NDMP backup selection list

So it's day one with your new Isilon cluster and you go to backup the unit using NDMP as you would a NetApp. Your hoping to select the device and start browsing through subdirectories and select any file or folder you wish, as you would with a NetApp...well...no so fast. For some reason Backup Exec only lets you select the root volume and nothing else. An Isilon cluster by design will only have a single root volume that continues to grow as you add more nodes, so selecting the root volume of 400TB to backup when you're only looking for a subfolder with 20GB's is unacceptable.

I cannot speak for the nightmare Symantec calls Backup Exec 2012, but in 2010 R3 I finally figured out how to back up individual folders using NDMP on an EMC Isilon unit. Here's a quick tutorial for all of those users out there that are just as frustrated as I was. I'll explain how I'm currently backup individual directories and files along with using wildcard searches and exclusions. This may or may not work in your environment but I figured I'd post this out here since there isn't much documentation found on the topic.

Backup up individual folders/files via NDMP on an Isilon Cluster

My Isilon looks like so, I've got a root /ifs/ volume with 4 main sub directory shares for each department in my organization. I want to backup 2 folders underneath the Processing directory called "Folder A" and "Folder B".

/ifs/

|____>/Engineering/

|____>/HR/

|____>/Processing/

|____>/Sales/

When I go to browse the NDMP selection list in Backup Exec I see the following

What you must do is right click the root volume and select "Include/Exclude Files..."

When the Include/Exclude Selections windows appears make sure the following items are checked.

Resource Type = NDMP

NDMP Type = Other

Type = Include

Volume = this will be filled out automatically to your root volume

Select an NDMP provider = Isilon

When the Isilon submenu appears under Variable Name select the Value under FILES and put in the following syntax based on your directory path. REMEMBER Isilon is Linux based, so if you have folders or files with spaces in the name you must put a "\" before every space in the name. Each new subdirectory you wish to backup needs to be separated with a space like I have below.

/Processing/Folder\ A /Processing/Folder\ B 

If you want to backup an individual file you would simply use the same syntax above however this time adding the file name to the end of the path. e.g /Processing/Folder\ A/log.txt

If you only want to backup certain file types in a particular folder then put the full folder path under Path and in the files field insert *.bmp *.txt

If you want to exclude files/folders from your backups it must be done in 2 steps.

1) First select your include directory(s) as we have done above and hit apply. You've now got a FILESYSTEM selection list backing up a directory or multiple directories.

2) Browse back into the NDMP selection and right click on root volume and choose "Include/Exclude Files..." only this time select Exclude on the right under Type. In the Value field under Exclude put any file/folder/extension you wish to exclude, remembering to put in "\" for any spaces in the name, and also separate each exclusion with a space.e.g *testdirecotry *.txt *.bmp /Procesing/Folder\ A/test.log

In the above example I've said to exclude any directory called "testdirectory, along with any .txt and .bmp files as well as exclude a test.log file found in /Processing/Folder\ A/.

What you should now see in the selection list is a FILESYSTEM selection and an EXCLUDE selection.

I hope this helps.