Cloning snapshots
A new volume group can be created and prepopulated with the contents of a snapshot. The new volumes and volume group inherit properties from the parent volumes and volume group of the snapshot.
The new volume groups can be of type thin-clone or clone. A thin-clone volume maintains space efficiency whereas a clone volume becomes an independent volume.
Administrators can use the management GUI or the command-line interfaces to create a clone or thin-clone volume group. In addition, the command-line interface supports the ability to single volume clones or thin-clone outside of a volume group.
Thin-clone
- A thin-clone is always dependent on the snapshot from which it was created.
- The capacity of a thin-clone can be expanded or shrunk. However, it cannot be shrunk to a size that is smaller than the snapshot from which it was created.
Clone
A clone is a host-accessible copy of a snapshot. Once all the data from the source snapshot has been copied to the clone volume, it becomes independent of the snapshot from which it was created.
During the copy process the volume displays as type 'clone', this changes once the copy is complete and the volume becomes a standard volume. By default, it is created in the same storage pool and I/O group as the source volume. Alternative pools or I/O groups can be specified.
A clone volume can be used like any other volume during the cloning process except it cannot be shrunk to a size smaller than the snapshot from which it was created.
Convert thin-clone to clone
A user can convert a thin-clone volume to a clone volume. When doing this any uncopied data is copied from the snapshot volume to the volume being converted and once that copy has completed the converted volume becomes a stand-alone volume. The system supports converting entire thin-clone volume groups and individual thin-clone volumes.