Discover assets

The XtremIO array has three types of volumes: Primary, Re-purpose copy, and Protection-copy. You can create the primary volumes manually and they can be of any size based on the limit of the associated volume. A re-purpose copy is a thin-provisioned volume created from the protection copy during the snapshot creation process.

NetBackup Snapshot Manager for Data Center discovers the primary volumes and re-purpose copy volumes which have an NAA identifier associated as a volume asset, and a protection-copy as a snapshot asset. For a volume to be discovered, map it to the host.

Create snapshot

To create a snapshot, NetBackup calls a REST API method with the required snapshot details. The API returns the details of the snapshot.

The protection-copy snapshot is read-only.

A typical snapshot created by NetBackup Snapshot Manager has the following naming convention:

NB<unique_21digit_number>

Delete snapshot

To delete a snapshot, NetBackup Snapshot Manager calls a REST API method with the required snapshot details. You can confirm that the snapshot is deleted successfully on the array, by making another call with the same snapshot.

If the snapshot is attached to any host, then all the mappings are deleted forcefully as a mandatory requirement. This process also deletes the mappings that do not belong to the NetBackup host.

Restore snapshot

NetBackup Snapshot Manager for Data Center offers the ability to restore the snapshots using a Put REST API. You can restore the source volume only with the protection-copy type snapshot. Any PIT rollback uses the snapshot associated with the source volume.

You cannot restore a snapshot to a different source volume to which it does not belong. By default, whenever you do a PIT rollback on any source volume, the array creates a re-purpose copy for the same to back up the volume. But NetBackup Snapshot Manager does not create this default re-purpose copy, when the restore is initiated from the console.

You can restore any snapshot of any PIT on the volume. Every protection copy acts as an individual asset and has no dependency on the other snapshot copies.

Export snapshot

NetBackup Snapshot Manager for Data Center supports export of snapshots over the iSCSI and FC protocols. When a snapshot export operation is initiated, firstly a re-purpose copy is created using the protection copy which was created in the create snapshot operation. Once this re-purpose copy is completed, a host is attached to the same. Do the SAN zoning between the host and array that you want to attach with the snapshot.

Deport snapshot

When a snapshot deport operation is initiated, NetBackup Snapshot Manager for Data Center deletes the export mapping created between the host and the re-purpose copy volumes.