Using Powershell to report on Netapp filer snapshots

2 03 2010

We had a few issues recently where SnapManager for Exchange and SnapDrive were failing to communicate properly which resulted in a weeks worth of missed snapshots before anyone realised what was going on.

I wrote this script to report on the status of snapshots. The filer name is passed as a variable and a list of volume names is stored as a variable at the top of the script. The output is nicely formatted email.

  1. The script uses SSH to connect to the filer (see my SSH guide for Netapp filers)
  2. For each vol listed in the array, the list of snapshots is returned
  3. Any line with “__daily” in is processed – all others are ignored (we only care about our nightly verified snapshots which are all named __daily)
  4. The snapshot name contains the date/time it was taken – this is read and if the date is within 24 hours of now a success is return (since reports are run the day after the verified job). If the date is over 24 hours a failure is returned.
  5. A nicely formated HTML email is sent out which looks a little something like this…

Please see below for today’s backup report.

VOL Name Status Snapshot name
Vol_Exc02_DB Success 0% ( 0%) 0% ( 0%) Mar 02 01:44 exchsnap__exchange02_03-01-2010_23.00.14__daily (busy,backup[0],dump)
Vol_Exc02_LOG Success 0% ( 0%) 0% ( 0%) Mar 02 04:38 eloginfo__exchange02_03-01-2010_23.00.14__daily
Vol_Exc02_DB1 Success 0% ( 0%) 0% ( 0%) Mar 01 23:00 exchsnap__exchange02_03-01-2010_23.00.14__daily
Vol_Exc02_LOG1 Success 1% ( 0%) 0% ( 0%) Mar 02 01:27 eloginfo__exchange02_03-01-2010_23.00.14__daily
Vol_Exc03_DB Success 1% ( 1%) 0% ( 0%) Mar 02 00:50 exchsnap__exchange03_03-01-2010_23.00.13__daily
Vol_Exc03_LOG Success 0% ( 0%) 0% ( 0%) Mar 02 02:06 eloginfo__exchange03_03-01-2010_23.00.13__daily
Vol_Exc03_DB1 FAILURE 1% ( 1%) 0% ( 0%) Feb 26 23:00 exchsnap__exchange03_03-01-2010_23.00.13__daily
Vol_Exc03_LOG1 FAILURE 0% ( 0%) 0% ( 0%) Feb 26 00:32 eloginfo__exchange03_03-01-2010_23.00.13__daily

See the script and HTML files after the jump… Read the rest of this entry »


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Categories : Netapp, Powershell, Scripting, Storage / Backups

NTFS permissions lost when copying from a snapshot

1 03 2010

Something I just remembered when performing a restore for a user.

When copying files from a CIFS snapshot using the hidden .snapshot directory NTFS permissions are lost. Instead they are inherited from the folder you are copying to.

To maintain permissions, use NDMPCOPY specifying the snapshot name in the source (first) parameter…

ndmpcopy "filer1:/vol/vol_A/qtree_A/.snapshot/nightly.1/MyDocs" "filer1:/vol/vol_A/qtree_A/MyDocs"

You can enclose the path in quotes if the path has spaces in.


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Categories : Netapp, OnTAP 7.2.6, Windows Server 2003

Netapp Rapid Cloning Utility v3.0

26 02 2010

Netapp have released their new version of their Rapid Cloning Utility – a vCenter plugin which allows you to provision and new datastores and clone hosts (including VMware View 4 VDI’s) with ease right inside of the Virtual Infrastructure Client. vCenter 4 is needed but it is compatible with ESX 3.5 and 4.

The great thing is that all the storage processing is offloaded from vCenter and is performed entirely on the filers. I’ve not had a chance to play with the RCU yet but this just looks utterly awesome! Check out this preview blog post and video from Netapp:

http://blogs.netapp.com/virtualstorageguy/2009/12/preview-rapid-cloning-utility-30-vcenter-plug-in.html

If you don’t have time to sit and read, then at least check out the video. I dare you not to be impressed!


Do any other storage vendors have similar tools?

Source: http://www.ntapgeek.com/2010/02/netapp-updates-rcu-for-vmware-vsphere-4.html

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Categories : ESX, ESXi, Netapp, Storage / Backups, VMware, vSphere

Scripting Netapp filers

26 02 2010

Scripting the Netapp filers can be accomplished by using either RSH or SSH. Both of these options must be enabled on the filer(s) in question using.

In either case scripts are not processed on the filers themselves. They are scheduled and run on Windows/Linux systems using their native languages (e.g. Vbscript or Powershell). These scripts simply call native OnTAP commands against a filer which then returns data in the form of text. This is important to note as although Powershell is a useful language to use OnTAP will not return native PS objects which means you are limited to text/string based manipulation.

RSH

This method is the least secure but is the quickest and easiest to set up. Users need not necessarily be filer administrators. Although there is some degree of security in the sense that access is restricted to a set user account and accessible only via a set IP address, data is not encrypted.

RSH is not natively supported in Windows 2008 [from the command line] as it is in Windows 2003.

To enable RSH on the filer use the following command:

options rsh.enable on

You must also specify user accounts and IP addresses via the FilerView web interface.

SSH

Windows 2008 does not natively support SSH either so this is accomplished using plink.

To enable SSH on the filer use the following commands:

secureadmin setup
secureadmin enable ssh

Read more after the break…

Read the rest of this entry »


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Categories : Netapp, Powershell, Scripting, Storage / Backups