Snapshot mount overview

You can use the IBM Storage Protect recovery agent to mount a snapshot and use the snapshot to complete data recovery.

Mount snapshots with the IBM Storage Protect recovery agent GUI. Install and run the recovery agent on a system that is connected to the IBM Storage Protect server through a LAN. You cannot use the recovery agent component operations in a LAN-free path.

Be aware of these situations when running mount operations:

When the IBM Storage Protect recovery agent is installed on a guest machine, you cannot start a mount operation for any file system or disk while the guest machine is being backed up. You must either wait for the backup to complete, or you must cancel the backup before running a mount operation. These operations are not allowed because the locking mechanism is for a full virtual machine.
When you browse the snapshot backup inventory, the operating system version of the virtual machine is the version that was specified when the virtual machine was originally created. As a result, the recovery agent might not reflect the current operating system.
A volume becomes unstable when a network failure interrupts a mount operation. A message is issued to the event log. When the network connection is reestablished, another message is issued to the event log. These messages are not issued to the recovery agent GUI.

A maximum of 20 iSCSI sessions is supported. The same snapshot can be mounted more than one time. If you mount a snapshot from the same tape storage pool by using multiple instances of the recovery agent, one of the following actions occurs:

The second recovery agent instance is blocked until the first instance is complete.
The second recovery agent instance might interrupt the activity of the first instance. For example, it might interrupt a file copy process on the first instance.
The recovery agent cannot connect to multiple servers or nodes simultaneously.

As a result, avoid concurrent recovery agent sessions on the same tape volume.

Mount guidelines

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Snapshots can be mounted in either read-only or read/write mode. In read/write mode, recovery agent saves changes to data in memory. If the service is restarted, the changes are lost.

The recovery agent operates in either of the following two modes:

No user is logged in: The recovery agent runs as a service.
User is logged in: The recovery agent continues to run as a service until you start the recovery agent and use the GUI. When you close the recovery agent and GUI, the service restarts. You can use only the recovery agent application and GUI when running with administrator login credentials. Only one copy of the recovery agent application can be active at any time.

When mounted volumes exist and you start Mount from the Start menu, this message is displayed:

Some snapshots are currently mounted. If you choose to continue, these snapshots will be
dismounted. Note that if a mounted volume is currently being used by an application, the 
application may become unstable. Continue?

When Yes is clicked, the mounted volumes are unmounted, even when they are in use.

Restriction: When exposing snapshots as iSCSI targets, and a snapshot of a dynamic disk is displayed to its original system, the UUIDs become duplicated. Likewise when a snapshot of a GPT disk is displayed to its original system, the GUIDs become duplicated. To avoid this duplication, expose dynamic disks and GPT disks to a system other than the original system. For example, expose these disk types to a proxy system, unless the original disks no longer exist.