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

The following syntax is the general form of the command:

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

Once the virtual disk copy has started, the source virtual disk is read only to all I/O activity. Any write attempts to the source virtual disk fails until the operation completes.

Once the virtual disk copy operation is completed register the target virtual disk with the operating system to be used by performing the following steps:

• Enable write permission on the target virtual disk by either removing the Virtual Disk Copy Pair or explicitly setting write permission.
  • In Windows, assign a physical disk letter to the virtual disk.
  • In Linux, mount the virtual disk.

See step 1 to step 4 in Preparing Host Servers To Create A Virtual Disk Copy.

The create virtualDiskCopy command might look like the following example:

client>smcli 123.45.67.89 -c "create
                                    virtualDiskcopy source=\"Jaba_Hut\" target=
                                    \"Obi_1\" copyPriority=medium
                                    targetreadonlyenabled=true"
                                 

The command in this example copies the data from the source virtual disk named Jaba_Hut to the target virtual disk named Obi_1. Setting the copy priority to medium provides a compromise between the following storage array operations:

• The speed with which the data is copied from the source virtual disk to the target virtual disk
• The amount of processing resource required for data transfers to other virtual disks in the storage array

Setting the targetReadOnlyEnabled parameter to TRUE means that write requests cannot be made to the target virtual disk. This setting also ensures that the data on the target virtual disk remains unaltered.

Refer to steps 1 through 4 in the preceding section, Preparing Host Servers To Create A Virtual Disk Copy. The following example is the script file version of the command:

create virtualDiskcopy source="Jaba_Hut" target=
                                    "Obi_1" copyPriority=medium targetreadonlyenabled=true;
                                 

After the virtual disk copy operation is completed, the target virtual disk automatically becomes read-only to the hosts. Any write requests to the target virtual disk are rejected, unless you disable the read-only attribute. Use the set virtualDiskCopy command to disable the read-only attribute.