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Supported topologies

DonkeyFleet manages volume-level SnapMirror relationships between a source-role cluster and a destination-role cluster.

Primary use case​

DonkeyFleet is designed primarily to protect the storage layer behind persistent volumes in bare-metal Kubernetes clusters. A CSI driver such as Trident provisions a volume on ONTAP; DonkeyFleet observes that ONTAP volume and manages its SnapMirror destination.

Supported storage routes​

SourceDestination
Customer-managed ONTAPCustomer-managed ONTAP
Customer-managed ONTAPAmazon FSx for ONTAP
Amazon FSx for ONTAPAmazon FSx for ONTAP

Every SVM pair records the direction explicitly. DonkeyFleet discovers aggregates, schedules, and SnapMirror policies, but it does not choose or create them. An administrator records the human placement and schedule decisions in the protection policy.

Managed unit​

The managed unit is the backing ONTAP volume, identified by its immutable volume UUID. Kubernetes and CSI metadata can provide workload context, but PV names, PVC names, and ONTAP volume names are never used as storage identity.

Supported changes​

Depending on mode, policy, approval, and dry-run, DonkeyFleet can:

  • create a destination DP volume;
  • create and initialize an XDP relationship;
  • grow a destination volume;
  • correct destination tiering;
  • remove an orphaned destination relationship and destination volume after explicit approval.

All writes target the destination-role cluster. Source volumes are read-only to DonkeyFleet.