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Data protection workflow for FlexGroup volumes

You can create SnapMirror disaster recovery (DR) relationships for FlexGroup volumes. Starting from ONTAP 9.5, you can also back up and restore FlexGroup volumes by using SnapVault technology, and you can create a unified data protection relationship that uses the same destination for backup and DR.

The data protection workflow consists of verifying the cluster and SVM peer relationships, creating a destination volume, creating a job schedule, specifying a policy, creating a data protection relationship, and initializing the relationship.


FlexGroup volume disater recover preparation workflow

About this task

The SnapMirror relationship type is always XDP for FlexGroup volumes. The type of data protection that is provided by a SnapMirror relationship is determined by the replication policy that you use. You can use either the default policy or a custom policy of the required type for the replication relationship that you want to create. The following table shows the default policy types and supported custom policy types for different types of data protection relationships.

Relationship typeDefault PolicyCustom policy type
SnapMirror DRMirrorAllSnapshotsasync-mirror
SnapVault backupXDPDefaultvault
Unified data protectionMirrorAndVaultmirror-vault

The MirrorLatest policy is not supported with FlexGroup volumes.

  1. Creating a SnapMirror relationship for FlexGroup volumes
    You can create a SnapMirror relationship between the source FlexGroup volume and the destination FlexGroup volume on a peered SVM for replicating data for disaster recovery. You can use the mirror copies of the FlexGroup volume to recover data when a disaster occurs.
  2. Creating a SnapVault relationship for FlexGroup volumes
    You can configure a SnapVault relationship and assign a SnapVault policy to the relationship to create a SnapVault backup.
  3. Creating a unified data protection relationship for FlexGroup volumes
    Starting with ONTAP 9.5, you can create and configure SnapMirror unified data protection relationships to configure disaster recovery and archiving on the same destination volume.
  4. Considerations for creating a SnapVault backup relationship and a unified data protection relationship for FlexGroup volumes
    You must be aware of the considerations for creating a SnapVault backup relationship and unified data protection relationship for FlexGroup volumes.