Administrator Guide

Managing Snapshots
Snapshots are read-only, point-in-time copies of NAS volume data. Storage administrators can restore a NAS volume from a
snapshot if needed. In addition, clients can easily retrieve files in a snapshot, without storage administrator intervention.
Snapshots use a redirect-on-write method to track NAS volume changes. That is, snapshots are based on a change set. When
the first snapshot of a NAS volume is created, all snapshots created after the baseline snapshot contain changes from the
previous snapshot.
Various policies can be set for creating a snapshot, including when a snapshot is to be taken and how long to keep snapshots.
For example, mission-critical files with high churn rates might need to be backed up every 30 minutes, whereas archival shares
might only need to be backed up daily.
If you configure a NAS volume to use VM-consistent snapshots, each snapshot creation operation such as scheduled, manual,
replication, or NDMP automatically creates a snapshot on the VMware server. This feature enables you to restore the VMs to
the state they were in before the NAS volume snapshot was taken.
Because snapshots consume space on the NAS volume, ensure that you monitor available capacity on the NAS volume and
schedule and retain snapshots in a manner that ensures that the NAS volume always has sufficient free space available for both
user data and snapshots. Also, to be informed when snapshots are consuming significant NAS volume space, enable a snapshot
consumption alert.
The FluidFS cluster automatically deletes one or more snapshots for a NAS volume in the following cases:
● If you delete a NAS volume, the FluidFS cluster deletes all of the snapshots for the NAS volume.
● If you restore a NAS volume from a snapshot, the FluidFS cluster deletes all the snapshots created after the snapshot from
which you restored the NAS volume.
Dedicated FluidFS Snapshot Profiles
For FluidFS deployments, Storage Manager creates a dedicated FluidFS snapshot that is automatically assigned to FluidFS LUNs
(storage volumes). The profile setting defaults to Daily, and the retention policy is to delete after 25 hours.
Creating On-Demand Snapshots
Create a NAS volume snapshot to take an immediate point-in-time copy of the data.
Steps
1. In the Storage view, select a FluidFS cluster.
2. Click the File System tab.
3. In the File System view, expand NAS Volumes and select a NAS volume.
4. In the NAS Volume Status panel, click the Snapshots & Clones tab.
5. In the Snapshot area, click Create.
The Create Snapshot dialog box opens.
6. In the Snapshot field, type a name for the snapshot.
7. (Optional) Configure the remaining snapshot attributes as needed. These options are described in the online help.
● To retain the snapshot indefinitely, clear the Snapshot Expiration Enabled checkbox.
● To expire the snapshot in the future, select the Snapshot Expiration Enabled checkbox and specify a day and time on
which to expire the snapshot.
8. Click OK.
FluidFS Administration
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