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EMC Isilon NDMP Backup with multiple streams

Sadfad
Level 3

Hello,

I have a question about NDMP backup from ISILON with NetBackup.
We use direct attached NDMP. The Isilon has 8 tape drives available. We are looking forward to use all 8 tape drives at the same time to improve speed.
Our problem is that the Isilon has only one filesystem with 150TB. So if we backup this filesystem the policy opens just one stream. Is there any possibility to backup every subfolder under the filesystem with one stream or something like that? 

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

Accepted Solutions

We found a solution which works fine for us.

We did it like that:

SET FILES=[a-fA-F]*/*
/ifs/data/
SET FILES=[g-lG-L]*/*
/ifs/data/...

That backs up all subdirectories under /ifs/data/ from a-f and A-F in one stream and so on.

View solution in original post

9 REPLIES 9

watsons
Level 6

This is possible, at least from the last time I read from a NBU guide for Isilon filers.

In your NDMP policy backup selection, setup like this:

NEW_STREAM
/ifs/data/project1
NEW_STREAM
/ifs/data/project2

Proivded you already have the subfolders created...

Thank you for your reply. I know it is possible this way but sadly our configuration is /ifs/data/ and there are all the subfolders/shares. There are an amount of 100 subfolders. So with this amount ob subfolders we cannot be sure and have no mechanims to proof that we backup every directory and every new one. And we would have like 100 streams.

quebek
Moderator
Moderator
   VIP    Certified

Hi

Make use of wildcards characters, here is quotation from NDMP admin guide:

"Support for wildcards in NDMP backup policy selections: Wildcard characters in regular expressions or directives are valid for streaming and non-streaming NDMP backups. (...)

Note: Wildcard characters are not supported in releases of NetBackup before version
7.6. To use wildcard characters in NDMP policy backup selections, both your master
server and the media servers on which NetBackup for NDMP is installed must run
NetBackup 7.6 or later."

ie

NEW_STREAM

/ifs/a*

/ifs/A*

/ifs/b*

/ifs/B*

NEW_STREAM

/ifs/c*

/ifs/C*

/ifs/d*

/ifs/D*

NEW_STREAM

....

and so on...

NEW_STREAM

/ifs/

I tried this, but it is not working.

I got status code 99 with the following error message:

Error ndmpagent readAllFSFromPath: No volumes found matching "/ifs/t*"

Marianne
Moderator
Moderator
Partner    VIP    Accredited Certified
No volumes found

The error seems to indicate that only volumes can be specified as Backup Selection. Not sub-folders.

Extract from NBU8 NDMP guide: 

Note: Wildcard characters are not supported in releases of NetBackup before
version 7.6. To use wildcard characters in NDMP policy backup selections, both
your master server and the media servers on which NetBackup for NDMP is installed
must run NetBackup 7.6 or later.

Note: Directory-level expansion is not supported for some NDMP servers. Some
NDMP filer vendors do not have the APIs that NetBackup uses to support wildcard
characters lower than the volume level.

Currently, only NetApp filers support wildcard characters for backup selections
lower than the volume level

quebek
Moderator
Moderator
   VIP    Certified

Hey

I provided fake filesystem names as I have not clue what is there behind rootfs.... This was only to show you a way how to accomplish that...

Genericus
Moderator
Moderator
   VIP   

You need to speak with your EMC vendor, you may need to upgrade OneFS, I know I cannot use wildcards either.

I end up with multiple selections, and scripts I run every Friday to verify I am not missing any. It is a pain.

I am hoping to be able to use wildcards in the future.

In this case - you need to plan your isilon file structure so you have a few major selections under ifs/data/

( 100 is TOO MANY! )

Also - you may want to check with EMC, since if you ever add any isilons or replication, you will want to have different paths, and it will be harder to change later.

like /ifs/LOCATION/data/PROD,QA,DEV etc

 You may find that while you cannot use wild cards, you CAN use exclusions, so you can exclude a few large file systems and run those separately...

 

NetBackup 9.1.0.1 on Solaris 11, writing to Data Domain 9800 7.7.4.0
duplicating via SLP to LTO5 & LTO8 in SL8500 via ACSLS

We found a solution which works fine for us.

We did it like that:

SET FILES=[a-fA-F]*/*
/ifs/data/
SET FILES=[g-lG-L]*/*
/ifs/data/...

That backs up all subdirectories under /ifs/data/ from a-f and A-F in one stream and so on.

Isilon NDMP keeps only one timestamp per NDMP level and per base path, /ifs/data in your case.

If you are runnig multiple streams with different FILES selections for the same directory at different times, effective timestamps will be off by the interval of stream start times, with bad consequences for detecting which files go into an incremental backup.

fwiw -- watch out!