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Create a replication relationship with ONTAP

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The relationship between the source volume in primary storage and the destination volume in secondary storage is called a data protection relationship. You can use the snapmirror create command to create SnapMirror DR, SnapVault, or unified replication data protection relationships. Learn more about snapmirror create in the ONTAP command reference.

Note This procedure applies to FAS, AFF, and current ASA systems. If you have an ASA r2 system (ASA A1K, ASA A90, ASA A70, ASA A50, ASA A30, or ASA A20), follow these steps to create a replication relationship. ASA r2 systems provide a simplified ONTAP experience specific to SAN-only customers.

Beginning with ONTAP 9.11.1, you can use System Manager to select pre-created and custom mirror and vault policies, to display and select legacy policies, and to override the transfer schedules defined in a protection policy when protecting volumes and storage VMs. This capability is also available in ONTAP 9.8P12 and later patches of ONTAP 9.8.

Note

If you are using ONTAP 9.8P12 or later ONTAP 9.8 patch release and you configured SnapMirror using System Manager, you should use ONTAP 9.9.1P13 or later and ONTAP 9.10.1P10 or later patch releases if you plan to upgrade to ONTAP 9.9.1 or ONTAP 9.10.1 releases.
Before you begin

  • The source and destination clusters and SVMs must be peered.

    Cluster and SVM peering

  • The language on the destination volume must be the same as the language on the source volume.

About this task

Until ONTAP 9.3, SnapMirror invoked in DP mode and SnapMirror invoked in XDP mode used different replication engines, with different approaches to version-dependence:

  • SnapMirror invoked in DP mode used a version-dependent replication engine in which the ONTAP version was required to be the same on primary and secondary storage:

    cluster_dst::>  snapmirror create -type DP -source-path ... -destination-path ...

  • SnapMirror invoked in XDP mode used a version-flexible replication engine that supported different ONTAP versions on primary and secondary storage:

    cluster_dst::>  snapmirror create -type XDP -source-path ... -destination-path ...

With improvements in performance, the significant benefits of version-flexible SnapMirror outweigh the slight advantage in replication throughput obtained with version-dependent mode. For this reason, beginning with ONTAP 9.3, XDP mode has been made the new default, and any invocations of DP mode on the command line or in new or existing scripts are automatically converted to XDP mode.

Existing relationships are not affected. If a relationship is already of type DP, it will continue to be of type DP. The table below shows the behavior you can expect.

If you specify…​

The type is…​

The default policy (if you do not specify a policy) is…​

DP

XDP

MirrorAllSnapshots (SnapMirror DR)

Nothing

XDP

MirrorAllSnapshots (SnapMirror DR)

XDP

XDP

XDPDefault (SnapVault)

See also the examples in the procedure below.

The only exceptions to conversion are as follows:

  • SVM data protection relationships continue to default to DP mode.

    Specify XDP explicitly to obtain XDP mode with the default MirrorAllSnapshots policy.

  • Load-sharing data protection relationships continue to default to DP mode.

  • SnapLock data protection relationships continue to default to DP mode.

  • Explicit invocations of DP continue to default to DP mode if you set the following cluster-wide option:

    options replication.create_data_protection_rels.enable on

    This option is ignored if you do not explicitly invoke DP.

In ONTAP 9.3 and earlier, a destination volume can contain up to 251 snapshots. In ONTAP 9.4 and later, a destination volume can contain up to 1019 snapshots.

Beginning with ONTAP 9.5, SnapMirror synchronous relationships are supported.

Beginning with ONTAP 9.14.1, the -backoff-level option is added to the snapmirror create, snapmirror modify, and snapmirror restore commands to enable you to specify the backoff level per relationship. The option is supported only with FlexVol SnapMirror relationships. The optional command specifies the SnapMirror backoff level due to client ops. Backoff values can be high, medium or none. The default value is high. Learn more about snapmirror create, snapmirror modify, and snapmirror restore in the ONTAP command reference.

Steps

You can use System Manager or the ONTAP CLI to create a replication relationship.

System Manager

  1. Select the volume or LUN to protect: click Storage > Volumes or Storage > LUNs, and then click the desired volume or LUN name.

  2. Click Protect icon.

  3. Select the destination cluster and storage VM.

  4. The asynchronous policy is selected by default. To select a synchronous policy, click More Options.

  5. Click Protect.

  6. Click the SnapMirror (Local or Remote) tab for the selected volume or LUN to verify that protection is set up correctly.

Related information

Other ways to do this in ONTAP

To perform these tasks with…​ See this content…​

System Manager Classic (available with ONTAP 9.7 and earlier)

Volume backup using SnapVault overview