Applications

The applications command provides a diverse set of subcommands that allow you to utilize the physical storage. To use the physical storage, you need to create application instances, which act as abstract containers for logical volumes. Therefore, before creating a logical volume, you must have at least one application instance.

The applications set of commands allows you to:

Create, edit, delete, or list application instances.
Create, edit, delete, and list volumes.
Edit consistency-group (CG). A CG is a collection of volumes that form a single storage entity (sharing the same data retention: primary data and redundant data).
Take snapshots of a volume or a file; delete, list, and restore snapshots.

Share the path or files of a volume by adding it to SMB or NFS share groups; edit or delete share groups.
Create, edit, list, and mount file systems; display and discard (trim) unused blocks on a mounted file system.
Generate an encryption key. You can use this key later to encrypt a consistency group.
Create, edit, list, and delete object-based storage on a volume; encrypt and control access to object-based storage.
Map volumes that can use as a local file system using iSCSi, Fiber Channel (FC), or NVMeOF protocols.

Create an application instance

You can create an application instance using the application create command. You cannot create volumes or use any of the other features of the applications commands without creating at least one application instance. An application instance is a namespace for volumes. Within the app instance, logical volumes must have a unique name. However, two logical volumes with the same name may exist in two different app instances.

Usage:

applications create --application=<a_name> [--template=<temp_name>] [--description=<text>]

Options

Options and arguments	Description
`--application=<a_name>`	To specify the application instance name, replace `<a_name>` with a name of your choice.
`--template=<t_name>`	To create the app instance from a template, replace `<t_name>` with a template name.
`--description=<text>`	To write a description for your app instance, replace `<text>` with the text of your description.

Notice: If the <text> argument in the --description option contains white-spaces, then wrap your description in a double quotation mark " "

Examples

To create a new application instance sales with a description, run

applications create --application sales --description "Application for the sales team."

To create application instance HR from a template standard-app-inst with a description, run

application create --application HR --template standard-app-inst --description "For our HR team"

Delete application instance

To delete an application instance, use the applications delete command.

Usage:

applications delete --application=<a_name> [--force]

Options

Options and arguments	Description
`--application=<a_name>`	To specify the app instance name that will be deleted, replace `<a_name>` with the app instance name.
`--force`	To delete the app instance without prompting for approval.

Examples:

To delete application instance HR; run
```
applications --application HR 
```
To delete application instance HR without getting prompted for approval, run
```
applications --application HR --force
```

List application instance

To list application instances, use the applications list command.

Usage:

applications list [--application=<app_name> --volume=<vol_name>] [--desc] [--cg] [--vols] [--snapshot]
[--connectivity] [--capacity] [--fs] [--rep] [--vms]

Options

Options and arguments	Description
`--application=<app_name>`	To list information from the specified app instance. Replace `<app_name>` with the application instance you want to list.
`--volume=<vol_name>`	To list information from the specified volume. Replace `<vol_name>` with the name of the volume that you want to list.
`--desc`	To display the application instance description.
`--cg`	To display consistency groups. For each application instance, display its consistency groups.
`--vols`	To display volumes. For each application instance, display its volumes.
`--snapshot`	To display the point in time (PIT) of snapshots.
`--connectivity`	To display the connectivity of the volumes.
`--capacity`	To display information about volume capacity.
`--fs`	To display information about the file system.
`--rep`	To display information about volume replication.
`--vms`	To display information about VMware VMs.

Examples:

To list all application instances with descriptions, run
```
applications list --desc
```
To list all application instances with descriptions and additional information on their volumes, run
```
applications list --desc --vols
```
To list only information for application instance sales with description, related volumes, capacity, and file systems information, run
```
 applications list --application sales --vols --desc --capacity --fs
```
Assuming that application instance sales has two volumes: SR; and SR-10, to list only information for an application instance sales and volume SR with capacity and file system information, run
```
applications list --application sales --volume SR --desc --capacity --fs
```

Edit application instance

To edit an application instance, use the applications edit command.

Usage:

applications edit --application=<app_name> [--newname=<new_app_name>] [--description=<text>]

Options

Options and arguments	Description
`--application=<app_name>`	To specify the app instance, replace `<app_name>` with application instance name to edit.
`--newname=<new_app_name>`	To specify a new name for the app instance. Replace `<new_app_name>` with a name of your choice.
`--description=<text>`	To write a new description for the app instance, replace `<text>` with your new description.

Notice: If the <text> argument in the --description option contains white-spaces, then wrap your description in double quotation marks " "

Examples:

To change the description of application instance sales, run

applications edit --application sales --description "We are the most powerful sales team in the universe."

To change the name of the application instance sales to super-sales; run
```
application edit --application sales --newname super-sales
```
To change the name of the application instance super-sales to human-resources and to change the description, run
```
application edit --application super-sales --newname human-resources --description HR-team
```

Consistency group

A consistency group (CG) is a collection of volumes that form a single storage entity. Logical volumes in the consistency group share the same data retention (sharing the same data retention: primary data and redundant data). To edit a CG, use the applications consistency_group edit command.

Usage:

applications consistency_groups edit --cgid=<num> | (--application=<app_name> --volume=<vol_name>)
[--retention=<rpo:timeframe>] [--enable_vss | --disable_vss]

Options

Option --enable_vss enables Volume Snapshot Service (VSS) (Volume Shadow Copy support) on the consistency group.
The options argument of --retention has two parts separated by a column. The first part is the recovery point objective (RPO) and the second (timeframe) is the recovery time objective (RTO). Both RPO and RTO are numerical values with time indicator suffixes. Available time suffixes: ’m’ for minutes, ‘h’ for hours, ’d’ for days, ‘w’ for weeks. Use ‘0’ or ’none’ to remove the data retention. The time interval of the RPO must be smaller than the time interval of the RTO (timeframe).

Options and arguments	Description
`--cgid=<num>`	To identify the CG by its id, replace `num>` with the CG id number.
`--application=<app_name>`	To identify the CG by app instance and volume name, replace `<app_name>` with the app instance name.
`--volume=<vol_name>`	To identify the CG by app instance and volume name, replace `<vol_name>` with vol name.
`--retention=<rpo:timeframe>`	To set the data retention values (see item 2 in the list above).
`--enable_vss`	To enable volume snapshot service (VSS) on the consistency group.
`--disable_vss`	To disable volume snapshot service (VSS) on the consistency group.

Examples:

To enable VSS in consistency group with id 605 and to set the retention RPO value to 5 minutes and RTO value to 2 hours, run
```
applications consistency_groups edit --cgid 605 --enable_vss --retention 5m:2h
```
Application instances may contain more than one consistency group. However, each consistency group (CG) must live inside a specific application instance. Hence, you can identify the CG by using its application instance and one of its volumes or by its numerical id. To disable VSS in a consistency group that lives inside application instance HR and contains volume managers run:
```
applications consistency_groups edit --application HR --volume managers --disable_vss 
```

Last updated on 22 Nov 2022
Published on 23 Nov 2022