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Dell PowerStore Protecting Your Data

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Secure snapshots

Secure snapshots cannot be deleted before their expiration time. Use secure snapshots to protect your data from malicious attacks.

NOTE:Secure snapshots are only supported for block snapshots that are created for volume or volume groups.

PowerStore enables you to generate secure snapshots. Unlike regular snapshots, secure snapshots cannot be manually deleted and are deleted only when they reach their expiration time.

NOTE:If you want to use secure snapshots, it is recommended to review the business requirements with an administrator before proceeding, to avoid reaching the maximum snapshot limit.

Secure snapshots provide protection from accidental or malicious deletion of backup data and are effective against ransom attacks. Generating secure snapshots guarantees that you can restore data to a previous point in time.

To manually generate a secure snapshot for a volume or volume group, select the Secure Snapshot option in the Create Snapshot panel. To generate secure snapshots as part of a local protection policy, create a snapshot rule and select the Secure Snapshot option in the Create Snapshot Rule panel.

NOTE:Be sure to set a retention period for the secure snapshots. The secure snapshot option is not available when No Automatic Deletion is selected.
NOTE:When a volume group snapshot is configured as secure, all the members in the group are set as secure.

You can view and monitor secure snapshots by adding the Secure Snapshots column to the Snapshots table. You can also filter snapshot lists for secure snapshots.

It is possible to convert existing nonsecure snapshots to secure by selecting the Secure Snapshot option in the Snapshot Details panel. Similarly, you can convert a nonsecure snapshot rule to secure by selecting the Secure Snapshot option in the snapshot rule Properties panel.

NOTE:Only snapshots created by the rule after modifying it to secure are secure snapshots. Snapshots created before the modification remain nonsecure.

When a secure snapshot rule is deleted or removed from a policy, or when a policy that includes a secure snapshot rule is unassigned from a resource, secure snapshots that were created by the rule remain secure and cannot be deleted until they expire. Volumes and clones that have secure snapshots cannot be deleted until the snapshots expire.

The expiration time of secure snapshots cannot be reduced but can be modified to a later date and time.

Secure snapshot and replication:

  • For clusters running PowerStore version 3.5 and above, all secure snapshots that are generated on the local system are replicated as secure to the remote cluster.
  • If the destination cluster is running a PowerStore version below 3.5, secure snapshots are replicated as regular snapshots on that cluster. In that case, the snapshot rule on the destination cluster is not secure. If failover occurs on a cluster running PowerStore version below 3.5, secure snapshots are not created for the storage resource.

After PowerStore upgrade to version 3.5, existing nonsecure snapshots and snapshot rules can be modified to secure.

If you must delete a secure snapshot that has not reached its expiration time, contact Dell support.

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