Restoring to a NAS

[Julie_Ulrich]

We are looking into replacing our Windows 2003 file server with a SUN 5320 NAS. One of my concerns is how am I going to get the data from our file server to this NAS. From what I am reading and testing, I can not restore from my Windows 2003 server backups to the NAS, because the NAS is NDMP and does not have a client on it. This also makes me concerned about disaster recovery issues. If I backup this NAS with NDMP, then I can only restore it to another NAS with NDMP. Does anyone know a way around these restore issues, or is this just the way it is? The disaster recovery issues I can get around by adding a NAS to our hotsite, but I am really concerned about how to get over 1Tb of data from my file server to the NAS with the permissions in place.

[Alex_Vasquez]

http://www.google.com/search?q=netbackup+ndmp+admin+guide&start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official

Julie,
Unfortunately I don't think there is a way around this. The manual, linked above, says this:
"Note The destination host must be an NDMP host compatible with the data format of the
source (the source and destination must be of the same NAS vendor type)."

Now, in thinking about this more, you'd probably want to configure the destination client to work via 3way with the NDMP host... But, I don't see a way of just doing a standard restore to any old clien that you want.

[Thomas_Nguyen]

that's right, destination should be NDMP host

[Julie_Ulrich]

I read that same blurb from the manual and was just hoping there was a way around this. I don't want to have to robocopy over a terabyte of data!

[Alex_Vasquez]

What??? You don't like copying terabytes of data??? I don't believe it. =)

I mean, out of the box, you can't just pick an alternate destination client. You could try making the client a media/master server and configuring it for NDMP. That's the only other way I can think of, but even that is a hassle.

[Chia_Tan_Beng]

Well, there's some way to avoid NDMP if backup throughput is not the top concern.
(A) Perform a snapshot on NAS and mount it onto one of your media server and backup as a filesystem/mount point/drive of the media server. A pre- & post-backup script is needed to automate the snapshot and mounting/un-mounting the drive.
(B) Add the mount point or drive to your client's backup policy filelist and backup as network drive.

The major drawback is speed and unnecessary data path consuming resources on media server and/or backup client. However, if that's what you can live with why spend extra $$ on NDMP? We've 1-2TB of backup volume from NAS which were done using the combination of the above.