VMWare: Restore a VM using Netapp snapshot in an NFS exported Datastore Environment

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Problem: Restore a VM that resides on a NFS Exported Datastore using Netapp Native Snapshot, NOT VMWare snapshot. Use case is-- A virtual disk on Windows server cannot be expanded, if that VM has snapshot on it. This method adds one more way of restoring a VM, if you don’t have solid backup in place, and/or it can be used as secondary plan for restoring a VM, should primary backup becomes unavailable.

1.    Find which ESXi host this VM resides on

a. This can be done either through vcenter GUI or through the vmware scripts

b.   Look at Each Disk of the VM,  EVERY virtual disk MUST be on the NFS to be recoverable.  

c.   In our example,  the disks are all Netapp volumes (netappdatastore2)

2.     Shutdown/power down the VM 

3.     Unregister the VM from Vcenter (Remove from Inventory) (DONT DELETE FROM DISK)

4.     Login to the ESXi host as user root,  in this case,  ESX-Server-01.domain.com

a.   ssh -l root@ ESX-Server-01.domain.com

b.   Find the netapp volume once you log in.

c.   [root@ESX-Server-01:~] df -h

Filesystem  Size  Used      Available Used%      Mounted on

NFS         20TT  15TT      5.0T      81%        /vmfs/volumes/netappdatastore2

5.    cd into that file system

[root@ESX-Server-01: cd /vmfs/volumes/netappdatastore2

   [root@ESX-Server-01 pwd

/vmfs/volumes/netappdatastore2

6.    Make sure we have a .snapshot directory and it has snapshots for the VM

7.   cd into .snapshot directory, and locate the snapshot desired based on timestamp.

root@ESX-Server-01:/vmfs/volumes/netappdatastore2] cd .snapshot/

[root@ESX-Server-01:/vmfs/volumes/netappdatastore2/.snapshot] ls -l

Snapshot.1

Snapshot.2

Snapshot.3

8.   Find the existing vm directory and move that directory into a backup directory to save the existing state

[root@ESX-Server-01:/vmfs/volumes/netappdatastore2] mv VMname VMname.backup

9.   Recover the VM directory from snapshot directory,  you MUST choose the right snapshot directory by the time frame

Cd into desired snapshot.

[root@ESX-Server-01:/vmfs/volumes/netappdatastore2/.snapshot/Snapshot.3]

[root@ESX-Server-01:/vmfs/volumes/netappdatastore2/.snapshot/snapshot.3] ls -ld VMName

10. Rsync command is recommended vs cp  (rsync has the -S option to handle sparse files more efficiently,  thin allocated vmdk files are usually sparse files - that are files with holes in the blocks).

root@ESX-Server-01:/vmfs/volumes/netappdatastore2/.snapshot/snapshot.3] rsync -av -S VMName ../../VMName

11. Re-register the vm in vcenter with the newly recovered directory

a.   Login to vcener

b.   Brower the ESXi host the VM was running on

c.   Go to Storage for the ESXi host and browse the storage file systems on the ESXi host

d.   Browse to the directory where you have the recovered VM files. 

e.   Go into that directory and register the VM. (right click on the VM definition file, and choose register). 

12.  Power back on the VM.

 You are Welcome :)

Netapp: xcp tool for high file count volumes copy

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Source: https://kb.netapp.com/app/answers/answer_view/a_id/1005557/

Troubleshooting Workflow: NetApp XCP Migration Tool errorsDocument ID BR519

Answer ID 1005557

Published Date 12/12/2019

Symptom

Symptom 1

-bash: ./xcp: Permission denied

Symptom 2

xcp: ERROR: This license has expired

Symptom 3

xcp: This copy is not licensed.

Symptom 4

xcp: ERROR: XCP not activated, run 'activate' first

Symptom 5

xcp: ERROR: License file /opt/NetApp/xFiles/xcp/license not found.

