A storage system includes a storage array having physical storage resources, a Software Defined Network Attached Storage (SDNAS) process running in an emulation on the storage system, a user file system having user file system data stored in the storage array that is accessed by the SDNAS process via a first Thin Logical Unit (TLU) storage volume mounted on an emulation operating system, a snapshot copy of the user file system stored in the storage array, and control logic. In some embodiments, the control logic is configured to associate a logical view of the snapshot copy of the user file system to a second TLU, mount the second TLU on the emulation operating system as a snapshot copy file system, and replay pending transactions and sub-transactions of the user file system on the snapshot copy file system to bring the snapshot copy file system to a stable state.