Using HX Native Snapshots after VMware Snapshots were in place

[OmarDeSouza84463]

hyperHello,

I read that it's recommended to take an initial HX native snapshot on all VMs on the HX cluster (Sentinel snapshot), however we never did that and now we have a backup solution that is taking VMware snapshots in every job.

How can I switch to HX native snapshots? Can I just stop backups jobs, be sure there are no snapshots in any VM, install HTML5 plug-in and then create the Sentinel snapshot for all VM's? or I need to do an additional clean-up.

Thanks in advance,

Omar De Souza.

[Steven Tardy · Accepted solution]

If you create a snapshot of a VM (with no existing snapshots) from Hyperflex Connect web UI, then a SENTINEL snapshot will be created before the actual snapshot which you create.

If there is a SENTINEL snapshot in place and another snapshot it take (even via vCenter) then the resulting snapshot will always be "HX native".

If any prior VMware redo-log based snapshots are present, you should remove all of those before creating the first HX snapshot of a VM.

The public docs do cover all of these points, but it takes reading it a time or three before the details sink in:

  https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/hyperconverged_systems/HyperFlex_HX_DataPlatformSoftware/AdminGuide/4_0/b_HyperFlexSystems_AdministrationGuide_4_0/m_hxdp_snapshots.html

Basically if there is a SENTINEL snapshot at the top of the snapshot tree, then the snapshots are "HX native".

If SENTINEL does NOT exist, then delete all snapshots and create one snapshot, "My Snapshot" via HX Connect to create SENTINEL + "My Snapshot". All snapshots thereafter will be "HX native".

[OmarDeSouza84463]

Hi Steve,

Good information! many thanks.