Dell Solutions Enabler 10.0.0 TimeFinder SnapVX CLI User Guide

When sensitive data needs to be presented to test or development environments, some data may require obfuscation to protect the data before presenting it to the test or development hosts. A cascading snapshot from a linked target and linking targets from the cascaded snapshot provides the obscured data environment.

The cascading snapshot configuration, shown in the figure above, provides the following:

• Snapshots of production volumes can be linked to a target storage group which is part of a masking view for presenting to an interim host. The interim host processes the host data to obfuscate sensitive data such as social security numbers.
• A snapshot from the target storage group is linked to multiple environments, which see the snapshot image without security concerns.
• A relink operation can be performed at any stage on the target storage groups to roll back to a pristine snapshot image.
• At any point in the chain, linked snapshots can be converted to full independent copies if the first level linked copy needs to be refreshed with a newer snapshot image.
• When the test or development environments need to be refreshed, a new snapshot from the source LUN can be taken and relinked to the target storage group (TGT_SG).

Create original snapshot src_snap:

symsnapvx -sid 001 -sg SOURCESG1 -name src_snap establish

Link snapshot src_snap to TGT_SG1:

symsnapvx -sid 001 -sg SOURCESG1 -lnsg TGT_SG1 -snapshot_name src_snap link

At this point, TGT_SG1 can be mounted and updated by host processes.

Create snapshot obfuscated_snap off of TGT_SG1:

symsnapvx -sid 001 -sg TGT_SG1 -name obfuscated_snap establish

Link obfuscated_snap to the multiple development target devices:

symsnapvx -sid 001 -sg TGT_SG1 -lnsg DEVSG1 -snapshot_name obfuscated_snap link

symsnapvx -sid 001 -sg TGT_SG1 -lnsg DEVSG2 -snapshot_name obfuscated_snap link

symsnapvx -sid 001 -sg TGT_SG1 -lnsg DEVSG3 -snapshot_name obfuscated_snap link

Any of the snapshots can be refreshed at any stage. For example, the following command reverts DEVSG2in the development environment back to it's original state when it was first linked:

symsnapvx -sid 001 -sg TGT_SG1 -lnsg DEVSG2 -snapshot_name obfuscated_snap relink

This process can be repeated to support multiple versions of the snapshots.

To terminate the snapshots in the previous example:

1. Unmount the DEVSG volumes on hosts.
2. Unlink the DEVSG storage groups from obfuscated_snap snapshot.
3. Terminate snapshot obfuscated_snap.
4. Terminate the original snapshot src_snap.
5. Remount DEVSG volumes on hosts.