SnapMirror licensing

SnapMirror Synchronous license​

Starting with ONTAP 9.5, SnapMirror Synchronous relationships are supported. You require the following licenses for creating a SnapMirror Synchronous relationship:

• The SnapMirror Synchronous license is required on both the source cluster and the destination cluster.

  SnapMirror Synchronous licenses are only available when the premium bundle is installed. You can use the Lenovo LKMS site to verify your entitlement. Lenovo LKMS site

• The SnapMirror license is required on both the source cluster and the destination cluster.

Data Protection Bundle​

Starting with ONTAP 9.5, new ONTAP data protection features were packaged with the DM Series as part of the Premium Bundle. This new bundle included a new DP_ Optimized (DPO) license that provided unique ONTAP features for secondary workloads. With the introduction of ONTAP 9.5 the DPO license increased the number of volumes per node from 1,000 to 1,500.

The DPO license was specifically designed for ONTAP clusters that were to be dedicated as secondary targets for SnapMirror replication. In addition to increasing the maximum volumes per node on the DPO controller, the DPO license also modified controller QoS settings to support greater replication traffic at the expense of application I/O. For this reason, the DPO license should never be installed on a cluster that supports application I/O, as application performance would be impacted. Later, Data Protection Bundles based on the DM7000H offered as a solution and included programmatic free licenses based on the customer environment. When purchasing the solution bundles, free SnapMirror licenses would be provided for select older clusters which replicated to the DPO secondary. While the DPO license is needed on the Data Protection solution cluster, primary clusters from the following platform list would be provided free SnapMirror licenses. Primary clusters not included in this list would require purchase of SnapMirror licenses.

Data Protection Optimized (DPO) License​

As DM Series matured and new platforms were introduced and new requests to support ONTAP features for secondary replication use cases increased. As a result, a new DPO license was introduced in November 2018 with ONTAP 9.5 release.

The DPO license is supported on both Hybrid and AFA platforms and can only be purchased pre-configured with new clusters.

Additional ONTAP features were delivered with the DPO across multiple ONTAP releases.

* Details about priority for the SnapMirror backoff (workload bias) feature:

• Client: cluster I/O priority is set to client workloads (production apps), not SnapMirror traffic.
• Equality: SnapMirror replication requests have equal priority to I/O for production apps.
• SnapMirror: all SnapMirror I/O requests have higher priority that I/O for production apps.

Considerations for all new DPO installations​

• Once enabled, the DPO license feature cannot be disabled or undone.
• Installation of the DPO license requires a re-boot of ONTAP or failover to enable.
• The DPO solution is intended for secondary storage workloads; application workload performance on DPO clusters may be impacted
• DPO features vary by ONTAP release. Refer to the compatibility table for reference.