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Netapp Snap Mirror Setup Guide

This document provides instructions for setting up Snapmirror in Netapp to replicate data between filers for disaster recovery. Snapmirror can replicate at the volume or qtree level. It requires a source and destination filer, and the initial replication involves creating volumes on the destination, enabling Snapmirror, and running the 'snapmirror initialize' command on the destination to start the baseline transfer. The status and updates are managed through commands like 'snapmirror status' and 'snapmirror update' on the destination.

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467 views3 pages

Netapp Snap Mirror Setup Guide

This document provides instructions for setting up Snapmirror in Netapp to replicate data between filers for disaster recovery. Snapmirror can replicate at the volume or qtree level. It requires a source and destination filer, and the initial replication involves creating volumes on the destination, enabling Snapmirror, and running the 'snapmirror initialize' command on the destination to start the baseline transfer. The status and updates are managed through commands like 'snapmirror status' and 'snapmirror update' on the destination.

Uploaded by

Nilesh Chodhary
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Netapp Snapmirror Setup Guide

Snapmirror is an licensed utility in Netapp to do data transfer across filers.


Snapmirror works at Volume level or Qtree level. Snapmirror is mainly used for
disaster recovery and replication.

Snapmirrror needs a source and destination filer. (When source and destination
are the same filer, the snapmirror happens on local filer itself.   This is when you
have to replicate volumes inside a filer. If you need DR capabilities of a volume
inside a filer, you have to try syncmirror ).

Synchronous SnapMirror is a SnapMirror feature in which the data on one system is


replicated on another system at, or near, the same time it is written to the first system.
Synchronous SnapMirror synchronously replicates data between single or clustered
storage systems situated at remote sites using either an IP or a Fibre Channel
connection. Before Data ONTAP saves data to disk, it collects written data in NVRAM.
Then, at a point in time called a consistency point, it sends the data to disk.

When the Synchronous SnapMirror feature is enabled, the source system forwards data
to the destination system as it is written in NVRAM. Then, at the consistency point, the
source system sends its data to disk and tells the destination system to also send its
data to disk.

This guides you quickly through the Snapmirror setup and commands.

1) Enable Snapmirror on source and destination filer

source-filer> options snapmirror.enable


snapmirror.enable                      on
source-filer>
source-filer> options snapmirror.access
snapmirror.access                       legacy
source-filer>

2) Snapmirror Access
Make sure destination filer has snapmirror access to the source filer. The
snapmirror filer's name or IP address should be in /etc/snapmirror.allow. Use
wrfile to add entries to /etc/snapmirror.allow.

source-filer> rdfile /etc/snapmirror.allow


destination-filer
destination-filer2
source-filer>

3) Initializing a Snapmirror relation

Volume snapmirror : Create a destination volume on destination netapp filer, of


same size as source volume or greater size. For volume snapmirror, the
destination volume should be in restricted mode. For example, let us consider
we are snapmirroring a 100G volume - we create the destination volume and
make it restricted.

destination-filer> vol create demo_destination aggr01 100G


destination-filer> vol restrict demo_destination

Volume SnapMirror creates a Snapshot copy before performing the initial


transfer. This copy is referred to as the baseline Snapshot copy. After performing
an initial transfer of all data in the volume, VSM (Volume SnapMirror) sends to
the destination only the blocks that have changed since the last successful
replication. When SnapMirror performs an update transfer, it creates another
new Snapshot copy and compares the changed blocks. These changed blocks are
sent as part of the update transfer.

Snapmirror is always destination filer driven. So the snapmirror initialize has to be done on
destination filer. The below command starts the baseline transfer.

destination-filer> snapmirror initialize -S source-filer:demo_source destination-


filer:demo_destination
Transfer started.
Monitor progress with 'snapmirror status' or the snapmirror log.
destination-filer>

Qtree Snapmirror : For qtree snapmirror, you should not create the destination qtree. The
snapmirror command automatically creates the destination qtree. So just volume creation of
required size is good enough.

Qtree SnapMirror determines changed data by first looking through the inode file for
inodes that have changed and changed inodes of the interesting qtree for changed data
blocks. The SnapMirror software then transfers only the new or changed data blocks
from this Snapshot copy that is associated with the designated qtree. On the
destination volume, a new Snapshot copy is then created that contains a complete
point-in-time copy of the entire destination volume, but that is associated specifically
with the particular qtree that has been replicated.

destination-filer> snapmirror initialize -S source-filer:/vol/demo1/qtree destination-


filer:/vol/demo1/qtree
Transfer started.
Monitor progress with 'snapmirror status' or the snapmirror log.

4) Monitoring the status : Snapmirror data transfer status can be monitored


either from source or destination filer. Use "snapmirror status" to check the
status.

destination-filer> snapmirror status


Snapmirror is on.
Source                                                  Destination                                                  State                  Lag Status
source-filer:demo_source               destination-filer:demo_destination     Uninitialized  -   
Transferring (1690 MB done)
source-filer:/vol/demo1/qtree     destination-filer:/vol/demo1/qtree     Uninitialized  -   
Transferring (32 MB done)
destination-filer>

5) Snapmirror schedule : This is the schedule used by the destination filer for
updating the mirror. It informs the SnapMirror scheduler when transfers will be
initiated. The schedule field can either contain the word sync to specify
synchronous mirroring or a cron-style specification of when to update the
mirror. The cronstyle schedule contains four space-separated fields.

If you want to sync the data on a scheduled frequency, you can set that in
destination filer's /etc/snapmirror.conf . The time settings are similar to Unix
cron. You can set a synchronous snapmirror schedule in /etc/snapmirror.conf by
adding “sync” instead of the cron style frequency.

destination-filer> rdfile /etc/snapmirror.conf


source-filer:demo_source               destination-filer:demo_destination - 0 * * *   # This syncs every
hour
source-filer:/vol/demo1/qtree     destination-filer:/vol/demo1/qtree - 0 21 * * # This syncs every
9:00 pm
destination-filer>

6) Other Snapmirror commands

To break snapmirror relation - do snapmirror quiesce and snapmirror break.

To update snapmirror data   - do snapmirror update

To resync a broken relation - do snapmirror resync.

To abort a relation - do snapmirror abort

Snapmirror do provide multipath support. More than one physical path between a source
and a destination system might be desired for a mirror relationship. Multipath support
allows SnapMirror traffic to be load balanced between these paths and provides for
failover in the event of a network outage.

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