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Hi,
Does anyone have any knowledge around issues with backing up an NDMP filer (e.g. say NetApp), with Networker (7.6.2)?
My main questions revolve around:
- When doing a full DR restore of whole volume(s), do you require the exact same filer?
- My understanding is yes, if you backup direct from filer to tape.
- But what if the data goes via a storage node?
- Can you do incremental backups? Does this consume / integrate snapshotting on the filler, or are they handled seperately?
- When doing a full backup, can you do granualar restores (e.g. a single file)? Or do you need to restore the whole volume somewhere?
Many thanks
- No, you do not require exactly the same filer, but compatible one (which is to say NetApp). Even if tape was directly attached, you could attach it now to new filer and change restore storage node in client resource of originating one.
- incremental backup are done through usage of differential backups actually - thus you backup changes. You never backup volume. NetApp, in this case, will create snapshot of the volume you backup thus you do not backup snapshots which already exist on the system. You can easily see that with snap list command or from GUI when checking snapshots on the volume.
- You can do granular restores when DAR/DDAR is enabled.
Yes, that's true. NAS did a boom, but DAS is knocking on the door again and it makes no sense to set up a backup system that would create Stockholm syndrome towards any vendor. I think when it comes to long-term backup, NFS is more secure apporach (especially since such backups are not performed on daily basis thus it does not complicate overall backup design and setup and at the same time gives you better and more secure approach in protection of your data).
ble1
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Posted January 10th, 2012 11:00
I never said equivalent. But I assume you want something like NetApp to some other vendor or whatever combination. The problem there is that different vendors have different structure of volumes and since you are doing volume backup which is mostly based on hardcoded paths, there is no much you can do there. When it comes to backup, that's not an issue. When it comes to archiving or long-term-backup then it is. I do have requirement on one such share which contains db dumps with financial data and I use NFS backup for that. This gives me much better flexibility as I can restore it to any UNIX/Linux box (not to mention index scan management and all other features you loose with NDMP). That's not to say NDMP is bad - it's just not developed much and it also depends on vendor implementation and fs structure - so even NDMP can't make magic there.