Celerra NS20 NAS Backup Help Needed

Thanks for your response, i have some further questions/clarifications to ur answers

1. If we move to NetBackup or EMC networker where we can have drive sharing (DDS) or 3-way NDMP and use two drives in our tape library one connected to Celerra data mover fro NDMP and other to our backup server. Will the server control the robotics for the drive attached to the celerra?
What do u recommend as a better option moving to Netbackup or EMC networker?


3. If we backup by mounting the CIFS shares on the backup server, will we get the compression etc?

Unfortunately Backup Exec unlike its bigger cousins like Netbackup or EMC Networkter cannot do drive sharing (DDS) or 3-way NDMP.

If your library has multiple tape drives you should be able to wire one tape drive direclty to the Celerra data mover for NDMP and still let the backup server control the robotics and use the other tape drives.



yes, NDMP backup is normally volume level (one complete file system) but restore can also be done file-level

Backup Exec does support DAR/DDAR so on a restore it can quickly position the tape to the position of the file/directory needed.



If you dont use multi-protocol (CIFS and NFS) and you're ok with the performance you could also very well do a LAN based backed by just mounting the Celerra's CIFS shares on the backup server

Actually quite a number of customers do that - its just that NDMP is better and faster

have you researched an option of using 3-Way NDMP ..where you don't have to attach library directly to your NAS unit.

actually what you are describing is library sharing - one drive is *always* used by the Celerra and another drive and the robotics is *always* used by the backup server.

That is pretty basic and even Backup Exec should be able to do that.
Same for controlling the robotics.

DDS is dynamic - for example both the Celerra and the backup server are connected to the same tape drives through a FC switch and each drive can be used by both (of course not at the same time)



look at the cost - being employed by EMC I'm obviously biased

If its just for that reason and you dont need other capabilities I would stick with Backup Exec and try to make library sharing work.

A Veritas Backup Exec support guy should be able to tell you exactly if its possible.

If not then some libraries can be partitioned so that they look and act like two libraries.



Sure - assuming you mean the compression that the tape drives do

Backup Exec doesnt support heterogenous 3-way NDMP - i.e. it doesnt have a tape server software implemented on the backup server that could receive NDMP streams over the network and write them to a local tape drive.

attached is the NDMP support matrix listing all the NDMP backup packages and their supported capabilities

i have clients who use my CIFS servers but wanted to go with their own backup strategy. Many of them are using Backup Exec D. They are doing exactly what Rainer is describing. They are mapping the root of the CIFS share to their backup server and then spin it tape/disk/virtual tape. I'll save you some time with one caveat ..Backup exec uses port 10000 to communicate to its backup agents, but Celerra uses port 10000 for NDMP so before you decided to backup Celerra make sure to change default port on all of your currently backed up hosts to something other then 10000 as well as change NDMP port in the server configurations. Port 9000 worked just fine.

oh yeah ..one more thing. If you also want to backup a consistent copy of your data utilizing snapsure, just schedule a daily snapsure snapshot , connect to that snapshot from Backup exec server after snapshot has been created and back it up to tape/disk. I have one schedule that's all its there for ..it get refreshed everyday simply for backup purposes.

If I could figure out the answer to this very question I would pretty much be done dealing with my backup issues. I've got a few filesystems that I need to make snapshots of and back up the snapshots, but I can't figure out how to get BE12 (or my NetBackup trial installation) to see the snapshots.

Any ideas?

In netbackup there is an option (or switch) for netbackup to use snapshots. Once this is set, netbackup should create a snapshot to use for backup and then delete it once finished.

that's for NDMP backup ..but what about regular file system backup ?

I assume you are talking LAN based backup here (since with NDMP you and NetBackup you could just use integrated checkpoints)

For LAN based backup you are probably facing a couple of obstacles
- access to the checkpoints is thru a invisible .ckpt directory so you cant browse it from the backup servers GUI
- by default the naming convention for checkpoints is year_date_xxx so the directory path to the checkpoints changes with every one

I can see two possible solutions

1) write your own little shell script that runs on the Celerra (crontab) that
creates a checkpoint
umounts it and mounts it under a new mountpoint like /backup_fs1
share it with a new share name like backup_fs1$
then you can tell your backup software to just map \\celerra\backup_fs1 and backup that
You could then either have a second skript umounting the ckpt, deleting the ckpt, and deleteing the share
or even simpler at the start of the skript just refresh your chkpt (from yesterday)

2) control this from the backup application (probably simpler)
most backup application will allow you to configure a pre- and a post-process skript
in the pre skript ssh to the Celerra (plink) to create a ckpt
then either use the custom mountpoint and share I mentioned in 1)
or (if not using BE) umount the cvfs and mount it again with the option cvfsname=backup_fs1
this way your new ckpt will be accessible in .ckpt\backup_fs and you can just tell your backup app to backup this path
in the post skript remove the ckpt (unless you want to keep it till the next backup)

I havent tested this but it should work with not a lot of effort to implement

hold on - I think there is an even easier solution

lets assume you just want to run a LAN-based backup daily but you want that to run from a consistent checkpoint instead of the changing production file system

just create a new checkpoint schedule for that file system through Celerra Manager
configure that schedule to run dailty at a time before the backup starts
tell the schedule to keep 1 checkpoint
in the checkpoint names field enter for example backup_fs1
after the schedule has run for the first time create a CIFS share for /backup_fs1 for example with the name backup_fs1$

then just tell your backup software to backup \\celerra\backup_fs1$

Of course make sure that your backup is finished before the checkpoint gets refreshed

actually for the record this was the important bit:


"in the checkpoint names field enter for example backup_fs1"