You can use the filestats command to determine when the most activity occurs on a volume during a given day so that you can effectively schedule creation of hourly Snapshot copies.
The following example shows how you can use the filestats command to determine when the most file changes occur in a volume within a 24-hour period:
filestats ages 1H,2H,3H,4H,5H,6H,7H,8H,9H,10H,11H,12H, 13H,14H,15H,16H,17H,18H,19H,20H,21H,22H,23H,24H volume vol0 snapshot hourly.0
If hourly.0 was taken at 8 a.m. and most file changes took place between 7H and 9H, which corresponds to 3 p.m. and 5 p.m. in this example, you can schedule creation of more Snapshot copies during these hours and fewer throughout the rest of the day. Scheduling creation of more Snapshot copies before or during increased file activity decreases the time between file changes and Snapshot copy creation.
For information about managing Snapshot copies, see the Data ONTAP Data Protection Online Backup and Recovery Guide.