Creating snapshot using CFS Management console

[WayneKim]

I have HP Clustered Gateway running the CiFS file serving option v.3.4 with EVA 6000. I have a 500GB vdisk presented to the gateway servers and would like to create a snapshot or a snapclone of the vdisk to a near-line storage on the EVA. In the CFS Mgmt Console, when I right-click on the mounted filesystem, choose "Create Snapshot", and choose any of the three options of Fully-Allocated/Demand-Allocated/Complete-Copy, I get an "error creating snapshot of psv1. Main: Snapshots not configured." What have I missed? I cannot find any menu items that indicates such option.
Thanks in advance.

Wayne

[Srikanth Venkata Seshu]

Hi Wayne ,

There are couple of things to try :

a) Have you configured the Command View management station IP address and username/password credentials in the CFS management console ? If not, that is the reason for this failure.
Inorder to configure that , please logon to the CFS management console using the "configure option" and then navigate to "Storage Settings" tab and then go to "Snapshot configuration" section and click add button. This would bring up a dialong where in you can enter the Command View EVA Management station IP or hostname( host name should resolve ) , user id and password.
Once this is done, click "ok" and then try creating snapshot once again. If you are running CV EVA 6.0 and above , the "Test configuration" button will not work and there is an advisory regarding that. So dont bother trying that but instead click ok and exit out of the screen.

b) If you are running CV EVA 6.0 or higher version , then you will need to get the corresponding command line utility sssu.exe and copy the same to the folder
"C:\Program Files\Hewlett-Packard\SANworks\Element Manager for StorageWorks HSV\Bridge\" .

The sssu.exe can be downloaded from the link below :

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/DriverDownload.jsp?prodNameId=3185481〈=en&cc=us&prodTypeId=12169&prodSeriesId=471497&taskId=135

once you have the environment setup right you could try snapshot creation. If you have the right credentials setup, then you should be able to create snapshots.

hope this helps.

Thanks,
Srik

[WayneKim]

Hi Srik,

Thanks for your response. Yeah, I definitely missed to setup the first step that you described in (a). For your point (b), I am running CV EVA v.6.0.1 Build 8. I see the executable on the CV EVA appliance in the path you mention. Are you asking me to copy the sssu.exe executable to the gateway servers? That path does not exist on the gateway servers (and I'm assuming it's because it was never installed there). Do you want me to just create the same folder structure and copy the sssu.exe file from the CV server to the gateway servers?
Please clarify.

Wayne

[WayneKim]

Also, does creating the snapshot disrupt the service in anyway? Is the psv1 unmounted before taking the snapshot/snapclone? I have two levels of storage areas...primary disk group and near-line disk group. The source data that I am trying to create a snapshot is on the primary disk group and I would like to create the snapshot on the near-line group. Is this possible?

[nasdude]

>Are you asking me to copy the sssu.exe executable to the gateway servers? Do you want me to just create the same folder structure and copy the sssu.exe file from the CV server to the gateway servers?

It's all in the documentation. Do you have the docs?
You need to install SSSU v6.x on every CGW node in the cluster and then (unfortunately, since you didn't do that before) go to the Management Console's configuration screen (File > Configuration) where you in Tab 4 need first to stop service on all servers, then in Tab 2 configure snapshots and then you can start service on all servers again. So this will disrupt service for a few minutes.

Snapshots itself aren't disruptive and what you want to do is achievable.

Before you embark on this, check with tech support about the latest CGW-supported version of SSSU.

[Emil Velez]

it does not disrupt the filesystem

it does a pfssuspend and pfsresume which momentarily suspends i/o and lets you create a filesystem snapshot of all luns.

Yes you need to define the eva configuration in the tools -> configuration gui and in the san section it lets you configure the eva snapshot options. The EVA is one of the two disk arrays that are supported with polyserve.

Works fine.
Then if you want you can mount the snapshot on one or all of the nodes in the cluster at a different mount point.

[Ramaprasad K]

The first two questions posed by you earlier are answered. I would like to enlighten you on the 3rd query you had.

Any of the Snapshot creation guide mentions it - you cannot create a Snapshot across Disk Groups, in other words, your snapshot can be created in a Disk Group same as the one in which your original VDISK resides.

Hope this clarifies.

Regards,
Ram.