I can think of 1 exception: BCVs.
If you have BCVs mapped to an FA for backup purposes, I can imagine that sometimes that BCV is not masked to a host and sometimes it is masked. I would check if those "orphaned" symdevs perhaps are BCVs or clones or snaps or something.

Definately a concern over BCVs, Clones, and VDEVS.

This is why we keep maps of all our systems that include the associated R1s, R2, BCVs, CLONEs, VDEVs, etc. Since they are not all masked at the same time (especially in our DR site) we refer to this to verify if mapped but unmasked devices have become "orphaned".

Always run a "symdev show symdev" to make sure that it's a real orphan and no related to anything anymore.

Hi
Thanks for your answers however I don't see how "symdev show " helps me.
I understand in relation to maps of all the hosts <-> devices, and this is something we will look to do in the very near future especially as we are about to start DR in our environment.
However I think this two are orphaned devices, I just wanted to make sure....
Thanks for your help
Any other information would be helpful
Best regards

Hi WingCommander,

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With a "symdev show" you can see if symdevs are BCV's or not and have an existing relationship with another symdev or not....

The only other caution is if you have FA ports that do not have VCM enabled you will not see a mapping relationship only devices presented to an FA.

If all of your ports are VCM enabled then you can disregard this

To check Clone/BCV/Snap relationships you could run the following short listing commands just to verify if the device in question has a defined relationship you need to cancel or research:

symbcv list
symclone list
symsnap list

If you find the device in question in this output then you need to research that relationship before reclaiming the device.