NetApp Snapshot Support

Tuesday, April 1, 2008 in Microsoft, Storage by slowe | 3 comments

For readers that didn’t already know this, Snapshots on NetApp-hosted CIFS shares are automatically and transparently recognized by Windows versions that support the “Previous Versions” tab. I believe this functionality is native on Windows Server 2003 and an add-on for Windows XP, but I’m not 100% certain. Either way, this means that users can easily recover files from NetApp Snapshots from within the Windows GUI.

Here’s a screenshot of the Previous Versions support on an out-of-the-box server running Windows Server 2003 R2:

NetApp Snapshots as Previous Versions

As you can see in the screenshot, the Previous Versions tab automatically shows the NetApp Snapshots. No configuration is required; this is after a vanilla installation of Windows Server 2003 R2 and all applicable updates from Windows Update.

To NetApp veterans, this is nothing new, but I thought some new NetApp users out there might find information about this functionality and integration useful.

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Wednesday, April 2, 2008 at 11:21 pm

Charles Tyler

Charles Tyler’s avatar

The Previous Versions feature is super nice, but can be a tad bit too powerful at times. Restoring a previous version of a file is ideal, but restoring at a folder level can have implications to all files below the folder.

I’ve had several NetApp customers ask me how to remove and this is what I’ve found:

You can disable the entire Previous Versions tab, or just the actual Restore button.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/888603

Thursday, April 3, 2008 at 6:03 am

slowe

slowe’s avatar

Charles,

Thanks, that’s useful information to have.

I agree that the Previous Versions feature isn’t right for every organization, so this ability to disable the feature entirely or just the Restore button is very helpful.