Jeff,
I had looked at this KB but it didn't really seem to apply since it was talking about moving the root volume to the new environment. It would indicate that the snapvault information being used is not being read from the disks, but from the root volume (registry files?).
For the snapvault source the snapvault relationship and the snapshot that will be softlocked because it is the base snapshot are stored in the registry. So when you start with a brand new root volume, the knowledge of snapvault relationships and softlocked snapshots is lost. However this does not imply that your base snapshot is lost after a headswap with new root volume.
As "proof" of the registry information an example for a softlock from the registry file of an actual filer:
"state.sv_softlock.cce124.001d69e5.066.internal.1=locked"
This shows that volume cce124 has a softlock on snapshot id "066".
Snapshot id "066" in volume cce124 has the name "sv_daily.0":
Volume cce124 snapid status date ownblks release fsRev name ------ ------ ------------ ------- ------- ----- -------- 66 complete Jul 08 21:00 738206 8.1 22331 sv_daily.0
And indeed it is softlocked for snapvault:
%/used %/total date name ---------- ---------- ------------ -------- 0% ( 0%) 0% ( 0%) Jul 08 21:00 sv_daily.0 (snapvault,acs)
If this really is the case, it sounds like you can never migrate primary filers without taking the root volume with you.
As I already described, just execute snapvault updates from the snapvault destination to register the snapvault relationship and softlocks again in the new root volume. As long as the base snapshots have not been deleted this will work.
I know this does not apply to the secondary filers. I recently took all the drives from a 3140 and connected them to a 3270. Once I changed the system ID and updated the snapvault relationship to point to the new filer, everything was happy. We've done that on several occasions with no issues.
With moving all disks, do you mean you also reused the original root volume (with all the registry information)? To be honest I do not have experience with new root volumes on secondary filers. But for primary filers I have seen it gone wrong for the reasons I described.
Pascal.