Thank you both GM and Aborzenkov for getting back to me, appreciate it.
Yes orginally that's how I had it configured and how I assumed it should be: source > sm > sv. I have read a lot of NetApp documenation that says this is correct and possible. I'm not sure if we are having the problems because the SM and SV are on the same FAS at the same site?
Our source volume at HQ (Test_volume) contains, as you mentioned, the short term smvi snapshots (4 Hourly, 4 daily, 4 weekly) this was then in a snapmirror to DR where it replicated the snapshots to a volume called test_volume_sm.
Its after that, that I am having issues. I want my SV to use the SM (on the same FAS, same site) as it's source volume, however using labels, i want my SV to hold onto 10 hourly, 31 daily, 5 weekly snapshots.
When I created the SV (using the SM as the source volume) the smvi snapshots changed name and instead i was getting 1 snapshot called snapmirror.---- Because of this I was unable to pull through any hourly snapshots and these snapshots were not smvi snapshots. I read that the Vault would use a hidden label called sm_created however this doesnt allow me to configure hourly, daily, weekly jobs, it just allows me to specify say 50 snapshots and that would take 1 a day until it reaches the 50 threshold.... if that makes sense?
As you mentioned G, the mirror is purely for if HQ became completely unusable so to speak. The source smvi snapshots will be used for short term restoring purposes and then its the Vault which will be used for long term restore jobs.
At the minute it seems I have 2 options 1) have it working the way I want, but both the mirror and vault need to use HQ Test_volume as the source, meaning duplication of data across the WAN or 2) Have either a working mirror or working vault. If no other options were available we would have to go with option 1 as we require both a working mirror and vault. We were just hoping we could avoid duplication of data across the WAN.