Flexclones from SnapVault

[moiseshoyos]

As far as I understand volumes (or qtrees) can be replicated thorugh SnapMirror. With the mirror in place in a remote data center it would be possible to create a test environment (via a flexclone from one of the replicated snapshots). However snapshots are finite (i.e., due to retention period) which means that the snapshot I am using for the test system would have to be deleted eventually. I would like to keep the test system for a longer period (months) regardles of the snapshot retention period. Would it be possible to create a Flexclone from a snapshot stored in SnapVault?

[eric_barlier]

Hi,

If you want to keep the flexclone for a longer period of time you can split it so that it will become an independant volume like

its source volume.

NOTE : before splitting the volume make sure you have enough free space in aggregate to accomodate for the volume.

Is this an option for you or are you out of space? If it is here is the command:

vol clone split start <vol-name>

If you still want to flexclone from a snapvault snapshot:

I have not tried to flex clone from a snapvault destination snapshot and cannot test for you as we have currently not

got snapvault in place. Why dont you give this a test? Keeping in mind that the one of the differences between snapmirror

and snapvault is that a snapmirror destination can be turned into read AND write by breaking the relationship. A snapvault

cannot be made into write by itself. You could achieve this with bundled but its more work intensive.

Right now with the information you ve given us I suggest trying splitting the clone, the command will fail if its not possible.

next try to clone using a snapvault snapshot. last resort would be to snapmirror your snapvault destination and then break that etc etc.

Regards,

Eric

[jmonson]

Dealing with some of these issues as well....

What I can comment on is if you use SnapVault (Like through data protection) to move snapshots from a production controller to a backup/dev controller, the following will happen...

• The snapshot that you use to create your flexclone will not be able to be automatically deleted (by the zapi process)
• Instead, the snapshot will remain, and continue to take up more and more space on the snapvault destination volume
• Eventually, the volume will have to be increased, or the volume split.

Now the issue I am dealing with now deals with using a snapshot in a snapmirror destination volume to create a flexclone.  What I think I have witnessed (still need to prove it) is that the mirror breaks because the snapshot being used for the flexclone can't be deleted due to the dependency of the flexclone.  In our environment, I only keep 2 snapshots on the 'production' volume, but keep 2 weeks worth of snapshots in the snapvault location.  The snapmirror comes from production.  The issue here is that snapshots in the production volume don't stick around long, less than a day.  So the mirror can't update the destination volume, because the snapshot in use would have to be dropped...

Anyways.  Will work on getting back to this thread in order to share what I learn.