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Perform a planned failover of clusters in a SnapMirror active sync relationship

Contributors netapp-ahibbard
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In a planned failover of ONTAP clusters in a SnapMirror active sync relationship, you switch the roles of the primary and secondary clusters, so that the secondary cluster takes over from the primary cluster. During a failover, what is normally the secondary cluster processes input and output requests locally without disrupting client operations.

You may want to perform a planned failover to test the health of your disaster recovery configuration or to perform maintenance on the primary cluster.

About this task

A planned failover is initiated by the administrator of the secondary cluster. The operation requires switching the primary and secondary roles so that the secondary cluster takes over from the primary. The new primary cluster can then begin processing input and output requests locally without disrupting client operations.

Before you begin

  • The SnapMirror active sync relationship must be in sync.

  • You cannot initiate a planned failover when a nondisruptive operation is in process. Nondisruptive operations include volume moves, aggregate relocations, and storage failovers.

  • The ONTAP Mediator must be configured, connected, and in quorum.

Steps

You can perform a planned failover using the ONTAP CLI or System Manager.

System Manager
Important From ONTAP 9.8 through 9.14.1, SnapMirror active sync is referred to as SnapMirror Business Continuity (SM-BC).

  1. In System Manager, select Protection > Overview > Relationships.

  2. Identify the SnapMirror active sync relationship you want to failover. Next to its name, select the …​ next to the relationship's name, then select Failover.

  3. To monitor the status of the failover, use the snapmirror failover show in the ONTAP CLI.

CLI

  1. From the destination cluster, initiate the failover operation:

    destination::>snapmirror failover start -destination-path vs1_dst:/cg/cg_dst

  2. Monitor the progress of the failover:

    destination::>snapmirror failover show

  3. When the failover operation is complete, you can monitor the SnapMirror synchronous protection relationship status from the destination:

    destination::>snapmirror show