You need to fulfill a set of prerequisites before you can use SnapMirror.
- You must purchase and enable the SnapMirror license. If the SnapMirror source and destination are on different systems, you must enable the SnapMirror license on each system.
- For SnapMirror volume replication, you must create a restricted volume to be used as the destination volume.
SnapMirror does not automatically create a volume. For information about how to create volumes, see the section on organizing data using volumes and qtrees in the Data ONTAP Storage Management Guide for 7-Mode.
- For SnapMirror volume replication, the destination system must use a version of Data ONTAP that is the same as or later than that of the SnapMirror source system.
Note: Depending on the Data ONTAP version of the destination, the source can run any version from the previous two Data ONTAP release families. For example, if the destination is Data ONTAP 8.2, the source can be either version in Data ONTAP 8.1 or Data ONTAP 8.0 release families.
If you configure volume SnapMirror to support replication for the purpose of disaster recovery, both the source and destination system must use the same version of Data ONTAP. The following table describes how SnapMirror volume replication is dependent on Data ONTAP versions of the source and destination systems:
Volume SnapMirror Source |
Volume SnapMirror Destination |
Replication (Yes or No) |
Data ONTAP 7.3 |
Data ONTAP 8.1 |
Yes |
Data ONTAP 8.0 |
Data ONTAP 8.1 |
Yes |
Data ONTAP 8.1 |
Data ONTAP 7.2 |
No |
Data ONTAP 8.1 |
Data ONTAP 7.3 |
No |
Data ONTAP 8.1 |
Data ONTAP 8.0 |
No |
Data ONTAP 8.1 |
Data ONTAP 8.1 |
Yes |
Note: If you upgrade your system to a later version of Data ONTAP, you must upgrade the SnapMirror destination before upgrading the SnapMirror source.
- For SnapMirror qtree replication, you must not create a qtree to be used as a destination qtree; the snapmirror initialize command creates the destination qtree automatically.
- For SnapMirror qtree replication, the destination system must be using Data ONTAP 6.2 or later.
- The name and IP address of the source system must be in the /etc/hosts file of the destination system or must be resolvable through the DNS or by using the yp command.