on rewrite operations compare to Copy-on-write where old data block going to be rewritten in-place and captured in a snapshot needs to be copied first to space allocated for snapshot reserve in order to preserve original data, this generates additional data copy operations once system get rewrites to that block. Snapshots provide online backups that can be accessed quickly, through special hidden directories in the file system, allowing users to recover files that have been accidentally deleted or modified. NetApp's Data ONTAP Release 7G operating system supports a read-write snapshot called FlexClone. Snapshots are basis for technologies like SnapMirror, SnapVault and Online Volume Move while features like FlexClone, SnapLock, SnapRestore are snapshot-like technologies leverage on WAFL capabilities and properties like manipulations with inodes. Starting with ONTAP 9.4 maximum number of snapshots supported for each FlexVol is 1024, while for previous versions max limit was 255. Starting with ONTAP 9.5 snapshot sharing functionality were added to run deduplication scan across Active file system and snapshots, and deduplication savings is a magnitude of number of snapshots. Before 9.5 not deduplicated data locked in a snapshot couldn’t be used by deduplication process and runs only in active file system. File and directory model An important feature of WAFL is its support for both a Unix-style file and directory model for NFS clients and a Microsoft Windows-style file and directory model for SMB clients. WAFL also supports both security models, including a mode where different files on the same volume can have different security attributes attached to them. Unix can use either access control lists (ACL) or a simple bitmask, whereas the more recent Windows model is based on access control lists. These two features make it possible to write a file to an SMB type of networked filesystem and access it later via NFS from a Unix workstation. Alongside ordinary files, WAFL can contain file-containers called LUNs with required special attributes like LUN serial number for block devices, which could be accessed using SAN protocols running on ONTAP OS software. FlexVol Each Flexible Volume (FlexVol) is a separate WAFL file system, located on an aggregate and distributed across all disks in the aggregate. Each aggregate can contain and usually has multiple FlexVol volumes. ONTAP during data optimization process including the "Tetris" which finishes with Consistency Points (see NVRAM) is programmed to evenly distribute data blocks as much as possible in each FlexVol volume