To perform data protection and provisioning operations with SnapCenter, first you must set up the storage system connections that give SnapCenter access to ONTAP storage. Setting up these connections also involves configuring AutoSupport and Event Management System (EMS) features.
Host plug-in installations must not be in progress while adding a storage system connection because the host cache might not be updated, and databases might indicate "Not available for backup" or "Not on NetApp storage" in SnapCenter.
SnapCenter does not support multiple storage systems with the same name on different clusters. Each storage system that is supported by SnapCenter must have a unique name and a unique data LIF IP address.
You can delete storage connections for an individual user or for a group. If you belong to one or more groups with permission to the same storage system, the storage system name is displayed multiple times in the storage connection list; once for each group with permission to the storage system. The name of the group to which permission is assigned is displayed in the Domain Group column. If permission to the storage system is assigned directly to you, the Domain Group column remains blank.
When you configure storage systems, you can also set up AutoSupport and EMS features. The AutoSupport tool collects data about the health of your system and automatically sends the data to NetApp technical support, enabling them to troubleshoot your system. If you enable these features, SnapCenter sends AutoSupport information to the storage system and EMS messages to the storage system syslog when a resource is protected, a restore operation finishes successfully, or an operation fails.
The administrative documentation contains details about managing EMS data collection.
If you are planning to replicate Snapshot copies to a SnapMirror destination or SnapVault destination, you must set up storage system connections for the destination SVM as well as the source SVM.
A cluster administrator must enable AutoSupport on each storage system node to send email notifications from all storage systems to which SnapCenter has access, by running the following command from the storage system command line:
autosupport trigger modify -node nodename -autosupport-message client.app.info enable -noteto enable