Running Systems

It has been a long while, I know. I was busy with life, work and everything around it. Not much worth mentioning.

This, however, is something else.

I have discovered an issue with Citrix XenServer 5.0 (probably the case with 5.5, but I have other issues with that release) using NetApp through NetApp API SR – Any non XenServer-generated snapshot will be deleted as soon as any snapshot-related action would be performed on that volume. Meaning that if I had manually created a snapshot called “1111” (short and easy to recognize, especially with all these UUID-based volumes, LUNs and snapshot names XenServer uses…), the next time anyone would create a snapshot of a machine which has a disk (VDI) on this specific volume, the snapshot, my snapshot, “1111” will be removed under that specific volume. The message seen in /var/log/SMlog would look like this:

Removing unused snap (1111)

While under normal operation, this does not matter much, as non-XenServer snapshots have little value, when using NetApp SnapMirror technology, the mechanism works a bit differently.

It appears that the SnapMirror system takes snapshots with predefined names (non-XenServer UUID type, luckily for us all). These snapshots include the entire changes performed since the last SnapMirror snapshots, and are used for replication. Unfortunately, XenServer deletes them. No SnapMirror snapshots, well, this is quite obvious, is it not? No SnapMirror…

We did not detect this problem immediately, and I should take the blame for that. I had to define a set of simple trial and error tests, as described above, instead of battling with a system I did not quite follow at that time – NetApp SnapMirror. Now I do, however, and I have this wonderful insight which can make your personal life, if you had issues with SnapMirror and XenServer, and did not know how to make it work, better. This solution cannot be an official one, due to its nature, which you will understand shortly. This is a personal patch for your pleasure, based on the hard fact that SnapMirror uses a predefined name for its snapshots. This name, in my case, is the name of the DR storage device. You must figure out what name is being used as part of the snapshot naming convention on your own site. Search for my ‘storagedr’ phrase, and replace it with yours.

This is the diff file for /opt/xensource/sm/NETAPPSR.py . Of course – back up your original file. Also – this is not an official patch. It was tested to function correctly on XenServer 5.0, and it will not work on XenServer 5.5 (since NETAPPSR.py is different). Last warning – it might break on the next update or upgrade you have for your XenServer environment, and if that happens, you better monitor your SnapMirror status closely then.

400,403c400,404
<                     util.SMlog("Removing unused snap (%s)" % val)
<                     out = netapplib.fvol_snapdelete_wrapper(self.sv, val, volname)
<                     if not na_test_result(out):
 		    if 'storagedr' not in val:
>                     	util.SMlog("Removing unused snap (%s)" % val)
>                     	out = netapplib.fvol_snapdelete_wrapper(self.sv, val, volname)
>                     	if not na_test_result(out):
>                         	pass

Hope it helps!