Hi Toasters.

I'm running 9.14.1P13.

I used the ONTAP ASYNC-Delete feature from the GUI (storage - Volumes - click on a volume - Click on File system - click on Explorer) to delete a few top level folders in a volume. That worked fine. I saw the background job running and they finished fine.

I needed to delete much more. So I clicked on the trash can for one of the folders, clicked ok to start the delete. Then I clicked elsewhere in the GUI and clicked back to File-System, Explorer - and clicked on the trash can for a different folder. I did this maybe 6 or 7 times. When I check the jobs in ONTAP, I saw them all running.

But then as I waited, I saw a lot more space being used by snapshots (via the df command) than the 6 or 7 folders I wanted to delete. At this point, only 1 ASYNC-Delete job was still running, so I canceled it.

When I look at the live file system.. I see almost all folders (not just the 6 or 7 I clicked) have massive files deleted. Luckily for me, this volume was just a filesystem that barely changes.. so I could snapshot restore from a few hours before, and all was well.

Now I'm scared to death of that file-explore page in the ONTAP GUI. I am the only administrator, so no one else could have been logged on to ONTAP. The pattern of deleted files makes a delete coming from a CIFS client very unlikely. There is no NFS export to this volume.

Maybe the file explorer delete button was not intended for multiple, simultaneous runs? I don't know.. I know I will avoid page like a plague forever now. Any thoughts ?

Thanks!