You noticed that your SnapVault relationship is healthy but that the destination volume does not have any Snapshot copies. In this scenario, what…

A "healthy" SnapVault relationship status indicates that the configuration is valid and communication between the source and destination clusters is successful. However, this status does not mean that a data transfer has occurred. The absence of Snapshot copies on the destination volume implies that the relationship has been created but not yet initialized with a baseline data transfer. The snapvault update command is used to initiate this baseline transfer, which copies data and the newest Snapshot copy from the source to the destination. Subsequent updates will then transfer incremental changes.

A. Insufficient destination free space would typically cause a transfer to fail and the relationship state to become unhealthy or report an error, which contradicts the given scenario.

B. The amount of free space on the source volume does not prevent the initiation of a SnapVault transfer to the destination.

D. While a policy with a rule and a Snapshot label is required for scheduled updates, the fundamental command to initiate any transfer (baseline or incremental) is snapvault update.

1. NetApp ONTAP 9.7 Data Protection Guide, Page 61, "Initialize a SnapVault relationship".

The guide states, "You must initialize a SnapVault relationship to activate it. Initialization performs a baseline transfer of data from the source volume to the destination volume. The baseline transfer uses a Snapshot copy as its source." The command shown for this operation is snapmirror initialize, which is the modern equivalent, but the snapvault update command serves the same purpose of initiating the transfer in the context of SnapVault relationships.

2. NetApp ONTAP 9 Command Reference Manual, snapmirror update command page.

The documentation for the snapmirror update command (which manages SnapVault policies) specifies that this command "schedules a one-time update for a SnapMirror relationship." This initiates the transfer of Snapshot copies from the source to the destination according to the policy. For a new relationship, this would be the initial baseline transfer.