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Creating a snapshot of a snapshot

Creating a snapshot of a snapshot shows how it may be desirable to create a snapshot of an existing snapshot for some applications.

Creating a snapshot of a snapshot

Creating a snapshot of a snapshot

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Even though the arrangement of the snapshots in this figure appears similar to a snapshot cascade, the relationship between the snapshots is not recursive. When reading from the snapshot S2, data is obtained directly from the original volume, V, if it does not exist in S2 itself.

See "Snapshot cascade" on page 322.

Such an arrangement may be useful if the snapshot volume, S1, is critical to the operation. For example, S1 could be used as a stable copy of the original volume, V. The additional snapshot volume, S2, can be used to restore the original volume if that volume becomes corrupted. For a database, you might need to replay a redo log on S2 before you could use it to restore V.

Using a snapshot of a snapshot to restore a database shows the sequence of steps that would be required to restore a database.

Using a snapshot of a snapshot to restore a database

Using a snapshot of a snapshot to restore a database

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If you have configured snapshots in this way, you may wish to make one or more of the snapshots into independent volumes. There are two vxsnap commands that you can use to do this:

Dissociating a snapshot volume

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Splitting snapshots

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