Hello and welcome to using snapshots and cloning with the FS 80,600 NAS appliance. This is one of a series of videos designed to help understand and use the features and functionalities of the FS 8600 NAS appliance. This video is a continuation of my discussion of how to set up and configure and use snapshots and clones. Let's continue. So what is NAS volume cloning? After a snapshot of a volume is taken, the volume can be turned into a new cloned NAS volume. Creating a NAS volume clone is an instant operation and does not consume space out of the NAS pool.
The new clone will appear and behave in all aspects very similar to a regular NAS volume. The user will be able to run the same types of actions on the NAS volume clone like rename, changing the size or deleting it. And we'll be able to update its entire set of configurations including creating shares, exports snapshots replication, et cetera to create a clone of a volume. A snapshot must be taken first, a volume consists of mapped blocks of data in the fluid file system. Before a snapshot is taken only one set of pointers defines the data for that volume. After a snapshot is taken, the point in time in which the snapshot was taken is recorded. And an additional set of pointers to the blocks of data in the volume are set to represent the snapshot.
Users can use this snapshot as a read only point in time copy of the volume as the blocks of data in the volume are modified. Let's say block D is modified with new data. The original block D remains unchanged and the snapshot still points to it. Block D one is written elsewhere in the file system and a new block of data accessible only by the original NAS volume is mapped to it. When a NAS volume clone is created, a third set of pointers is created and points to the same blocks of data as the snapshot. The NAS volume clone was created from in this way, a NAS volume clone does not use any additional space in the NAS pool. But since you can also write to a NAS volume clone, it is only then that blocks of data are written elsewhere in the NAS pool and the NAS volume clone will begin to consume space.
This enables a very space efficient way to provide access to volume data because the original blocks of data are simply referred to by the fluid file system with pointers without having to recreate the actual data to create a NAS volume clone. The first step is selecting a volume that you would like to clone. In this case, I've selected a volume called production files. You'll notice that I also have an SMB share set up on this volume so that I can access it via SMB. The share name is called Dell production. The next step in creating the clone is selecting a snapshot from which to create the clone, I can create clones from any one of the snapshots that have been created. In this case, you see I have several snapshots occurring automatically through a snapshot schedule.
I'm going to choose this point in time here. Snapshot, snap one, I'll right click and select create NAS volume clone. The screen comes up. I'm going to name my clone. I'll call it clone one. Now that the cloning process has been completed, you can see that they cloned NAS volume clone. One appears under NAS volumes on the left hand side of your screen. The summary tab for clone one displays information about the clone. For example, which parent volume the clone was created from and which base snapshot it was created from. When I create a new NAS volume clone. It does not inherit any of the original volume attributes such as shares, quarter rules, et cetera. In this case, to access my new clone, I'm going to create a new SMB share.
I'll call it clone one share. Let's go back to the properties of the production files volume for a minute. This is the volume that the clone one clone was created from. You can see over here in enterprise manager, I'm using about 12.29 gigs of space in that volume. I've also done a properties on the Dell production SMB share on all of the files in that volume. And you can see that I have got approximately the same amount of data about 12 gigs. Let's compare the same settings on the volume that we just created through the clone one share that I created. I have access to the same set of data that I have in the production files. You can see that I'm using approximately 12 gigabytes yet. If I look in the use space for that cloned volume with an enterprise manager I'm using.
So both the new NAS cloned volume clone one and the original volume production files contain the same data. I'm going to copy approximately 400 megs of data to the new NAS clone volume clone one. After the copying is complete, you can see that the use space in clone one has now increased by approximately 400 megabytes. This is showing that only when you add data or write data to a NAS clone volume, does it consume additional space from the NAS pool? Since a NAS cloned volume is treated much the same way as a regular volume, I can create additional SMB shares to access the information on this NAS clone volume, I can create NFS exports. Additionally, I can create snapshots or create quota rules for users.
I can replicate this clone. If the parent volume is being, when you're all through using a cloned volume, you can delete it. You'll need to make sure that any SMB shares or NFS exports have been deleted. Likewise, for any snapshots or any replication that you may have created against this clone. Once that's complete, I can right, click it, select delete any data that you've written to this clone will be lost. So you need to acknowledge that. Click. OK? For more information about setting up configuring and using snapshots and clones on the FS 8600 appliance, you should check out the FS 8600 appliance administrators guide. You can also visit Dell Tech Center at the URL listed on your screen.
Thanks for watching.
