Skip to main content
ONTAP tools for VMware vSphere 10

Protect datastores in a cluster with ONTAP tools

Contributors jani
PDFs

Use granular datastore protection when a host cluster includes datastores from multiple storage virtual machines (SVMs) and you need to protect selected datastores with different policies.

Before you begin

Make sure you meet these requirements before you protect datastores in a host cluster:

  • The datastores are VMFS datastores that use iSCSI or FC protocols.

  • The datastores are discovered and available in ONTAP tools.

  • The source and target storage VMs are configured for SnapMirror relationships.

Steps

  1. Log in to the vSphere Client.

  2. Right-click on a host or a host cluster and select NetApp ONTAP tools > Protect datastores.

  3. Select the Storage VM in the cluster.

    Datastores from the selected SVM are displayed.

  4. The Datastore type field is pre-populated with VMFS as the only supported datastore type for protection and is disabled.

  5. From the list that populates based on eligibility criteria, select the datastores you want to protect and click Next.

  6. In the Protection settings window, choose whether to protect the selected datastores in an existing protection group or a new protection group.

  7. If you select Create new, provide a name for the protection group and select Add Relationship.

  8. In the Add SnapMirror Relationship window, select the Target storage VM and the Policy type.

    The policy type can be Asynchronous or AutomatedFailOverDuplex. AutomatedFailOverDuplex is supported only for datastores provisioned on ONTAP 9.15.1 with iSCSI or FC protocols and mounted on the host cluster.

    If you add the SnapMirror relationship as AutomatedFailOverDuplex, add the target storage as a storage backend to the same vCenter Server where ONTAP tools for VMware vSphere is deployed.

    In the AutomatedFailOverDuplex policy type, there are uniform and non-uniform cluster configurations. For uniform cluster configuration, the host initiator group configuration is replicated on the target site. For more information, refer to Key concepts and terms.

  9. For non-uniform cluster configuration, select the host access (source or target) for each host in the cluster. ONTAP tools creates the corresponding host initiator group configurations on the target storage to provide host access to target storage objects.

  10. Select Save.

  11. Review the configuration in the Summary window and select Protect.

  12. To view the details of all the available protection groups, go to NetApp ONTAP tools > Protection > Protection groups.

Result

A new protection group is created with the selected datastores and the SnapMirror relationship is added to that protection group. The system creates a vCenter task with job ID details and shows its progress in the recent tasks panel. This is an asynchronous task; the user interface shows only the request submission status and does not wait for the task to complete.

Note

For ONTAP storage (ONTAP 9) clusters, unprotect of a non-last datastore is not supported if the protection group has an asynchronous relationship.
Related information