You can create a FileSnap over Network File System (NFS) by creating a hard link from an existing file to a new file with the extension "::snap:vxfs:". For example, the following command creates a new file named file1, but instead of making file1 a hard link of file2, file1 will be a FileSnap so that the link count of file2 will not change:

# ln file1 file2::snap:vxfs:

This is the equivalent of using the following command:

# vxfilesnap -p file1 file2

The new file has the same attributes as the old file and shares all of the old file's extents.

An application that uses this namespace extension should check if the file created has the namespace extension, such as file1::snap:vxfs: instead of file1. This indicates the namespace extension is not supported, either because the file system exported over NFS is not VxFS, the file system is an older version of VxFS, or the file system does not have a license for FileSnaps.

As with the vxfilesnap command, FileSnaps must be made within a single file set.