How privileged delete works

By default, a newly created SnapLock Enterprise volume does not allow privileged delete operations. The initial state of the privileged delete feature in a SnapLock Enterprise volume is uninitialized. Therefore, to use privileged delete, you need to enable the privileged delete option in the SnapLock Enterprise volume.

Each volume has one of the following options for the privileged delete functionality:

on—The privileged delete feature is turned on and deletions are allowed on that SnapLock Enterprise volume.
off—The feature is turned off and no privileged delete operations are allowed on that SnapLock Enterprise volume.
disallowed—The feature is disabled for this volume and can never be turned on for this volume. If this option is set, you cannot delete any files from the volume before the expiry date.

You can transition the volume option between the three values. However, you cannot enable the privileged delete functionality on a volume for which the volume option is disallowed. In certain scenarios, where the volume option for the privileged delete feature is set to on, the privileged delete operations might fail.This happens because the SnapLock log file is unavailable. For example, it can happen when the volume is offline.

Note: The SnapLock log captures any change made to the privileged delete configuration, along with the delete events. Therefore, before transitioning between the privileged delete options on the volume, you need to assign a SnapLock log volume in the system.

The privileged delete state of the SnapLock Enterprise volume is a property of the data contained in the SnapLock Enterprise volume. Consequently, in the case of a volume SnapMirror relationship, the state of the privileged delete option on the source volume is transparently transferred to the destination volume. For SnapLock Enterprise volumes, the initial state of the privileged delete feature is uninitialized; for SnapLock Compliance volumes, the initial state of the privileged delete feature is disallowed; for non-SnapLock volumes, the initial state of the privileged delete feature is uninitialized. In addition, when you upgrade a SnapLock Enterprise volume to Data ONTAP 7.3 for the first time, the initial state of the privileged delete feature is uninitialized. You can transition the privileged delete state to on, off, or disallowed by using the snaplock options [-f] privdel on|off|disallowed command. However, if a SnapLock Enterprise volume in disallowed state is a volume SnapMirror destination and you use a vsm transfer, vol copy, or aggr copy command to transfer data from the source volume, the SnapLock Enterprise volume can transition out of the disallowed privileged delete state to the privileged delete state of the source.

Note: When you transition a SnapLock Enterprise volume to disallowed privileged delete state, you cannot use the snaplock command to change the state again.

The SnapLock privileged delete functionality was introduced in Data ONTAP 7.3 release family starting from release Data ONTAP 7.3.1; it was not available in earlier releases. If you revert to any release prior to Data ONTAP 7.3, the privileged delete state of the SnapLock Enterprise volume is saved in the volume metadata. When the system is upgraded again to a Data ONTAP 7.3 release, the saved privileged delete state of the SnapLock Enterprise volume is restored from the earlier saved volume metadata. The Data ONTAP system can detect whether the volume is upgraded to a Data ONTAP 7.3 release for the first time or is upgraded after having already been in a Data ONTAP 7.3 release and having been reverted to a previous release.