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Learn about ONTAP long-term retention snapshots

Contributors netapp-lenida

SnapMirror relationships with a policy type of either “vault” or “mirror-vault” allow snapshot creation directly on the secondary volume of the SnapMirror relationship. These snapshots are retained on the destination as backups. These snapshots are often created for long-term retention and are called long-term retention (LTR) snapshots.

You create a long-term retention snapshot by specifying a snapshot creation schedule in the SnapMirror policy rule, the snapshot name prefix, SnapMirror label, and the retention count. This snapshot is retained on the SnapMirror destination volume regardless of the retention rules on the source.

Long-term retention snapshots are available for FlexVol SnapMirror configurations only. You cannot create LTR snapshots for FlexGroup SnapMirror configurations.

In a SnapMirror cascade relationship, long-term retention snapshots can only be created on the last volume of the cascade.