cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

NDMP - how does it work? (file level or block level)

gkman
Level 5

Hi

theoretical question here-

I always thought that NDMP was a communication protocol in the basic form of: backup server request files in X path for backup and NDMP host passing these files. in case of a incremental backup request the NDMP host sends only files that have changed since the last backup (file level backup only- meaning the NDMP host itself does the inventory check \ block level comparison etc- but in the end result sends the entire file to the backup server)

I am now told that NDMP does enable in fact real block level backups.

I wasn't able to find anywhere a conclusive answer to how NDMP works (if it's a block-level backup or file-level backup)

can anyone help please? (I would like an official document of some sort of backup or storage vendor if possible)

thanks in advance for the help.

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

Accepted Solutions

Marianne
Moderator
Moderator
Partner    VIP    Accredited Certified
The answer to your questions are actually outside of NetBackup (or any other backup software with NDMP agent).

In short - NDMP does file-level backup.
Most common backup types are tar and dump.

A bit of NDMP background :
http://searchdatabackup.techtarget.com/feature/Common-NAS-backup-challenges#q2

Hope this helps.

View solution in original post

4 REPLIES 4

Marianne
Moderator
Moderator
Partner    VIP    Accredited Certified

Are you referring to Accelerator for NDMP? 
Where file-level backups are done to supported deduplication storage that deduplicates at block-level?

Herewith some info about Accelerator:

https://www.veritas.com/content/support/en_US/doc/18716246-126559472-0/v64001338-126559472

And Accelerator for NDMP:

https://www.veritas.com/content/support/en_US/doc/24427212-127304472-0/v99897177-127304472

Hi Marianne.

 

 

I didn't understand your reply (specifically your question)

I am "going back to basics" on NDMP protocol itself (as I have obviously missed a few lessons.) regardless of the different techniques used by Netbackup to speed up the process. 

I know about how the protocol work communication wise (the host, client and controller)
but I never learned about the types of ndmp backups.

from the second link you have sent I read "Accelerator for NDMP supports only the DUMP format"
what other formats are there? 
are they block level or file level?
up until now I thought that ndmp was just like copying files over the network with smb (from the data passed (file level) point of view)

thanks again for the help

 

Marianne
Moderator
Moderator
Partner    VIP    Accredited Certified
The answer to your questions are actually outside of NetBackup (or any other backup software with NDMP agent).

In short - NDMP does file-level backup.
Most common backup types are tar and dump.

A bit of NDMP background :
http://searchdatabackup.techtarget.com/feature/Common-NAS-backup-challenges#q2

Hope this helps.

thank you very much.

it is exactly what I was looking for.