temporary access to a static version of an existing volume

[CHINGHIZ99]

My netapp admin is in Disney World this week....

I have a 3.75TB volume with data that updates frequently.

I have been asked by a data owner to present a second volume that has a static copy of this volume. For example, I would like to present them last night's snapshot. This "new" volume only has to be read only so they can copy some files from it. I don't suppose this is possible? I am trying to avoid presenting a full 3.75TB copy of the volume because I don't think I have an aggregate with that much free space. Do I have an option here?

Is there a way to see into a snapshot and copy some files out of it?

thanks very much for the help.

[chrism]

If it's a NAS volume then the easiest thing browse directly to the snapshot via \\filername\share_name\~snapshot and then send them a link to the particular snapshot that they need access to, ex: \\filername\share_name\~snapshot\nightly.0

They can mount that if they'd like and they will be presented with a read only copy of the data until that snapshot expires.

If it's SAN data then you can make a clone of the the LUN via lun clone or of the entire volume using flexclone.

[CHINGHIZ99]

Chris -

Yes I like the ~snapshot idea, that makes sense. But these volumes are formatted with an NSS (Novel Storage System) filesystem and are presented to SuSE servers. I do not believe we can leverage the \\filenname\share\~snapshot feature because of this odd file system.

I think flexclone needs a license? Is there a way I can check if I am licensed to use flexclone?

Otherwise I will look into lun clone.

Thanks very much for the help.

[chrism]

Doug,

You're correct in the FlexClone needs a license. Lun Clone is included for free, but there's a catch. The clone of the lun, while costing you no additional space overhead except for any net new writes you perform to the clone, will be located in the same parent volume as the source lun. The benefit of FlexClone is that it creates an entirely new volume, separate from the source, and places the cloned lun in there. The downside to using lun clone is that if the clone will be around for an extended period of time then it and any data you write to it will be caught in any scheduled snapshots taken on the volume until the clone is deleted. If you don't write any data to the clone and treat it as read only then this really won't have much of a negative impact, but if you do write data to the clone and then destroy it after it's been caught in one or more scheduled snapshots then those snapshots will inflate to the size of the destroyed data. You then need to account for the extra space now consumed by these snapshots until they're staled out of the schedule.

Hope that helps.

Chris

[CHINGHIZ99]

Chris,

Thanks so far. I am doing my reading about lun clone and have a new dilema.

Let us say this is the data that I want to clone:

Netapp System Manager --> netapp1 --> Storage --> Volumes --> dbvol1

But (uh-oh) there is no corresponding LUN in

Netapp System Manager --> netapp1 --> Storage --> LUNs

It is an NFS mount and I think I am reading that some NFS exports do not need to be a LUN, they can just be a volume. It looks like the circumstances around this particular blob of storage is that it is not required to be an actual LUN?  And if this is my reality. Should I assume that I cannot leverage LUN Clone because I do not even have a LUN?

Thanks much.