Managing Replication Packages

Packages are containers for replicated projects and shares. Each replication action on a source ZFSSA corresponds to one package on the target ZFSSA as described above. Both the BUI and CLI enable administrators to browse replicated projects, shares, snapshots, and properties much like local projects and shares. However, because replicated shares must exactly match their counterparts on the source ZFSSA, many management operations are not allowed inside replication packages, including creating, renaming, and destroying projects and shares, creating and renaming snapshots, and modifying most properties of projects and shares. Snapshots other than those used as the basis for incremental replication can be destroyed in replication packages. This practice is not recommended but can be used when additional free space is necessary.

In 2009.Q3 and earlier software versions, properties could not be changed on replicated shares. The 2010.Q1 release (with associated deferred upgrades) adds limited support for modifying properties of replicated shares to implement differing policies on the source and target ZFSSAs. Such property modifications persist across replication updates. Only the following properties of replicated projects and shares may be modified:

• Reservation, compression, copies, deduplication, and caching. These properties can be changed on the replication target to effect different cost, flexibility, performance, or reliability policies on the target ZFSSA from the source.

• Mountpoint and sharing properties (e.g., sharenfs, SMB resource name, etc.). These properties control how shares are exported to NAS clients and can be changed to effect different security or protection policies on the target ZFSSA from the source.

• Automatic snapshot policies. Automatic snapshot policies can be changed on the target system but these changes have no effect until the package is severed. Automatic snapshots are not taken or destroyed on replicated projects and shares.

The BUI and CLI don't allow administrators to change immutable properties. For shares, a different icon is used to indicate that the property's inheritance cannot be changed:

Figure 13-2  Managing Replication Package Properties

Deferred updates provided with the 2010.Q1 release must be applied on replication targets in order to modify properties on such targets. The system will not allow administrators to modify properties inside replication packages on systems which have not applied the 2010.Q1 deferred updates.

The current release does not support configuration of "chained" replication (that is, replicating replicated shares to another ZFSSA).