topic Powershell scripting snapshots & replication in Array Performance and Data Protection

Powershell scripting snapshots & replication

Michael89012 — Mon, 21 Sep 2020 16:02:53 GMT

We are new Nimble SAN customer and I'm trying to address an issue presented by a non-VSS friendly database (OpenEdge from Progress).

On our old NetApp cluster, I wrote a PS script that told the OpenEdge system to stop writes, told the NetApp controller to take a VOL snapshot, and then told the OpenEdge system to allow writes to the DB again. The NetApp SnapMirror system took care of the replication of that snapshot, and any other snapshot on that VOL every hour. The same script also cleans up old snapshots

With the Nimble, I was able to reuse my PS script and make changes for it to use the Nimble HPE PowerShell module. Everything with that piece working as expected, except these independent snapshots are not replicating, but the Volume Collection snapshots set on the controller are. There doens't seem to be setting that allows me to replicate any & all snapshots that exists on the volume.

I tried looking to see if I can do the following to no avail:

Mark these indepedent snaps for replication via the PS commands new-nssapshot or set-nssnapshot
Tell new-nssnapshot to leverage a Volume Collection
Set overall VOL replication policy

Is there anyway for me to get a powershell created snapshot to replicate? Taking a collection friendly snapshot? Or is there a work-around such as naming the snapshot the same as a vol collection (I plan testing that).

Thanks for anyhelp!

Re: Powershell scripting snapshots & replication

mamatadesaiNim — Tue, 22 Sep 2020 05:47:02 GMT

Take a look at Set-NSSnapshotCollection

Re: Powershell scripting snapshots & replication

Michael89012 — Tue, 22 Sep 2020 15:44:57 GMT

I ended up opening a trouble ticket with HPE support who pointed me to Invoke-NimSnapVolumeCollection. Unfortunately, documentation doesn't show that command was replaced by New-NSSnapShotCollection. Actually, I'm finding a few things behind with the documenation on HPE's site about the PowerShell Tool Kit. Even New-NSSnapShot is not mentioned in the online documentation.

Anways, New-NSSnapShotCollection is working. It took the snapshot associated to the new Vol collection group I created and I see it replicated on the partner.