How can I use NetBackup to pull data using FTP?

[jcromes]

Any help here is appreciated, I'm new to NetBackup...

We have a few servers that are provided by vendors and not wholly controlled by us.  We have NetBackup 6.5.4 and would like to utilize our disk-based backup and lifecycle policies to pull SOME data from these servers.  However, the vendor has asked if it's possible that we pull the files using FTP (or NFS/CIFS) rather than installing the NetBackup client on the systems.

I think I could write a script to pull the data from these systems to a media server and then backup those paths on the media server with a NetBackup profile - but that's just awful.  Can someone tell me if NetBackup can pull data using any method other than from its own client?

Thank you.

[Marianne · Accepted solution]

NetBackup can backup NFS mounts but cannot pull data via ftp.
Any reason why the cusomer does not want the NBU client? I can understand with older versions of NBU when a multitude of port connections were required, but since 6.x all NBU comms to and from a client use vnetd only.

[zer0sig]

if the files you are grabbing are in a format that NetBackup can already suggest, perhaps using wget in a simple shell script to then drop the files locally where NetBackup needs them could be a solution?

[jcromes]

Well, the vendor is just being over-protective.  If we REALLY pushed them to install the NetBackup client, then they most likely would.  After all, we are their customer.  But, I was trying to accommodate and learn at the same time.

I didn't specify earlier - but my master/media server is Windows 2008.  Will I still be able to pull from NFS?  If so, can you give me a rough idea if there are any extra steps to making NetBackup recognize NFS shares?  Will I need to install the Unix components for Windows or will NetBackup talk NFS natively?  Reading documentation now...