Symptom 6

xcp: ERROR: Failed to activate license: Server unreachable

Symptom 7

xcp usage error: show: requires at least one server

Symptom 8

xcp: ERROR: show '10.61.73.94:/vol/nfsvol1': invalid hostname

Symptom 9

xcp usage error: scan: missing source path

Symptom 10

xcp usage error: scan: invalid path '10.61.73.94'

Symptom 11

xcp: ERROR: Catalog inaccessible: Cannot mount nfs_server:/export[:subdirectory]

Symptom 12

xcp: compare1 'n.txt': ERROR: nfs3 LOOKUP 'n.txt' in '10.61.73.113:/target': nfs3 error 2: no such file or directory

Symptom 13

xcp: ERROR: Failed to open catalog id '3': nfs3 LOOKUP '3' in '10.61.73.94:/vol/nfsvol1/catalog/indexes': nfs3 error 2: no such file or directory

Symptom 14

xcp: ERROR: Empty or invalid index '10.61.73.94:/vol/nfsvol1/catalog/indexes/2/2.index'

Symptom 15

xcp: copying 'file3': WARNING: 10.193.67.237:/ntfs/topdir_3/subdir_52/file3: nfs3 SETATTR '10.193.67.237:/ntfs/topdir_3/subdir_52/file3' mode 00777, uid 0, gid 0, size 27, atime Thu Feb 23 10:15:00 2017, mtime Tue Feb  7 11:51:54 2017: nfs3 error 1: not owner

Symptom 16

Sync fails in different areas due to following warning:

xcp: mount 10.61.73.94:/vol/nfsvol1: WARNING: This NFS server only supports 1-second timestamp granularity. This may cause sync to fail because changes will often be undetectable.

Symptom 17

XCP fails to transfer ACLs and produces the following ERROR:

ERROR failed to obtain fallback security principal "". Please check if the principal with the name "" exists on "".

Cause

The cause and procedure to be performed to resolve these issues are described in the Solution section below.

Cause #1: Improper file permissions for XCP binary.

Solution: Modify permissions by running the  "chmod 755" command. 

Ensure XCP binary can be executed by the 

root user or sudo
command on designated XCP Linux client host.

Cause #2: This error occurs if the free 90 days XCP evaluation license is expired.

Solution: Renew or obtain the new XCP license from https://xcp.netapp.com

Cause #3: XCP is not licensed.

Solution: Download and apply XCP licenses on Linux client host system.

Cause #4: XCP license is not activated

Solution: Obtain the appropriate XCP license file. Copy the XCP license to the 

/opt/NetApp/xFiles/xcp/ directory on the XCP Linux client host. Run  "xcp activate" command to activate the license.

Cause #5: XCP license is not activated.

Solution: Download the XCP license from https://xcp.netapp.com. Copy XCP license file on to the XCP Linux client host at 

/opt/NetApp/xFiles/xcp/

After copying, run "xcp activate" command to activate the XCP license.

Cause #6: License file not found at 

/opt/NetApp/xFiles/xcp/license

Solution: Register for XCP license at https://xcp.netapp.com. Download and copy XCP license file to 

/opt/NetApp/xFiles/xcp/ directory on XCP Linux client host.

Cause #7: Incomplete parameter specified for the 

xcp show command.

Solution: Re-run the command with the server name or IP address specified. Correct syntax 

./xcp show abc.nfsserver.com

Cause #8: Valid hostname was not specified for the 

./xcp show

 command.

Solution: Run the 

./xcp show

 command with valid hostname. Exact command syntax 

./xcp show 10.61.73.94

 or 

./xcp show localhost

Cause #9: Incomplete parameters specified for the 

xcp scan

 command.

Solution: To resolve this error, run the 

xcp scan

 command with the complete source NFSv3 export path. Correct syntax 

xcp scan

Cause #10: Incomplete parameter specified for the 

xcp scan command.

Solution: Run the same command again by specifying the complete NFSv3 source export path. Correct syntax 

xcp scan .

Cause #11: Catalog path is not specified in the

 xcp.ini

 configuration file.

Solution: Open a text editor on XCP Linux client host and update XCP configuration file with proper catalog location. XCP config file is located at 

/opt/NetApp/xFiles/xcp/xcp.ini

Sample entries of config file:

[root@localhost linux]# cat /opt/NetApp/xFiles/xcp/xcp.ini

# Sample xcp config:

[xcp]

catalog = 10.61.73.94:/vol/nfsvol1

Cause #12: Verify operation did not find the source file(s) on target NFS export.

Solution: Run the 

xcp sync

 command to copy the incremental updates from the source to destination.

Cause #13: XCP could not locate the specified catalog index number.

Solution: Verify the index number of the previous operation. To determine the exact catalog path, run the 

cat /opt/NetApp/xFiles/xcp/xcp.ini

 command. Catalog indexes are located in the 

:/catalog/indexes

 directory. After locating the index number, run the same command again by specifying the correct index number or name.

Cause #14: Previous copy operation was interrupted before indexing the files.

Solution: Run the 

xcp copy

 operation again by specifying the 

–newid

 option.

Interrupt the copy operation when you see the message '

indexed' 

on the console session

:

88,126 scanned, 42,058 copied, 41,469 indexed, 150 MiB in (3.60 MiB/s), 41.9 MiB out (2.88 MiB/s), 16s

Cause #15: This happens on NTFS security style volumes because XCP attempts to chown a file and cannot, as UNIX operations will fail on NTFS security style volume by default.

Solution:  Run the following command:

# chown root newfile
chown: changing ownership of ‘newfile’: Operation not permitted

In a packet trace, the following is displayed:

3380 7.642295   10.193.67.237   10.193.67.233   NFS  214  V3 SETATTR Reply (Call In 3338) Error: NFS3ERR_PERM

The error is benign, as the owner would be set from a Windows client after the fact anyway.

The following are the two ways to avoid this:

• Change the export policy rule to ignore with the following command: export-policy rule modify -vserver DEMO -policyname default -ruleindex 1 -ntfs-unix-security-ops ignore
• Copy to a mixed security style or UNIX security style volume. After the copy, change the security style to NTFS.

A third possible way would be for XCP not to attempt to run setattr after copying. Unable to identify a way to perform so in the current version for the copy command. Perhaps that option could go into a future release.

• copy: Recursively copy everything from source to target
• newid : Catalog name for a new index
• md5: Checksum the files (also save the checksums when indexing) (default: False)
• edupe: Include dedupe estimate in reports (see documentation for details)
• nonames: Do not look up user and group names for file listings or reports
• bs : read/write blocksize (default: 64k)
• dircount : Request size for reading directories (default: 64k)
• parallel : Maximum concurrent batch processes (default: 7)
• noId: Disables the creation of a default index (default: False)

Cause #16: Have seen this when source volume is SLES or RHEL with ext3 file system

Solution: Issue is documented here: 1181841 XCP Sync: Timestamp granularity

• Workaround: We recommend to have access time enabled, because xcp compares the timestamp of the files from the source and index (contains all the file metadata found on the source). And in this use-case we may have differences < 1s and xcp will not apply the changes.
• This is only a warning, and could be ignored.

Cause #17: This may happen when:

• The target netbios name/machine account cannot be resolved to an IP
• The target machine cannot resolve the fallback-user or fallback-group to a SID

Solution:

• For cause 1, add a mapping in the hosts file (c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts) for the netbios name/machine account name of the target.
• For cause 2, select a fallback-user/group that can be resolved by the target system. This can either be a local user to the target machine, or a domain user resolvable by the target machine.

Related Links:

• 1098120: NetApp XCP Frequently Asked Questions and Resources
• 1015592: Triage Template - How to troubleshoot NetApp XCP Migration Tool issues
• 1015613: How to transition 7-Mode NFSv3 exports to clustered Data ONTAP using NetApp XCP Migration Tool 1.0

XCP 1.5

• Download
• https://mysupport.netapp.com/products/p/xcp.html 
• Release notes
• https://library.netapp.com/ecm/ecm_download_file/ECMLP2861780User
• User Guide
• https://library.netapp.com/ecm/ecm_download_file/ECMLP2861779

XCP Best Practices TR-4808

• https://www.netapp.com/us/media/tr-4808.pdf

You are Welcome :)

Netapp: How to do perform Disk Erasure, Disk Clearing and Wipe Configuration on CDOT Netapp disks.

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Depending on what scenario is applicable to you in your environment, there are two ways to run data erasure and disk configuration wipe out activity. By simply pushing the data disk to spare pool after removing it from aggregate may not suffice some of the data erasure function requirement. Disk degaussing by feeding the drive into traditional degauss machine that uses magnetic function to certify degauss might leave some data owners in a questionable position about their comfort before disk disposal. Here are two scenarios that are standard practices which Netapp supports without intervention from third party software or application that runs disks data erasure and wiping configuration.

Scenario 1 Usage: Disk Initialize

If there is flexibility to reboot the node and entire disks data needs to be wiped or configuration reset, then “disk Initialize” is the right option.

Prerequisites.

1. If the disks are part of an aggregate and/or holds volumes, volumes must be taken offline, destroyed followed by taking aggregate offline and aggregate deletion.

2. Disks must be in a spare pool, but can be owned by nodes.

3. Only root aggregate disks should be present.

Actual Action:

Step 1. Boot each node by while accessing from console or SP (if configured) and take it to the loader prompt.

Boot each node to the LOADER/CFE prompt and ensure that the below variables are set. These variables remove the cluster RDBs, CDBs and the varfs from mroot, boot device and nvram.

setenv bootarg.init.boot_clustered true

setenv bootarg.factory_init_completed true

setenv bootarg.init.clearvarfsnvram true

Step 2. Then run boot_ontap from loader prompt and while node reboots, Press CTRL + C to go to special boot menu.

Step 3. Out of 8 special boot menu option, dont select any option yet. Rather Type “wipeconfig” on each node.

Step 4. Then select Option no. 4. that says “Clean configuration and initialize all disks”

(This will prompt if you want to zero disks, reset config and install a new file system. Type “yes”)

Step 5. This will run disk initialize operation in the background which is indicated by dots (…….) fillling the screen till its done. Each and every drives gets initialized and upon completion, it will take you to a prompt where it asks if you want to create or join cluster or new filesystem.

At this time, it is safe to power down Controller head and Disk Shelves. Disk have been reset and data have been completely erased.

Scenario 2 Usage: Disk Sanitization

Data ONTAP 8.0 and earlier, the disk sanitization feature needed a disk sanitization license.

Data ONTAP 8.1 and later, Just need to enable the feature per step 1, under Actual Action below.

If you only few drives in a stack, or just one shelf from a set of stack of shelves, you cannot use scenario 1 based solution for complete data erasure as we are not going to erase data from entire array, but only from selective disks.

Disk sanitization is the process of physically obliterating data by overwriting disks with specified byte patterns or random data so that recovery of the original data becomes impossible. You use the sanitization process to ensure that no one can recover the data on the disks. This functionality is available through the nodeshell.

Pre-Requisites.

1. Disks in question must be in spare pool, but can be owned by nodes.

How Disk sanitization works?

Disk sanitization process uses three successive default or user-specified byte overwrite patterns for up to seven cycles per operation. The random overwrite pattern is repeated for each cycle.

**Sanitization contains two phase:

a. Formatting phase

b. Pattern overwrite phase

**Disk Sanitization Feature is applied at Storage system level, and once it is enabled, it cannot be disabled.

Actual Action:

Step 1. Go to nodeshell from cluster.

node::>options nodescope.reenabledoptions licensed_feature.disk_sanitization.enable

node::>options licensed_feature.disk_sanitization.enable on

Step 2.Start disk sanitize on disk or disklist.

node::> disk sanitize start disk_list

Step 3. Check disk sanitize status

node::> disk sanitize status disk_list

Step 4. After disk sanitization is complete, return the sanitized disk to spare pool, it wont automatically send disk to spare pool.

node::> disk sanitize release disk_name

Step 5. Exit from node shell and go to cluster shell.

node::> CTRL + D

Cluster::>>

Step 6. Verify disk have been properly placed on spare pool.

cluster::> storage disk show -container-type spare

By now, disk is sanitized with no data and is in hot spare pool for it be ready to be used.

