Auto Snapshot Policies

The Auto Snapshot Policy feature is used to schedule snapshots for a filesystem. There are two aspects of scheduling snapshots: frequency and datetime. The frequency is how often filesystem or storage profile snapshots are taken within a given time interval: minute, hour, day, week, month, year. The datetime determines what day of the week, month, or year and what time of the day to take the snapshot. For example, if the frequency of the week is two and the datetime is set to Sunday at 5:00 PM, a snapshot is take each Sunday at 5:00 PM and only two of these weekly snapshots are kept at any time. A file system’s policy only affects itself and its descendants; a pool and its datasets. A storage profile’s policy affects any filesystem configured to use that storage profile: General File System, Custom File System, Streaming Media File System, etc.

Edit a storage profile’s snapshot policy

  1. Navigate to the Auto Snapshot Policies page.

  2. Choose a policy to edit.

    1. Click the action cog cog icon to open its dropdown menu.

    2. Choose the Edit Policy item from the menu.

  3. Configure the fields of the Auto Snapshot Creation panel.

  4. Review the Datasets Affected panel.

  5. Click the Save Storage Profile Policy button.

A snapshot policy for a storage profile determines how long Hub retains a policy snapshot. The Retention column of the Edit Default Data Protection Policy dialog determines how many snapshots Hub keeps for the given time interval. For example, if the retention for the daily frequency was set to four on Monday, by Friday, Hub would delete Monday’s snapshot and replace it with Friday’s snapshot. The same logic applies to the Replica Retention column, except for the snapshots replicated to another filesystem. If you want the local and replicated snapshots to have the same retention, disable the Alternate retention for replicas toggle. To disable rolling snapshots on the dataset, disable the Rolling snapshots toggle.

The policies marked as system are built-in policies and cannot be modified.
configure snapshot service dialog
Figure 1. Configure Snapshot Service Dialog

Customize a filesystem’s snapshot policy

  1. Navigate to the Dataset Snapshots - Coverage page.

  2. Choose a filesystem to edit.

  3. Click the action cog cog icon to open the filesystem’s dropdown menu.

  4. Choose the Edit Auto Snapshot Policy item from the menu.

  5. Enable the Use custom policy radio button on the Auto Snapshot Policy panel.

  6. Flip the toggle on top-right of the Auto Snapshot Creation panel.

  7. Configure the fields of the Auto Snapshot Creation panel.

  8. Click the Apply button.

By default, a new filesystem will use whatever snapshot storage policy is configured in the Auto Snapshot Policies tab. If there is no policy configured for the filesystem’s storage profile, Hub will enforce the default snapshot policy.

edit configuration dataset snapshots
Figure 2. Edit Auto Snapshot Policy dialog