Convert Snapmirror to snapvault for archive

[terryzolinski]

Recently purchased 2 netapp filers, FAS2040A and FAS2020A. 2040 serves primary data in SiteA and as DR and archive for Site B. 2020 serves primary data in SiteB and as DR and archive for Site A. 2 locations in one city serving as DR for eachother. I already have my snapmirrors setup and that works great, now to get Snapvault going so I can archive these backups.

Is it possible to use the snapmirrored volume on a snapmirror destination to build a snapvault archive? I don't want to transfer the same backup data twice across the VPLS connection and send 2 large (1TB) baselines.

So, it would work like this. FILER1-A snapmirrors to FILER2-B. Could I use the snapmirrors on FILER2-B to build a snapvault of FILER1-A? Or do I have to setup the snapmirror relationships, then setup the same snapvault relationships and have double the data replicating across this link?

I am using VSM

Thanks in advance!

[radek_kubka]

Hi,

FILER1-A snapmirrors to FILER2-B. Could I use the snapmirrors on FILER2-B to build a snapvault of FILER1-A?

If you mean cascading SnapMirror target to a tetiary SnapVault then yes, you can do that & if memory servers right, from ONTAP 7.3 onwards you can even preserve application-consistent snapshots (e.g. generated by SnapManager products).

Regards,

Radek

[alapati · Accepted solution]

Yes, you can perform SnapVault backups from a VSM destination. There are some caveats depending on the ONTAP version. Please review this section in the SnapVault Best Practices Guide.

Section 6.2:

http://www.netapp.com/us/library/technical-reports/tr-3487.html

[terryzolinski]

In order to do what the document says I would need 3 filers. I have technically 4 filers, 2 clustered pairs. The problem I face then is I would have to snapmirror SiteA to controller 1 and snapvault from there to controller 2. There is no disk space on controller 1 to hold snapmirror destination. Then again, once the systems join a cluster would this ability still exist?

So essentially I need to be able to snapmirror to snapvault on the same filer. This is more than likely not possible.

[alapati]

Hi,

You could SnapVault within the same controller as the VSM destination. I think this is what you need to do if I understand your config.

[terryzolinski]

Thanks for all the input. I was able to setup my snapvault from the mirror to a volume on the same controller.