This API manages asynchronous extended data protection (XDP) relationships for FlexVols, FlexGroups, or SVMs. It is also used to create a synchronous relationship between FlexVol volumes, which provides zero RPO data protection. It supports the SnapMirror policy types "mirror-vault", "sync-mirror", and "strict-sync-mirror". You can create a relationship between the source and destination which can be used to transfer APIs to perform SnapMirror "restore" operations.

To create FlexVol or FlexGroup SnapMirror relationships, the source volume must be in the "online" state and be a read-write type; the destination volume must be in the "online" state and be a data protection type. To create SnapMirror relationships between SVMs, the source SVM must be of subtype "default" and the destination SVM of subtype "dp_destination". Additionally, SVMs must be peered before a relationship can be established between them. The SnapMirror functionality is subdivided into relationship APIs and transfer APIs: