Does NetApp providing tooling to export a WAFL export snapshots to a file?

Question

With the open source ZFS file systm, an exact copy/snapshot can be produced using zfs snapshot. This includes file-system level optimizations like deduplication. Further you can send these to a remote server that's listening with zfs receive using zfs send.

Can something similar be done with NetApp's WAFL? At the least I want to create a snapshot and export it to a file which I can transfer to another ONTAP instance and restore with.

With WAFL you'd need a whole chain of these backups just to get a coherent filesystem, and restore them in order. — Chopper3, Jan 07 '12 at 00:18
read up on copy-nahostfile this may give you a hint as to what you need to do. copy-nahostfile is only a powershell commandlet for now but. — tony roth, Jan 07 '12 at 02:17

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Jan 09 '12 at 14:45

2

"Export" is the wrong word. You can clone it onto disk, replicate it onto another filer, or copy it (like any other file) onto another non-WAFL server. You could also create a read/write copy that initially only takes the space already taken by the original data.

That said, assuming you're trying to back up a snapshot, your best choice would to be to use backup software that supports NDMP.

answered Jan 09 '12 at 14:45

Basil

8,851
3
38
73

That very interesting! Do you have links on how to copy a snapshot to another non-WAFL server? Or perhaps the commands involved? – Sandra Jan 09 '12 at 18:08
Assuming it's not a disk volume (block IO), you would simply mount the snapshot on the target server and use an operating system command to copy it. – Basil Jan 10 '12 at 16:49

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 10 '12 at 10:41

2

The only approach from a NetApp perspective is to run SnapVault between your primary and secondary (in NA lingo).

answered Jan 10 '12 at 10:41

pfo

5,700
24
36

Is this still true? – Evan Carroll Jan 11 '23 at 20:43

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Jan 12 '23 at 03:57

0

You can do this with ndmpcopy

It will copy data between Netapps, without using temporary files.

answered Jan 12 '23 at 03:57

arainchi

141
5

Does NetApp providing tooling to export a WAFL export snapshots to a file?

3 Answers3