topic Re: Nimble Snapshot Size in Array Performance and Data Protection

Nimble Snapshot Size

nimuser — Thu, 29 Oct 2020 18:53:25 GMT

Hi,

I am looking to find size of each snapshot of a volume and also understand how the size of each snapshot is determined? I was sent info like the following, I am trying to understand what the total size of the each snapshot is and how much of a physical space is being occupied by each.

--------------------+--------------------+----------+------+-------+------------

Volume Snapshot Size Online Status New Data

Name Name (MiB) (MiB)

--------------------+--------------------+----------+------+-------+------------

A AdhocSnap 2306867 No Okay 7317

A A1-2020-10-15::18:00:21.642 2306867 No Okay 27372

A A1-2020-10-14::18:00:22.631 2306867 No Okay 37534

A A1-2020-10-13::18:00:29.959 2306867 No Okay 560692

Re: Nimble Snapshot Size

Sheldon Smith — Thu, 29 Oct 2020 19:12:36 GMT

Have you read the chapter on Snapshots in the Nimble Administration Guide? Available at InfoSight.

After that, look at the Command Reference, starting with the snap command.

Re: Nimble Snapshot Size

nimuser — Thu, 29 Oct 2020 19:57:10 GMT

Hello Sheldon,

Thank you for your response. I do not have access to InfoSight, I registered there but my email is not linked to my org's Nimble. Can that be shared with me?

Re: Nimble Snapshot Size

Nick_Dyer — Mon, 02 Nov 2020 09:33:30 GMT

Hello

the right way to get access to the Nimble docs are through Infosight. Please give Nimble Support a quick call and they can resolve this for you.

Phone numbers: https://h20195.www2.hpe.com/v2/getdocument.aspx?docname=a00050207enw

Referring more to your question - Nimble snapshots are redirect on write rather than full copies of your data (ie copy on write). This means that a snapshot is just a metadata file with pointer references to blocks on your array. A Nimble block on your array can be pointed to by many snapshots, but none of those snapshots actually 'own' the data - in esscence not duplicating the data behind the scenes, but also meaning that the size of the snapshot is fluid.