Home > Storage > PowerScale (Isilon) > Product Documentation > Data Protection > Dell PowerScale SyncIQ: Architecture, Configuration, and Considerations > Archiving SnapshotIQ snapshots to a backup cluster
Specifying a snapshot to replicate from is also an option for cases where SnapshotIQ snapshots are consuming a significant amount of space on a cluster. The snapshots must be retained for administrative requirements. In this case, the snapshots are replicated to a remote backup or disaster recovery cluster, opening additional space on the source cluster.
When replicating SnapshotIQ snapshots to another cluster, the dataset and its history must be replicated from the source cluster. Therefore, snapshots are replicated from the source in chronological order, from the first snapshot to the last. The snapshots are placed into sequential jobs replicating to the target cluster. Replicating in this process, allows the target cluster to create a snapshot with a delta between each job, as each job replicates a snapshot that is more up to date than the previous.
Note: As stated in Specifying snapshots for replication, ensure that target snapshots are configured and retained before initiating the archiving process.
If snapshots are not archived in chronological order, an error occurs, as displayed in the following figure.
To ensure that SyncIQ retains the multiple snapshots required to recreate the dataset, SnapshotIQ must be installed with archival snapshots enabled.
After all snapshots are replicated to the target cluster, an archive of the source cluster’s snapshots is complete. The source cluster’s snapshots may now be deleted, creating additional space.
Note: Archiving snapshots creates a new set of snapshots on the target cluster based on the source cluster snapshots, but it does not “migrate” the snapshots from one cluster to another. The new snapshots have the same data, but with different data times. This may not meet compliance requirements for ensuring data integrity or evidentiary requirements.