Zero-copy clone for dev/test

[johntchaisky]

I have 2 seperate vSphere clusters (1 Prod and 1 Dev/Test) on 2 seperate networks (1 Prod and 1 Dev/Test) , and I would like to connect both clusters via FC to the same Nimble storage and use zero-copy clone to clone a production datastore that is accessible only to the prod vSphere cluster to a dev/test datastore that is accessible only to the prod/test cluster. Is that something that can be easily done? Sorry if this is a noob question because I am quite new to storage.

[mamatadesaiNim]

Are these clusters in one vCenter?

Any VMFS datastore clone within a Nimble array will use xcopy.

[Nick_Dyer]

Hi John,

Indeed - as Mamata has referenced - if both of your clusters are controlled under a single vCenter you can perform this operation yourself using the Nimble vCenter plugin. 

If not, you could script this functionality yourself using our automation plugins.

What you're essentially doing in this requirement is telling your Nimble array to take a Zero Copy Clone of a volume. This will clone out your volume as a new volume, with it's own ACL telling it to connect to your required intiator Groups.

So you could do:

Vol1 -> Initiator Group 1 (Production servers)
CloneofVol1 -> Initiator Group 2 (Dev/Test servers).