No Space for Snapshot

[aldoscic]

I just replicated a number of NAS shares from our main DSS to a temporary unit. I wanted to rebuild the SAN using version 6 and 64 bit.

When this was ready, I came to replicate back the data and realised that I made a serious mistake. The temp SAN had a single 2TB RAID 5 volume with I completely assigned to a NAS volume and now I realise that I do not have space for a snapshot volume!

You can call this inexperience and I agree and as a follow up I have a question and a suggestion.

Question

Is there a way around this issue that will allow me to replicate or backup the data without having a snapshot volume? I am 100% sure the data will not be amended or accessed during the replication.


Suggestion

I suggest that the volume manager should warn you if all space is going to be allocated and no space has been left for a snapshot volume, something like: “we note that you are allocating all space on this volume. If you go ahead, you will have no space for a snapshot volume and you will have problems in using the backup/replication features.”

[Pi-L]

I bet adding some space to temp unit could help.
And if you are in a position without any spare hdd left you can create iSCSI target on your real unit and connect to it from temp unit initiator and create snapshot volume.

[aldoscic]

I know i could add an extra drive and increase the size of my array, but i do not want to risk this data. What i will probably do is use a replication program from my workstation and copy the data across, then i test your suggestion on the temp unit.

Thanks for the suggestion

[Al-S]

DSS System save 4GB of SWAP at "System Volumes", you can delete it to free some space.