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Securely purge data on an encrypted volume without a SnapMirror relationship

Contributors netapp-ahibbard netapp-thomi netapp-aherbin
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Beginning with ONTAP 9.4, you can use secure-purge to non-disruptively “scrub” data on NVE-enabled volumes.

About this task

Secure-purge may take from several minutes to many hours to complete, depending on the amount of data in the deleted files. You can use the volume encryption secure-purge show command to view the status of the operation. You can use the volume encryption secure-purge abort command to terminate the operation.

Note In order to do a secure purge on a SAN host, you must delete the entire LUN containing the files you want to purge, or you must be able to punch holes in the LUN for the blocks that belong to the files you want purge. If you cannot delete the LUN or your host operating system does not support punching holes in the LUN, you cannot perform a secure purge.
Before you begin

  • You must be a cluster administrator to perform this task.

  • Advanced privileges are required for this task.

Steps

  1. Delete the files or the LUN you want to securely purge.

    • On a NAS client, delete the files you want to securely purge.

    • On a SAN host, delete the LUN you want to securely purge or punch holes in the LUN for the blocks that belong to the files you want to purge.

  2. On the storage system, change to advanced privilege level:

    set -privilege advanced

  3. If the files you want to securely purge are in snapshots, delete the snapshots:

    snapshot delete -vserver SVM_name -volume volume_name -snapshot

  4. Securely purge the deleted files:

    volume encryption secure-purge start -vserver SVM_name -volume volume_name

    The following command securely purges the deleted files on vol1 on SVMvs1:

    cluster1::> volume encryption secure-purge start -vserver vs1 -volume vol1

  5. Verify the status of the secure-purge operation:

    volume encryption secure-purge show