Dell PowerVault MD3260i - Manual (Page 66)

1. Stop all I/O activity to the source.
2. Using your Windows system, flush the cache to the source. At the host prompt, type SMrepassist -f
and press .
See "SMrepassist Utility" in the Owner’s Manual for more information.
3. Remove the drive letter(s) of the source in Windows or unmount the virtual drive(s) in Linux to help guarantee a
stable copy of the drive for the Snapshot. If this is not done, the snapshot operation reports that it has completed
successfully, but the snapshot data is not updated properly.
NOTE: Verify that the virtual disk has a status of Optimal or Disabled by clicking the Summary tab and then
clicking the Disk Groups & Virtual Disks link.
4. Follow any additional instructions for your operating system. Failure to follow these additional instructions can
create unusable snapshot virtual disks.
NOTE: If your operating system requires additional instructions, you can find those instructions in your
operating system documentation.
If you want to use a snapshot regularly, such as for backups, use the Disable Snapshot and Re-create Snapshot options
to reuse the snapshot. Disabling and re-creating snapshots preserves the existing virtual disk-to-host mappings to the
snapshot virtual disk.
After your server has been prepared, see Creating The Initial Snapshot Virtual Disk.
Creating The Initial Snapshot Virtual Disk
After first preparing the host server(s) as specified in the preceding procedure, use the following examples to make a
virtual disk snapshot.
The following syntax is the general form of the command to create a snapshot virtual disk:
create snapshotVirtualDisk sourceVirtualDisk=
"sourceVirtualDiskName" [repositoryRAIDLevel=(0 |
1 | 5) (repositoryPhysicalDisks=
(enclosureID0,slotID0 ... enclosureIDn,slotIDn)
userLabel="snapshotVirtualDiskName"
warningThresholdPercent=percentValue
repositoryPercentOfSource=percentValue
repositoryUserLabel="repositoryName"
repositoryFullPolicy=(failSourceWrites |
failSnapShot)] [enclosureLossProtect=(TRUE |
FALSE)]enableSchedule=(TRUE | FALSE) | schedule=
(immediate | snapshotSchedule)]
NOTE: Use one or all of the optional parameters as needed to help define your configuration. You do not, however,
need to use any optional parameters.
See step 1 through step 4 in the preceding section, Preparing Host Servers To Create An Initial Snapshot Virtual Disk.
The following example shows a command in which users assign the physical disks:
client>smcli 123.45.67.89 -c "create
snapshotVirtualDisk sourceVirtualDisk=
\"Mars_Spirit_4\" repositoryRAIDLevel=5
repositoryPhysicalDisks=(1,1 1,2 1,3 1,4 1,5);"
The command in this example creates a new snapshot of the source virtual disk Mars_Spirit_4. The snapshot repository
virtual disk consists of five physical disks that form a new disk group. The new disk group has a RAID level of 5. This
command also takes a snapshot of the source virtual disk, starting the copy-on-write operation.
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