Issues with Snapshots Rollback

General
1

Hi all

I am not sure if this is an issue or this is the correct behavior for rockstor dealing with snapshots when the rollback is used. I have scheduled snapshots for my shares, shadow copies are also enabled. When I select the share and go to previous versions I find all my snapshots and I can open any of them grab the data I want, but if I use the rollback feature from the web interface I get into problems.
Example: I delete my samba share, go to my snapshots and select the one I need to rollback to. It works perfectly fine.
I go back and create the samba share to browse the data, all the data is there which is perfect, If I check the snapshots in the previous version tab.

1st: There is no snapshots after the snapshot I selected, so if I selected something on the 10th of March 7:30am “doing hourly snapshots” every snapshot after this date/time is erased.

2nd: I check the previous versions tab on the share, I can see snapshots prior the date/time I selected, if I click and open any, they are empty no data is there.

3rd: I check from the webui the snapshots, there is no snapshots at all for this share.

The rollback basically restore to the point of time you select which is understandable but can be risky if someone not sure which snapshot they should rollback to, once it’s done it’s done. It erases any newer data/snapshots. The question is; was this the intentional design for the rollback? What happen if someone rolled back to a wrong snapshot? Data is gone!!!.

Hopefully someone look at this one, and let me if I am doing/understanding something wrong.

2

I am not sure if I understand your problem 100%, but I think I do.

If you have 7 days of daily snapshots (we’ll say Day 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7) and you are on day 7. Your previous versions will show Days 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. But, if you then roll back to day 3, the only previous versions you will see are days 1 and 2. This is as expected with all snapshot design from all NAS vendors. This is because when you roll back, it takes you back to that day. So, in the eyes of the data, it is Day 3 (4, 5, 6, 7 haven’t happened yet).

This is why we send out a BIG RED NOTICE to all of our used to never click “Restore” in the Previous version tab. Only go into the previous day, find the file you want and copy/paste it where you want it.

Hopefully this answers your questions.

3 Likes
3

I was pretty sure this was going to be the answer, I just needed someone to confirm my understanding regarding the rollback.

This wasn’t the case, yes I found the snapshots for day I selected to rollback to but there was no data and it was completely empty.