NW 7.6.1 NDMP Celerra Backup How To

I have Celerra, but I use at the moment backups with attach drives... but it doesn't really matter.

3way backup means 1 celerra is backed up by another celerra - don't think that is what you are after.  So, back to basics.

You can do either:

a) backup with tape drives attached to Celerra

b) backup of Celerra via LAN

In case of a), you need to zone via fc drives to data mover and the define it in NW.  ndmp is enabled by default on Celerra so you just have to make sure you can communicate with port 10000 (ndmp port).  You can verify that tapes are visible via server_devconfig server_2 -list -probe -scsi -nondisks command from Celerra control station (assuming your data mover is server_2 in this example).

In saveset list you define list of shares you backup (you can get those via server_mount server_2 (make sure to remove .etc and anything else from root file system - this is the main reason why saveset All is not supported with Celerra).  In backup command place nsrndmp_save -T dump.  In remote access you will need to add root or ndmp user along with its password.  In Application Information you can place:

HIST=Y

and then just start backup.  Oh yes, schedule... incr does not exist in world of NDMP so it is either differential or full (in 7.6SP2 incr is supported, but it is translated to differential of course to be compliant with ndmp protocol).  I do not recall if you need to restart data mover when adding drives, but I do recall that few changes required for whole thing to work (like block size and I know there was something else too) did require it so be prepared that data mover will need to be restarted once that you have all steps on paper.  I believe there is admin guide with steps or maybe even dedicated paper for this on PL.

Ah yes, SNAPSURE=Y.  This means that when you do backup of share, Celerra will make snapshot and you will backup snapshot.  For some strange reason, I do not use that as I have found that I hit some volume limit which has been imposed by original volume design by SAN guys.  I also found that without SNAPSURE my backups were faster.  Caveat is that if you backup share which is active at the time of backup (eg. some log destination) this backup of share will be reported as failed.  I see this sometimes during full backup only, but I do 300 share backup and if 1 fails it is easy to restart it later on so I do not worry myself with that.

With b), you do not assign drives to Celerra.  Instead, you push data over LAN to any of existing storage nodes.  Sounds simpler?  Perhaps... I have seen it where this works fast and where this works slower than direct attach tape option, but I didn't dig into the reasons so I can't comment further on this.  Anyway, same as a) except that you skip fc stuff with assigning drives and related Celerra tasks.  Another different thing is backup command which now reads:

nsrndmp_save -T dump -M -P

The rest of NW config is the same.

Firstly thanks for the reply. You've actually clarified a lot for me. I totally forgot that we're able to add certain commands on the backup within the GUI.

I will be sending the packets over the LAN for backup, so will be going with option B

I have it configured within NW already under the GUI with the above listed commands, however I am getting an error.

When configing the client, I tried checking and unchecking the NDMP option and still no go.

I get errors like, Probe job had unrecoverable failures (this is when the NDMP option is NOT checked)

When it is checked, I get an error saying that the NDMP connection is not authorized. Tried with both the ROOT user and the new one I created.

For the client, I'm using the CIFS server IP/FQDN where our files are located.

Please bear with me, this is still quite new to me. I am continually looking over the documentation.

Thanks again for your help.

BTW, nslookup and ping is good from both ends as well.

Strange to see authorized error on Celerra.  Ok, let's verify the client config first:

- name should reflect FQDN of the filer (not control station!)

- remote username and password should reflect user and its password with rights on filer (root for example)

- backup command should be nsrndmp_save -M -P -T dump

- remote access should be root@ (if Windows add administrator and SYSTEM)

- storage node should be FQDN of interface where backup goes

- application information we discussed already before

If those are correct, check connectivity by trying to do (from backup server) telnet towards filer name to port 10000.

There is a actually a very good KnowledgeBase article in Powerlink for the "Failed to Establish Connection Error" and "Connection not Authorized".  It pretty much covers the map on all the possible reasons and the solutions and recommendations.  Please see esg117173.

Hope that helps

Regards,

Rita Mines