Dell PowerStore Protecting Your Data

Refresh a storage resource

The refresh operation is used to replace the contents of a storage resource with contents from a related resource (a clone or an indirect child snapshot). You can create a duplicate of the production environment to be used for various purposes (such as test and development, reporting etc.). To keep the duplicated environment up-to-date, it should be updated with a storage resource that includes the recent changes.

You can use the refresh operation in the following scenarios:

• Refresh a thin clone from the base volume.
• Refresh a storage resource or thin clone from another thin clone in the family.
• Refresh a storage resource or thin clone from a snapshot of a related thin clone or base volume.

For file systems, you can refresh a snapshot of a file system with its direct parent file system.

If you refresh the thin clone of a snapshot that has derivative snapshots, the derivative snapshots remain unchanged and the family hierarchy stays intact. If you refresh a volume group, the point-in-time image on all member volumes is also refreshed.

When refreshing a resource from a snapshot that was replicated from a remote system, check the creation time and source data time values to ensure that you are using the correct snapshot. The Source Data Time value of replicated snapshots reflects the original source data time, and the Creation Time value is updated to the time of replication.

Before refreshing a snapshot, it is mandatory to shut down the application and unmount the volume or file system that is running on the production host, and then flush the host cache to prevent data corruption during the refresh operation.