How splitting a FlexClone volume from its parent works

Splitting a FlexClone volume from its parent removes any space optimizations that are currently used by the FlexClone volume. After the split, both the FlexClone volume and the parent volume require the full space allocation determined by their volume guarantees. The FlexClone volume becomes a normal FlexVol volume.

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When you split a FlexClone volume from its parent, all existing Snapshot copies of the FlexClone volume are deleted. If you want to retain the Snapshot copies of the FlexClone volume, you can move the FlexClone volume to a different aggregate by using the vol move command. During the volume move operation, you can also create new Snapshot copies, if required. For details of the vol move command, see the Data ONTAP SAN Administration Guide for 7-Mode.

•	No new Snapshot copies can be created of the FlexClone volume during the split operation.

•	Because the clone-splitting operation is a copy operation that might take considerable time to complete, Data ONTAP provides the vol clone split stop and vol clone split status commands to stop or check the status of a clone-splitting operation.

•	The clone-splitting operation proceeds in the background and does not interfere with data access to either the parent or the clone volume.

•	The FlexClone volume must be online when you start the split operation.

•	The parent volume must be online for the split operation to succeed.

•	If you take the FlexClone volume offline while splitting is in progress, the operation is suspended; when you bring the FlexClone volume back online, the splitting operation resumes.

•	If the FlexClone volume has a data protection or load sharing mirror, it cannot be split from its parent volume.

•	If you split a FlexClone volume from a FlexVol volume that has deduplication and compression enabled, the split volume does not have deduplication and compression enabled.

•	After a FlexClone volume and its parent volume have been split, they cannot be rejoined.