**At this time, you can use the degauss machine to crush the drive**

**Some of the Industry Standards on how to run disk sanitization or data erasure procedure**

https://kb.netapp.com/app/answers/answer_view/a_id/1034565/~/how-to-use-disk-sanitize-to-meet-department-of-defense-5220.22m-

https://kb.netapp.com/app/answers/answer_view/a_id/1072424/~/how-to-perform-disk-erasure%2C-disk-clearing-and-disk-sanitization-

You are Welcome :)

Netapp: How to remove Nodes from multi-node cluster running CDOT with Examples

I am a seasonal IT professional with a background on VMware, Storage, Backup, Unix, and Project liaison experience. I have held positions working on technologies like Netapp, EMC, IBM, Cohesity storage and Backup supporting SAN and NAS Environment. I have held roles of IT administrator, engineer, team lead and project liaison. This blog is for Storage and Backup Professionals, and content are derived from vendor as well as my own experience.
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I recently did cluster unjoin and removed nodes from multi-node cluster running CDOT 9.3Px without any service disruption and with seamless activities. 

##Visibility to system is the KEY. Log into SP or Console of nodes all the time during this activity. Helps if you run into some unforeseen or unpredicted situations.

Prerequisites:

1. Disable Storage failover (cf status) between HA nodes.
2. Migrate data lifs home and home port from nodes in question over to other healthy nodes/ports by net interface modify.
3. Remove ports of nodes from broadcast domain / failover-groups leaving only ones that would be present after nodes removal.
4. Delete intercluster lifs, and remove Intercluster ports from corresponding broadcast domain.

Actual Steps:

Step 1. 

Log into adv mode in cluster by:

cluster: set advanced

Warning: These advanced commands are potentially dangerous; use them only when directed to do so by NetApp personnel.

Do you want to continue? {y|n}: (Press y)

Step 2. 

Confirm that the nodes in questions is serving as master node. If it is working as master node, make it ineligible. (Caution, Once you have it made it ineligible, you would need to reboot the node to make it eligible again, if you need to.) This can be done by checking cluster ring status from adv mode.

cluster*::>cluster ring show

Verify that there is still no lif or data on nodes in question:

net int show -home-node node1

net int show -home-node node2

cluster*::> cluster modify -node node2 -eligibility false

Double confirm by running below to ensure there is no lif dependency except cluster port and/or node management port/lif. It would complain if there is still something left on nodes being worked.

cluster*::>cluster ring show

(This would list node2 being offline as it has been deemed ineligible. Other node will display as master)

(You run the same for both nodes in HA.)

Node      UnitName Epoch    DB Epoch   DB Trnxs      Master    Online

---------     --------      -------       --------       --------           ---------      ---------

node2     mgmt         0               25       736267                           offline

node2     vldb           0               23       1913                               offline

node2     vifmgr        0               25       11031                             offline

node2     bcomd       0               26       4                                     offline

node2     crs             0               23       1                                     offline

Step 3.  Verify:

cluster::*>storage failover show

cluster::*>cluster ring show

Step 4. 

Now run actual unjoin action.

cluster::*> cluster unjoin -node node2

(This will provide some warnings, but as long as checklist of pre-req and other is completed, proceed)

(At this time, you can wipe disk data by pressing step 4 by doing “Ctrl + C” during reboot. You will have visibility to console, if you have been accessing the node via console or service processor. It is strongly advised, that nodes in question be accessed using sp in a different session than actual session where cluster unjoin session is being executed.)

Step 5. 

Halt the nodes in question by logging into individual nodes, if applicable. You can uninstall the Hardware after completion of disk initialization (if chosen). Otherwise, its safe to remove cables, uninstall hardware.

You are welcome :)

Helpful link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9TyL5hygMo