Lots of vserverdr snapshots

Apart from not doing the snapmirror release -

Snapshot delete fails "Snapshot copy is currently used as a reference Snapshot copy by one or more SnapMirror relationships" - NetApp Knowledge Base

- there’s another possible reason for lots of vserverdr snaps:

SnapMirror SVM DR snapshots accumulate due to invalid owner tag - NetApp Knowledge Base

VMware SRM test uses flexclone.

Once it is confirmed the snapshot is not used anywhere – i.e. it is not the refence snapshot for vserverdr or snapmirror (vault) relationships – then (from the kb above):

Manually delete the oldest snapshot
::> set advanced
::*> volume snapshot delete -vserver xxx -volume xxx -snapshot xxx -ignore-owners true -force true

Whilst aggregate space is not an issue, the snapshots are not doing any harm being there, so no rush to tidy them up. From ONTAP 9.4 we allow 1023 snapshots per volume:

Maximum number of snapshots supported by ONTAP - NetApp Knowledge Base

There is a quick way to delete lots of snapshots:

set -confirmations off

snapshot delete {-vserver SVM1 -volume VOLUMENAME -snaphot PREFIX* -create-time <30d}

set -confirmations on

That would delete all snapshots older than 30 days for volume = VOLUMENAME and all snapshots with PREFIX at the start. If you want to be prompted at every snapshot delete, then don’t do the “set -confirmations off”.

Once snapshots are deleted on the source, a resync will tidy them up on the destination.


Additional reading:

I actually forgot I did this post over 10 years ago now, but it is still relevant:

Comments