You can revert snapshots to an earlier version using the application-aware revert method or the hardware-specific revert method.
Application Aware Revert Operations
An application aware revert operation reverts back all volumes included in the backup.
Freezing is required during the revert operation because the application is shut down and the corresponding volumes are unmounted. Under these conditions, the cluster automatically switches to failover to another node and prevents the revert operation.
Hardware Specific Revert Operations
The hardware specific revert operation reverts the volume back to the pre-snapshot state.
The revert operation might delete some snapshots. To avoid failures, when picking IntelliSnap jobs for the auxiliary copy operation or the backup copy operation, unpick all IntelliSnap jobs that have deleted snapshots as a result of a revert operation. Running the auxiliary copy operation or the backup copy operation with IntelliSnap jobs from deleted snapshots might result in failures.
Environmental Considerations
The behavior of the revert operation can vary per environment, and there are special considerations for some products.
Considerations for the NetApp 7-Mode System
For NetApp 7-Mode, if the volume being reverted is the source of a vault copy or of a mirror copy and if the protection topology is Primary-Vault, Primary-Mirror, or Primary-Vault-Mirror, then the baseline snapshot on the primary volume is shifted to the snapshot of the reverted volume. If the protection topology is Primary-Mirror-Vault or Primary-Mirror1-Mirror2, the baseline snapshot for Mirror-Vault and the baseline snapshot for Mirror1-Mirror2 are not shifted, which might lead to auxiliary copy job failures.
Considerations for the NetApp C-Mode System
For NetApp C-Mode, the revert operation does not shift the baseline snapshot. If the revert operation results in the deletion of the baseline snapshot, then the revert operation fails.
Considerations for Hitachi NAS
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The revert operation is applied to the entire file system, because snapshots are taken at the file system level.
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If you run backup operation on a subdirectory, snapshots are still taken at the file system level and the revert operation reverts the whole the file system, even other subdirectories that you didn't include in the backup operation.
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Hitachi NAS 14.6 does not support the snapshot revert operation as the 'legacy' mode cannot be enabled on the REST API server.