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Upgrade and revert ONTAP with SM-BC

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SnapMirror Business Continuity (SM-BC) is supported beginning with ONTAP 9.8. Upgrading and reverting your ONTAP cluster has implications on your SM-BC relationships depending on the ONTAP version to which you are upgrading or reverting.

Upgrade ONTAP with SM-BC

To use SM-BC, all nodes on the source and destination clusters must be running ONTAP 9.8 or later.

When upgrading ONTAP with active SM-BC relationships, you should use automated nondisruptive upgrade (ANDU). Using ANDU ensures your SM-BC relationships are in sync and healthy during the upgrade process.

There are no configuration steps to prepare SM-BC deployments for ONTAP upgrades. However, it is recommended that before and after the upgrade, you should check that:

  • SM-BC relationships are in sync.

  • There are no errors related to SnapMirror in the event log.

  • The Mediator is online and healthy from both clusters.

  • All hosts can see all paths properly to protect LUNs.

Note When you upgrade clusters from ONTAP 9.8 or 9.9.1 to ONTAP 9.10.1 and later, ONTAP creates new consistency groups on both source and destination clusters for SM-BC relationships that can be configured using System Manager.
Note The snapmirror quiesce and snampirror resume commands are not supported with SM-BC.

Revert to ONTAP 9.9.1 from ONTAP 9.10.1

To revert relationships from 9.10.1 to 9.9.1, SM-BC relationships must be deleted, followed by the 9.10.1 consistency group instance. Consistency groups with an active SM-BC relationship cannot be deleted. Any FlexVol volumes that were upgraded to 9.10.1 previously associated with another Smart Container or Enterprise App in 9.9.1 or earlier will no longer be associated on revert. Deleting consistency groups does not delete the constituent volumes or volume granular snapshots. Refer to Delete a consistency group for more information on this task in ONTAP 9.10.1 and later.

Revert to ONTAP 9.7 from ONTAP 9.8

Note SM-BC is not supported with mixed ONTAP 9.7 and ONTAP 9.8 clusters.

When you revert from ONTAP 9.8 to ONTAP 9.7, you must be aware of the following:

  • If the cluster host an SM-BC destination, reverting to ONTAP 9.7 is not allowed until the relationship is broken and deleted.

  • If the cluster hosts an SM-BC source, reverting to ONTAP 9.7 is not allowed until the relationship is released.

  • All user-created custom SM-BC SnapMirror policies must be deleted before reverting to ONTAP 9.7.

To meet these requirements, see Remove an SM-BC configuration.

Steps
  1. Perform a revert check from one of the clusters in the SM-BC relationship:

    cluster::*> system node revert-to -version 9.7 -check-only

    Example:

    cluster::*> system node revert-to -version 9.7 -check-only
    Error: command failed: The revert check phase failed. The following issues must be resolved before revert can be completed. Bring the data LIFs down on running vservers. Command to list the running vservers: vserver show -admin-state running Command to list the data LIFs that are up: network interface show -role data -status-admin up Command to bring all data LIFs down: network interface modify {-role data} -status-admin down
    Disable snapshot policies.
        Command to list snapshot policies: "snapshot policy show".
        Command to disable snapshot policies: "snapshot policy modify -vserver
       * -enabled false"
    
       Break off the initialized online data-protection (DP) volumes and delete
       Uninitialized online data-protection (DP) volumes present on the local
       node.
        Command to list all online data-protection volumes on the local node:
       volume show -type DP -state online -node <local-node-name>
        Before breaking off the initialized online data-protection volumes,
       quiesce and abort transfers on associated SnapMirror relationships and
       wait for the Relationship Status to be Quiesced.
        Command to quiesce a SnapMirror relationship: snapmirror quiesce
        Command to abort transfers on a SnapMirror relationship: snapmirror
       abort
        Command to see if the Relationship Status of a SnapMirror relationship
       is Quiesced: snapmirror show
        Command to break off a data-protection volume: snapmirror break
        Command to break off a data-protection volume which is the destination
       of a SnapMirror relationship with a policy of type "vault": snapmirror
       break -delete-snapshots
        Uninitialized data-protection volumes are reported by the "snapmirror
       break" command when applied on a DP volume.
        Command to delete volume: volume delete
    
       Delete current version snapshots in advanced privilege level.
        Command to list snapshots: "snapshot show -fs-version 9.8"
        Command to delete snapshots: "snapshot prepare-for-revert -node
       <nodename>"
    
       Delete all user-created policies of the type active-strict-sync-mirror
       and active-sync-mirror.
       The command to see all active-strict-sync-mirror and active-sync-mirror
       type policies is:
        snapmirror policy show -type
       active-strict-sync-mirror,active-sync-mirror
       The command to delete a policy is :
        snapmirror policy delete -vserver <SVM-name> -policy <policy-name>

For information on reverting clusters, see Revert ONTAP.