I am using snapdrive 4.1 on unix tying to split flexclone
snapdrive snap connect -fs /vol/fs1 /vol/fs1_0 -snapname mysnap -split
however, the system just ignores split. Any clue? Thanks J

Ideally it’s an object oriented environment, where the child ‘class’ has inherited much of itself from it’s singular (or multiple modular) parent(s).

A spawned virtual environment is instantiated instantly on access, and is simply an extension of the dynamic class(es) it’s based off. ‘It’ is simply the change it brings to it’s instance.

Perhaps this is what ‘View’ essentially is? I’m not all that versed in it actually.

-C

As the base volume is modified, the original blocks in that volume remain locked by the snapshot upon which the FlexClones were created. Additional space must be allocated to store the changes to the base volume, but the FlexClones do not require any additional space until they change their blocks from the blocks in the base volume’s snapshot.

Hope this helps!

Seems like there should be a way – kind of like unionfs in linux.
http://www.filesystems.org/project-unionfs.html

-C

Updating the master volume does not update the FlexCloned volumes. The only way to update the clones would be to destroy and respawn them again.

For the kind of functionality you need, VMware View is the answer. I’m looking forward (I hope) to the vStorage APIs being extended to allow the storage arrays to do the heavy lifting that VMware View now performs in software, but today that’s just wishful thinking.

Specificaly, if I create a master volume with a golden XP image, can I auto update the master and propogate all changes out to the children in one whack? Will this cause (or potentially cause) inconsistencies in the childrens’ registry settings, say if a key was previously changed in the child?

-C

NetApp can clone LUNs, either using FlexClones (in which case the FlexVol and the LUNs within that FlexVol are cloned) or using LUN clones (in which case the LUN is cloned within the same FlexVol). You’ll then need to deal with VMFS resignaturing, but the process is otherwise very similar. NFS is not a pre-requisite for using FlexClones.

BTW, do a site search for ‘FlexClone’ and you’ll turn up a number of articles, including a comparison of FlexClones vs. LUN clones.

Hope this helps!

I was under the impressoin that the Netapp must use NFS for flexcloning so it can manipulate the files on the NFS filesystem.

Or can Netapp read VMFS filesystems?

Or does it not need to and by some magic flexcloning works with both iSCSI/VMFS and NAS/NFS?

Cheers

This article was initially written from a block storage perspective, i.e., using LUNs, but you are absolutely correct–if we were using NFS, we’d run into the limit of 32 NAS datastores per ESX server.

Good point!

Why would you hit the limit of 256 LUNs? If its flexclone/netapp, surely its running on NFS, not iSCSI/VMFS .. in which case you would hit the NAS datastore limit of 32…?

Cheers
Alex