VERITAS Storage Foundation 4.1 Intelligent Storage Provisioning Administrator's Guide

Chapter 5, Administering Instant Snapshots

Creating Instant Snapshots

Refreshing an Instant Snapshot (vxsnap refresh)

Refreshing an instant snapshot replaces it with another point-in-time copy of a parent volume. To

refresh one or more snapshots and make them immediately available for use, use the following

command:

# vxsnap [-g diskgroup] refresh snapvol [source=vol] \

[[snapvol2 source=vol2]...] [sync=yes|no]

If the source volume is not specified, the immediate parent of the snapshot is used. For full-sized

instant snapshots, resynchronization is started by default. To disable resynchronization, specify the

syncing=no attribute. This attribute is not supported for space-optimized snapshots.

Note The snapshot being refreshed must not be open to any application. For example, any file

system configured on the volume must first be unmounted.

It is possible to refresh a volume from an unrelated volume provided that their sizes are

compatible.

You can use the vxsnap syncwait command to wait for the synchronization of the snapshot

volume to be completed, as shown here:

# vxsnap [-g diskgroup] syncwait snapvol

See “Controlling Instant Snapshot Synchronization” on page 92 for more information.

Attaching Plexes of an Instant Snapshot (vxsnap reattach)

Note Although this operation is named reattach, the plexes of an ISP snapshot volume could

never have belonged to the parent volume. For this reason, the description below refers to

the attachment, rather than the reattachment, of snapshot plexes.

This operation is not supported for space-optimized instant snapshots.

Using the following command, some or all plexes of an instant snapshot may be attached to the

specified source volume, or to a source volume in the snapshot hierarchy above the snapshot

volume:

# vxsnap -f [-g diskgroup] reattach snapvol source=vol \

[nmirror=number]