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Dell PowerVault MD 32XX/36XX Series Storage Arrays CLI Guide

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Create Virtual Disk Copy

Description

This command creates a virtual disk copy and starts the virtual disk copy operation.
  • CAUTION: Before you create a new copy of a source virtual disk, stop any data access (I/O) activity or suspend data transfer to the source virtual disk and (if applicable, the target disk) to ensure that you capture an accurate point-in-time image of the source virtual disk. Close all applications, including Windows Internet Explorer, to make sure all I/O activity has stopped.
  • NOTE: See Preparing Host Servers To Create A Virtual Disk Copy.
  • NOTE: Removing the drive letter of the associated virtual disk(s) in Windows or unmounting the virtual drive in Linux helps to guarantee a stable copy of the drive for the virtual copy.
  • NOTE: You can have a maximum of eight virtual disk copies in progress at one time. If you try to create more than eight virtual disk copies at one time, the RAID controller modules return a status of Pending until one of the virtual disk copies that is in progress finishes and returns a status of Complete.
This command creates virtual disk copies in two ways:
  • Virtual disk copy without snapshot (legacy)
  • Virtual disk copy with snapshot (legacy)
If you use virtual disk copy without snapshot (legacy), you cannot write to the source virtual disk until the copy operation is complete. If you want to be able to write to the source virtual disk before the copy operation is complete, use virtual disk copy with snapshot (legacy) . You can select virtual disk copy with snapshot (legacy) through the optional parameters in the command syntax.

Syntax

create virtualDiskCopy source=”
                                 sourceName”
                                 target=”
                                 targetName”
                                 [copyPriority=(highest | high | medium | low | lowest)
                                 targetReadOnlyEnabled=(TRUE | FALSE)]
                                 copyType=(offline | online)

Parameters

Parameter Description
source Name of an existing virtual disk to use as the source virtual disk. You must put quotation marks (" ") around the source virtual disk name.
  • NOTE: You can use any combination of alphanumeric characters, hyphens, and underscores for the names. Command names can have a maximum of 30 characters. If you exceed the maximum character limit, replace square brackets ([ ]) with angle brackets (< >) to overcome this limitation.
target Name of an existing virtual disk to use as the target virtual disk. You must put quotation marks (" ") around the target virtual disk name.
  • NOTE: You can use any combination of alphanumeric characters, hyphens, and underscores for the names. Command names can have a maximum of 30 characters. If you exceed the maximum character limit, replace square brackets ([ ]) with angle brackets (< >) to overcome this limitation.
copyPriority Specifies the priority that a virtual disk copy has relative to host I/O activity. Valid entries are highest, high, medium, low, or lowest.
  • NOTE: CopyPriority defines the amount of system resources used to copy the data between the source virtual disk and target virtual disk of a virtual disk-copy pair. If you select the highest priority level, the virtual disk copy uses the most system resources to perform virtual disk copy, which decreases performance for host data transfers.
targetReadOnlyEnabled Specifies whether the target virtual disk is write enabled or read only. To be able to write to the target virtual disk, set this parameter to FALSE. To prevent writing to the target virtual disk, set this parameter to TRUE.
copyType Creates a virtual disk copy with or a snapshot (legacy). Creating a virtual disk copy with a snapshot (legacy) enables you to continue to write to the source virtual disk while creating the virtual disk copy. To create a virtual disk copy with a snapshot (legacy), set this parameter to online. To create a virtual disk copy without a snapshot (legacy), set this parameter to offline.

If this parameter is not used, the virtual disk copy is created without a snapshot (legacy).

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