PowerScale OneFS Web Administration Guide

NDMP backup and restore of SmartLink files

You can perform NDMP backup and restore operations on data that has been archived to the cloud.

Backup and restore capabilities with CloudPools data include:

• Archiving SmartLink files when backing up from a cluster
• Restoring data, including SmartLink files, to the same cluster
• Restoring data, including SmartLink files, to another cluster
• Backing up version information with each SmartLink file, and restoring the Smartlink file after verifying the version compatibility on the target cluster

You specify how files are backed up and restored by setting the NDMP environment variables BACKUP_OPTIONS and RESTORE_OPTIONS. See Administering NDMP in the PowerScale OneFS CLI Administration Guide for details about configuring the backup settings and managing NDMP environment variables.

With NDMP backup, by default, CloudPools supports the backup of SmartLink files that contain cloud metadata such as location of the object. Other details such as version information, account information, local cache state, and unsynchronized cache data that are associated with the SmartLink file are also backed up.

To prevent data loss when recovering SmartLink files with incompatible versions, use the NDMP combo copy backup option. Use this option to back up SmartLink files with full data. Full data includes metadata and user data. Use the NDMP combo copy option by setting the BACKUP_OPTIONS environment variable.

When the combo copy option is used for backup, you can use the combo copy, shallow copy, or deep copy restore options to recover SmartLink files. You can specify these options by setting appropriate values to the RESTORE_OPTIONS environment variable:

• The combo copy restore option restores SmartLink files from the backup stream only if their version is compatible with the OneFS version on the target cluster. If the SmartLink file version is incompatible with the OneFS version on the target cluster, a regular file is restored.
• If the version check operation on the target cluster is successful, the shallow copy restore operation restores the backed-up SmartLink file as a SmartLink file on the target cluster.
• If the version check operation on the target cluster fails, the deep copy restore operation forces the recovery of the SmartLink files as regular files on the target cluster .
• If you do not specify any restore operation, NDMP restores SmartLink files using the combo copy restore operation by default.
• When you specify multiple restore options, the combo copy restore operation has the highest priority. The shallow copy restore operation has the next highest priority. The deep copy restore operation has the lowest priority.

In CloudPools settings, you can set three retention periods that affect backed up SmartLink files and their associated cloud data:

• Full Backup Retention Period for NDMP takes effect when the SmartLink file is backed up as part of a full backup. The default is five years.
• Incremental Backup Retention Period for Incremental NDMP Backup and SyncIQ takes effect when a SmartLink file is backed up as part of an incremental backup. The default is five years.
• Cloud Data Retention Period defines the duration that data in the cloud is kept when its related SmartLink file is deleted. The default is one week.

CloudPools ensures the validity of a backed-up SmartLink file within the cloud data retention period. Set the retention periods appropriately to ensure that when the SmartLink file is restored from tape, it remains valid. CloudPools disallows restoring invalid SmartLink files.

CloudPools ensures that a backed-up SmartLink file is still valid by checking the retention periods that are stored for the file. If the retention time is past the restore time, CloudPools prevents NDMP from restoring the SmartLink file.

CloudPools ensures that the account under which the SmartLink files were originally created is not deleted. If it is deleted, both NDMP backup and restore of SmartLink files fail.