8.2. Creating Snapshots

Before creating a snapshot ensure that the following prerequisites are met:
  • Red Hat Gluster Storage volume has to be present and the volume has to be in the Started state.
  • All the bricks of the volume have to be on an independent thin logical volume(LV).
  • Snapshot names must be unique in the cluster.
  • All the bricks of the volume should be up and running, unless it is a n-way replication where n >= 3. In such case quorum must be met. For more information see Chapter 8, Managing Snapshots
  • No other volume operation, like rebalance, add-brick, etc, should be running on the volume.
  • Total number of snapshots in the volume should not be equal to Effective snap-max-hard-limit. For more information see Configuring Snapshot Behavior.
  • If you have a geo-replication setup, then pause the geo-replication session if it is running, by executing the following command: 
    # gluster volume geo-replication MASTER_VOL SLAVE_HOST::SLAVE_VOL pause
    For example, 
    # gluster volume geo-replication master-vol example.com::slave-vol pause
Pausing geo-replication session between master-vol example.com::slave-vol has been successful
    Ensure that you take the snapshot of the master volume and then take snapshot of the slave volume.
To create a snapshot of the volume, run the following command: 
# gluster snapshot create <snapname> <volname> [no-timestamp] [description <description>] [force]
where,
  • snapname - Name of the snapshot that will be created.
  • VOLNAME(S) - Name of the volume for which the snapshot will be created. We only support creating snapshot of single volume.
  • description - This is an optional field that can be used to provide a description of the snap that will be saved along with the snap.
  • force - Snapshot creation will fail if any brick is down. In a n-way replicated Red Hat Gluster Storage volume where n >= 3 snapshot is allowed even if some of the bricks are down. In such case quorum is checked. Quorum is checked only when the force option is provided, else by-default the snapshot create will fail if any brick is down. Refer the Overview section for more details on quorum.
  • no-timestamp: By default a timestamp is appended to the snapshot name. If you do not want to append timestamp then pass no-timestamp as an argument.

Note

Snapshots are not activated on creation by default; to enable this behavior for all future snapshot creations, set the activate-on-create parameter to enabled.
For Example 1: 
# gluster snapshot create snap1 vol1 no-timestamp
snapshot create: success: Snap snap1 created successfully
For Example 2: 
# gluster snapshot create snap1 vol1
snapshot create: success: Snap snap1_GMT-2015.07.20-10.02.33 created successfully
Snapshot of a Red Hat Gluster Storage volume creates a read-only Red Hat Gluster Storage volume. This volume will have identical configuration as of the original / parent volume. Bricks of this newly created snapshot is mounted as /var/run/gluster/snaps/<snap-volume-name>/brick<bricknumber>.
For example, a snapshot with snap volume name 0888649a92ea45db8c00a615dfc5ea35 and having two bricks will have the following two mount points: 
/var/run/gluster/snaps/0888649a92ea45db8c00a615dfc5ea35/brick1
/var/run/gluster/snaps/0888649a92ea45db8c00a615dfc5ea35/brick2
These mounts can also be viewed using the df or mount command.

Note

If you have a geo-replication setup, after creating the snapshot, resume the geo-replication session by running the following command: 
# gluster volume geo-replication MASTER_VOL SLAVE_HOST::SLAVE_VOL resume
For example, 
# gluster volume geo-replication master-vol example.com::slave-vol resume
Resuming geo-replication session between master-vol example.com::slave-vol has been successful