Skip to main content
Sign Out

Welcome to Dell

My Account
  • Place orders quickly and easily
  • View orders and track your shipping status
  • Create and access a list of your products
  • Manage your Dell EMC sites, products, and product-level contacts using Company Administration.
Sign In Create an Account Premier Sign In Partner Program Sign In
Contact Us

Dell PowerStore Configuring Volumes

PDF

Thin clone terminology and hierarchy

The snapshots and thin clones for a volume, volume group, or storage container form a hierarchy. This document uses the following terms to describe this hierarchy:

Table 1. Thin clone terminologyTerminology for thin clones
Term Definition
Source A volume, volume group, or snapshot of a volume or volume group that is used as the source for thin clone create and refresh operations. The source can change when the clone is refreshed.
Base volume, base volume group, base storage container The founding (production) volume, volume group, or storage container for derivative snapshots and thin clones.
Family A volume, volume group, or base storage container and all its derivative thin clones and snapshots. This family includes snapshots and thin clones of the storage resource.
Parent The original parent storage container, volume, volume group or thin clone for the snapshot. This resource does not change when a thin clone is refreshed to a different source snapshot, because the new source snapshot must be in the same base volume, volume group, or storage container family.

For example, suppose the following hierarchy of snapshots and thin clones exists for Volume 1:

Figure 1. Thin clone hierarchy
Thin clone hierarchy
  • 1. Volume1
  • 2. Snapshot 1
  • 3, Snapshot 2
  • 4. Thin Clone1
  • 5. Thin Clone2
  • 6. Snapshot 3
  • 7. Thin Clone3
  • 8. Refresh

The base volume family for Volume 1 includes all the snapshots and thin clones that are shown in the diagram.

For Thin Clone 2:

  • The family is Volume 1.
  • The parent is Snapshot 2.
  • The source is Snapshot 2.

For Thin Clone 3:

  • The family is Volume 1.
  • The parent is Snapshot 3.
  • The source is Snapshot 3.

Now, if Thin Clone 3 is refreshed from Snapshot 1:

  • The family is still Volume 1.
  • The original parent is Thin Clone 2
  • The source has changed from Snapshot 3 to Snapshot 1.

If Thin Clone 2 is deleted after Thin Clone 3 is refreshed, the original parent resource shows as empty.

Rate this content

Accurate
Useful
Easy to understand
Was this article helpful?
0/3000 characters
  Please provide ratings (1-5 stars).
  Please provide ratings (1-5 stars).
  Please provide ratings (1-5 stars).
  Please select whether the article was helpful or not.
  Comments cannot contain these special characters: <>()\