Rollback on thin virtual disks, Initializing a thin virtual disk – Dell POWERVAULT MD3600I User Manual

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Virtual Disk Copy Source

Virtual Disk Copy Target

Availability

Standard virtual disk

Standard virtual disk

Supported

Thin virtual disk

Standard virtual disk

Supported

Standard virtual disk

Thin virtual disk

Not supported

Thin virtual disk

Thin virtual disk

Not supported

Rollback On Thin Virtual Disks

Rollback operations are fully supported on thin virtual disks. A rollback operation restores the logical content of a thin
virtual disk to match the selected snapshot image. There is no change to the consumed capacity of the thin virtual disk
as a result of a rollback operation.

Initializing A Thin Virtual Disk

CAUTION: Possible loss of data – Initializing a thin virtual disk erases all data from the virtual disk. If you have
questions, contact your Technical Support representative before performing this procedure.

When a thin virtual disk is created, it is automatically initialized. However, the MD Storage Manger Recovery Guru may
advise that you manually initialize a thin virtual disk to recover from certain failure conditions. If you choose to
reinitialize a thin virtual disk, you have several options:

Keep the same physical capacity — If you keep the same physical capacity, the virtual disk can keep its current

repository virtual disk, which saves initialization time.

Change the physical capacity — If you change the physical capacity, a new repository virtual disk is created

and you can optionally change the repository expansion policy and warning threshold.

Move the repository to a different disk pool.

Initializing a thin virtual disk erases all data from the virtual disk. However, host mappings, virtual capacity, repository
expansion policy and security settings are preserved. Initialization also clears the block indices, which causes unwritten
blocks to be read as if they are zero-filled. After initialization, the thin virtual disk appears to be completely empty.
The following types of virtual disks cannot be initialized:

Snapshot (Legacy) virtual disk

Base virtual disk of a Snapshot virtual disk

Primary virtual disk in a Remote Replication relationship

Secondary virtual disk in a Remote Replication relationship

Source virtual disk in a Virtual Disk Copy

Target virtual disk in a Virtual Disk Copy

Thin virtual disk that already has an initialization in progress

Thin virtual disk that is not in the Optimal state

Initializing A Thin Virtual Disk With The Same Physical Capacity

CAUTION: Initializing a thin virtual disk erases all data from the virtual disk.

You can create thin virtual disks only from disk pools, not from disk groups.

By initializing a thin virtual disk with the same physical capacity, the original repository is maintained but the

contents of the thin virtual disk are deleted.

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