This post is more than 5 years old
122 Posts
0
4343
Networker NDMP restore from Celerra to Isilon fails
I am trying to restore data that was made a week or so ago using Networker 7.6.5 from an EMC Celerra NAS onto an Isilon NAS. The Isilon OS is OneFS 7.1.1.2. Every attempt to run the job fails. I am running the jobs from the server with the tape drive attached using the Windows Networker User GUI. v7.6.5.2. The failure message gets truncated, but goes something like this --
NDMP Service Error: Fatal error reading archive. Unrecognized archive format, last header position .....
I can restore OK back to the Celerra, just not to the Isilon. Since we are going to decommission the Celerra and stick with the Isilon, I need a reliable way to get data off the existing tapes and back online to the Isilon.
Any suggestions?
ble1
14.3K Posts
0
November 16th, 2015 03:00
Did someone tell you that you could restore one filer onto another using NDMP when these two are of different kinds? As you may guess, the answer is normally you can't and I suspect same is here as ndmpd format from one filer in this case is not what ndmpd on another one understands.
david_knapp
122 Posts
1
November 16th, 2015 06:00
No one said I could do it. This was a trial. However, because we are going to retire/replace all the old Celerra storage and replace them with Isilon units, I am pretty sure we are going to need to be able to get the data from backups onto the new storage sooner or later. Is there no way to do this with Networker?
david_knapp
122 Posts
0
November 16th, 2015 12:00
I opened a ticket with Isilon support. You were correct. The NDMP protocol is not designed to support cross-platform file recovery. That seems like a throwback to the ancient times in data processing but that's life. The only other suggestion was to run a virtual version of the Celerra and use that as a restore target if necessary. Once the data is restored to the virtual version, it could be copied over to the Isilon. That would certainly free up some space in my data center as the storage density of the Isilon is much greater than the NS40 we are trying to decommission. As always, thanks for your help.
ble1
14.3K Posts
0
November 16th, 2015 15:00
What you can do is export those shares as NFS/CIFS and have them backed up that way. Restoring it back using NFS and CIFS to new shares should work just fine.
david_knapp
122 Posts
0
November 18th, 2015 06:00
It sounds as if there is nothing I can do about the tapes from several years ago. We have a regulatory requirement to keep some data for 25 years. If I need to get to that and don't have some sort of Celerra VM or hardware running there won't be a way to do a recover.
ble1
14.3K Posts
0
November 18th, 2015 09:00
You should never ever do long-term backup via NDMP... just mount export/dump via NFS and do backup that way.
david_knapp
122 Posts
0
November 18th, 2015 11:00
That is news to me. It was set up this way by someone else and I just took over. I don't see how to set the client to back up a share or export though. I assume this would not be run from a regular server, but from the management console as a regular job. The Windows clients we back up show only local drives, not mapped drives. Do I just put in a UNC path?
ble1
14.3K Posts
0
November 20th, 2015 05:00
Well, if you want to have long-term backup and not develop Stockholm syndrome towards some solution/vendor, you wish to keep data in long-term in as much as possible independent format. NDMP is not such format as you might have seen already. Doing such backup over NFS/CIFS is simple as all you need is export share to some host and do backup of that share from that host. And by exporting data that you really (and only) need to keep for long-term, you also decrease storage amount used for such backups.
david_knapp
122 Posts
0
November 23rd, 2015 13:00
I think I am starting to see why they used NDMP. I am trying to do as you suggest, make a backup using the UNC path. I have tried making a backup from a local host with the NAS on a mapped drive. In Networker User the folders show up just fine and I can check the folders I want backed up. However, all backups fail with very unhelpful messages. Example - : Failed with error(s). That is what the logs show as well, so they are not much help. On the GUI it just says -
94693 winworkr - the backup of save set "\\my_nas_server\my_path" failed. The deamon says it is unable to log an audit message.
When I try it from the management console, I get similar results both with a user name provided and without a user name. UNC names don't seem to be that easy to set up. Do I need a backup command or options on the client? Just putting the UNC path in the save set window does not work. I always get "no such file or directory".
ble1
14.3K Posts
1
November 24th, 2015 01:00
Might be not mounted when using that user? You can certainly see that by using savepnpc and dumping environment status in pre command for example. Anyway, you must use save -L -c in backup command.
You can also check How to troubleshoot CIFS share backup failures?
david_knapp
122 Posts
0
November 24th, 2015 07:00
Got it going, thank you very much. I started the local Networker service as a user with rights to get at the desired path. A trial run locally in a command window with -v showed I also needed to turn off VSS (-o vss:*=off in Save Operations). In the management gui I put the path as the save set, put "save -L -c clientname" in the save field in the Apps&Modules tab. The path does not need to be mounted, just accessible by the owner of the Networker service on the clientname server. No user name/password in the Remote User field necessary. This will allow us to move away from NDMP connections.