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Kingkcube's avatar
Kingkcube
Level 3
12 years ago

NetApp Snapmirror Agent for LINUX

Hi All,

Would anybody know the NetApp Snapmirror Agent for LINUX support NFS only?

How about FC LUN?

Thanks

 

business continuity
Cluster Server
  • TonyGriffiths's avatar
    TonyGriffiths
    12 years ago

    Hi Mike, kingkcube,

    I ran this past our Eng team:

    • FC is supported with Netapp SnapMirror agent (i.e Replication), But, Firedrill is not supported.
    • Firedrill is currently supported only with NFS.

     

    We will enhance our docs to reflect this, thanks for bringing it up.

    tony

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  • mikebounds's avatar
    mikebounds
    Level 6
    12 years ago

    The agent doc says:

     

    Clustering in a SnapMirror environment typically consists of the following
    hardware infrastructure:
    ■ One or more source hosts are connected by an ethernet cable to a Network
       Appliance device. The Network Appliance SnapMirror agent supports NFS as
      a transport protocol.
    As this is described as a typical environment, the fact that it only mentions NFS does not mean FC should not work and FC is mentioned later on when it talks about replication over multiple paths:
    The paths can be Ethernet, Fibre Channel or a combination of Ethernet and
    Fibre Channel.
    I can't see why it shouldn't work as in the agent you specify the volume name on the filer, so it shouldn't matter if this volume is presented via NFS or FC.
     
    Mike
     
  • mikebounds's avatar
    mikebounds
    Level 6
    12 years ago

    Hi Tony,

    The latest SnapMirror 5.0.04.0 VCS agent is the same version for VCS 5.0, 5.1 and 6.0 so I guess the VCS version does not matter and since the agent is basically running commands on the NetApp filer I guess it won't matter what version of Linux is been used either.  The agent docs don't specifically exclude FC as been supported, and they only mention NFS as a typical example (as oppose to a statement like agent supports NFS).   

    If Symantec had specifically tested FC then I guess it would be mentioned in the docs, so I guess it boils down to:

    1. The agent does not need to be tested for different ways of presenting the LUN either by NFS or FC as this is irrelevent for the replication function.
    2. The agent must be tested by Symantec for it to be supported as different ways of presenting the LUN either by NFS or FC may effect the replication function.

    To me, this would be a matter of checking the NetApp docs to see, if for the replication functions, there is a distinction made between if the LUNs are presented by NFS or FC and if there is no distinction, then there is no need to test.  But I had a similar query about support for the LVM agents (https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/forums/using-third-party-multipathing-vcs-lvm-agents) and here Symantec think it is necessary to test LVM agent with each Multipathing solution, even though there are no flags to the LVM import command to say do something different if disks are multipathed.

    So this probably boils down to the discretion of Symantec as to what they deem is relevent.

    Mike

  • TonyGriffiths's avatar
    TonyGriffiths
    Level 6
    12 years ago

    Hi Mike, kingkcube,

    I ran this past our Eng team:

    • FC is supported with Netapp SnapMirror agent (i.e Replication), But, Firedrill is not supported.
    • Firedrill is currently supported only with NFS.

     

    We will enhance our docs to reflect this, thanks for bringing it up.

    tony

  • mikebounds's avatar
    mikebounds
    Level 6
    12 years ago

    Thanks Tony - this make sense as I guess when the firedrill agent makes a clone of the volume it has to give access to the cloned volume from the server so I guess it gives it NFS access, whereas for replication, the access to server via FC is already setup so not relevent.

    Mike