MSDP NFS Support

[MilesVScott]

I've been planning a new NBU environment, and have been looking at MSDP's as a highly likely option for backup storage. While going through the requirements and considerations, I saw the line stating NFS/CIFs is not supported for the MSDP option...

For the last week I have been searching to find out why. While it makes sense that 1GB Ethernet running NFS traffic for DeDup is a bad idea, I can't locate any specific reasons why running on a 10GB network, NFS attached storage would be bad. 

If anyone has anything detailing why NFS isn't a supported option, or if you can point me to any sources of knowledge I have missed that would be great.

[sri_vani]

I dnt find any exclusive docs/articles related to Why NFS not supported on MSDP..

I see the below notes in dedup guide

NetBackup deduplication does not support file based storage protocols, such as
CIFS or NFS, for deduplication storage.

 NFS is not supported for use with MSDP. ISCSI is supported in NetBackup versions 7.5 and above but with  with the restrictions outlined in the NetBackup Deduplication Guide.

Enough bandwidth on the storage network to satisfy your throughput objectives. Symantec
supports iSCSI on storage networks with at least 10-Gigabit Ethernet network bandwidth.
Symantec recommends Fibre Channel storage networks with at least 4-Gigabit network
bandwidth.

[Nicolai]

I could not find any cause as why NFS isn't supported so I guess it because of reliability reasons (sloppy NFS installation at customer site). Persoanlly I would always use either DAS or SAN storage.

Fellow Connect members CRZ or MHP999 may be able to shed some light since they both are Symantec employees. 

[CRZ · Accepted solution]

Sorry, I can only quote the documentation you've already seen (and which sri has already quoted), and it doesn't say why it's not supported...only that it's not supported.

NetBackup Media Server Deduplication Pool does not support network attached storage (that is, file based storage protocols), such as CIFS or NFS, for deduplication storage. NetBackup Media Server Deduplication Pool does not support the Z file system (ZFS).

About MSDP storage and connectivity requirements
 http://symantec.com/docs/HOWTO88958

The above TechNote comes from pages 46-48 of...

Symantec NetBackup 7.6 Deduplication Guide
 http://symantec.com/docs/DOC6466

Reading between the lines of our documentation, I suspect it's not a network concern but one of resources - the I/O involved in making MSDP work results in a different kind of overhead than the I/O used by the various NFS daemons and processes to make *NFS* work and we're not comfortable saying that they would be able to coexist, so we don't.

DISCLAIMER: I really have no idea what I'm talking about here.  :)  If this is really important to you, I would bring it up to your sales engineer and ask them to take it up the chain to get you a better (real) answer.

[Nicolai]

Thanks Chris !

[MilesVScott]

Thanks for the answers. Similar to what I was thinking. I just wanted to see if anyone had seen anything more directed. Thanks again.