Forum Discussion

MarkLomas's avatar
MarkLomas
Level 2
10 years ago

NDMP & SMTape

Hi there!

I'm working on a solution where a customer will be wanting to backup a Netapp storage appliance to tape, so I'm evaluating the NDMP option with Backup Exec 2014/15.

NDMP is able to deliver both 'dump' backups of data volumes (rather crude) but also as an extention of NDMP the 'SMTape' style of backup allows some more sophisticated choices, including incremental and differential style backups.

Does anyone know if Backup Exec 2014/15 with the NDMP option fully supports SMTape?

For reference we'd be looking at a Netapp FAS2552 with Data OnTape 8.3 in cDOT configuration.

Many thanks!

--

Mark Lomas

Backup and Recovery
Backup Exec
NDMP Option
Windows Server (2003-2008)
  • VJware's avatar
    VJware
    Level 6
    10 years ago

    I believe BE uses only the traditional "dump" method for NetApp, however various backup levels such as level 1, level 2 are available (levels indicate the changes to backed up i.e. incremental).

    Also, found this article which outlines the differences between the backup methods - https://library.netapp.com/ecmdocs/ECMP1368865/html/GUID-705FF1CF-399E-4239-88B4-18DDEA9C1D56.html

  • Colin_Weaver's avatar
    Colin_Weaver
    Moderator
    10 years ago

    Be vary careful to understand what type of data will be stored on the NetApp as in a number of real world cases customers and partners have not understood that it is not just that the data is stored on a NetApp that should be the deciding factor on using the NDMP Option.

     

    Bascially if the NetApp is holding any form of LUN or Database Techology (Exchange etc) then the NDMP Option will not give any form of GRT restore and severly limit your restore capabilities

     

    Please take a look at:

    https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/blogs/lan-free-including-san-backup-configurations-backup-exec

    which tries to explain when the NDMP optipn might not be appropriate

  • Colin_Weaver's avatar
    Colin_Weaver
    Moderator
    10 years ago

    Oh and I think that currently CDOT / Clustering of NetApps still provides problems (ever since NetApp made changes that affected Backup Exec). I am not sure these have been fixed as I believe we were awaiting NetApp making further changes before we could follow up ourselves.

  • MarkLomas's avatar
    MarkLomas
    Level 2
    10 years ago

    Yeah, learning more about this as I note that in particular with LUNs, incremental / differential would be useless as the system would view the LUN as a 'file' which of course would always be different so the entire thing would always get backed up.  Not sure if SMTape would have helped with this, but since it looks like it's not supported in BE anyway that's irrelevant.