We have 2 FAS 3270s. One is PROD and the other is BACKUP/NON-PROD.
Our primary use of the 3270's is for Database Storage (Oracle 11GR2 - ASM Disks -- Fibre Channel LUNS)
We have FLEXCLONE and SnapMirror Licenses.
On PROD - we take hourly snapshots of the DB VOLs. We also take daily SnapMirrors Updates so snapshots on PROD will be on the BACKUP array,
Our DBs range in size from 2 ro 12 TB in size.
A Gigabit Link serves as SnapMirror Pipe between the NetApps.
1.) We have Database Clone Requirements wherein one set needs to be refreshed/updated from PROD on the NON-PROD Netapp every weekend.
2.) We also have another DB Clone Set that needs a refresh/update every month.
3.) And we also have sometimes adhoc Database Clone requests that could remain for a few days to a few months.
All the clones need to be on the BACKUP/NON-PROD Netapp.
We currently address 1 and 2 by creating FLEXCLONES of the replicated PROD snapshots that's on the SnapMirror Volume on the NON-PROD?BACKUP NetApp.. We have an automated script that currently does:
snapmirror update
vol clone create TESTW_SAPDBVOL01 -b SAPDBVOL01_M SAPDBVOL01_SNP_REF
luns of TESTW_SAPDBVOL01 presented to iGroup of TESTW DB Server
vol clone split start TESTW_SAPDBVOL01
We currently have 2 DBs (total VOL Sizes is arounf 6 TB) moved to this pair of NetApps and 10 more are scheduled. Eventually there will be over 30TB on PROD that will need to be cloned.
Currently the 6TB of VOlumes (3 TB each on each controller) takes 2 days to finish.
If I do 2 VOL CLONE SPLITS operations on each controller at the same time on the current DBs, completion takes 4 days!
The solution works beautifully but my problem is as more and more Databases are added to this NetApp Solution, the VOL CLONE SPLIT process takes a very long time to complete that if I have 2 VOL CLONE SPLIT process running at the same time on each controller, the time it takes to complete increases tremendously . We have to VOL CLONE SPLIT so we can delete/remove the reference snapshot from PROD so our snapshot reserves there will not fill up. We cannot also delete the reference snapshot of the clones on the PROD Netapp as doing so will mean snapmirror updates will fail since the reference snapshot still exists on the BACKUP/NON-PROD NetApp. And the reference snapshot on the Non-Prod NetApp cannot be deleted until my VOL CLONE SPLIT Process is done.
Our PROD NetApp is SSD so we can't have a very large snapshot reserve allocated to capture all the snapshot deltas and allow for continued snapmirror updates whilst the vol clone split processes go on on the BACKUP/Non-Prod NetApp.
So my question is: Is there a way to have the VOL CLONE SPLIT process done faster?
Could I use VOL COPY or NDMPCOPY Instead? (I can probably ask the client that their DBs will now need to be down until a VOL COPY / NDMPCOPY (to a different aggregate???) is done. They will loose the luxury of have their DB Clones immediately available. We're also planning to have a 10GBe SnapMirror Pipe between the PROD and BACKUP/Non-PROD NetApps and just use SnapMirror to do the above -- but then again, the CLONES will no longer be instantly mountable... There will now have to be a wait until after a SnapMirror Update/Break is done or VOL COPY of the SNapMirror Volume to an independent FlexVol likely to a different Aggregate...
Any advice?