User-initiated NDMP backups with custom selection list

[Col_G]

Hi. Wondering if anyone can help

We are running NB6 MP6 on a Windows host. We want to use remote-NDMP to backup some vol-snapshots on our netapp filers.

What im trying to do is automate this process so that Snapmanager for Exchange can automatically kick-off netbackup to do a backup as a post-command.

The issue here is as we want to backup a snapshot, there is no option to have a fixed name as it is derived from the date and time of the snapshot... Snapmanager has the capability to pass variables of the required snapshot names into a post-command, but im not sure how to get the netbackup windows-client to pass these back to the master server.... NDMP polices do not have the option for user-backups (well not in 6 anyway... anyone know if this has been changed in future versions?)

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

Colin G

[Abesama]

When we say a "User (Initiated) Backup" within VERITAS NetBackup world, we mean initiating a backup job from a NetBackup client as opposed to scheduled backup (master server initiates backup) or manual backup (administrator initiates backup from master).

NDMP hosts do not have NetBackup client binaries loaded on them, so there can't be any user initiated backups for NDMP backups.

You said "how to get the netbackup windows-client to pass these back to the master server"

To me it more sounds like a user initiated backup from Windows NetBackup client, not from NDMP.

Then it's not going to be an NDMP backup any more - it's MS-Windows-NT type of backup policy you are going to need, isn't it.

Or, if you want to achieve something like "NetBackup client process on Windows host (name_A) tells NetBackup master server (name_B) to kick of an NDMP backup for the snapshot sitting on NDMP host (name_C)" then that's ... not really possible.

Even without considering the difference of the policy/host types, NetBackup (or any other backup softwares) will not allow machine A to tell master (machine B) to backup machine C.
(Well, if machine A is a media server, then it might run a manual backup, but still it's not a user backup type)

Also, I'm not 100% sure about backing up a snapshot will work - will you be able to recover your data by restoring snapshots from tape?

A very rough analogy I can think of is that a snapshot is like an incremental backup - it is not really good enough to recover the real data all by itself, it's only meaningful when the base image is there.

That's why snapshot is smaller in size, while the real volume is huge - because snapshots only keep delta - if there's no original data/volume available, delta by itself is useless - delta of what?...

Does the NDMP vendor recommend you to backup the snapshots?

Abe

[Col_G]

Thanks for the reply.

Well if i cant initiate a backup of a ndmp policy from a different client... could it be done from the master server command-line and pass a file-selection-list into the ndmp policy?

On a Netapp filer, the snapshots are accessable from a special folder called .snapshot
You are correct that the snapshot is a delta-backup, but on storage systems block-sharing is used so looking into a snapshot will show a full copy of the data... blocks changed since that snapshot are written to a different location so the snapshot will get bigger over time as data changes... a ndmp dump will give you a full backup from that point in time as the netapp will re-construct it as it sends.

Thanks
Col G

[Abesama]

To achieve what you described, it'd need to be something like this.

1. snapshot is created
2. master server runs a script
3. script somehow picks up new snapshot path detail
4. the script updates the NetBackup NDMP backup policy's filelist, with the new snapshot path it found
5. the script then initiates a manual run of the backup policy

And, to be exact, I think the "step 4" above will need to be consisted with these three smaller steps

4A. find out what filepaths  (old snapshot paths) are currently listed in the NDMP backup policy
4B. delete those filepaths
4C. add new filepath (the new snapshot path) in the backup policy

In short, what you'd want to do is to update the policy with new snapshot path, and simply run the policy from master server.

/usr/openv/netbackup/bin/admincmd/bppllist is the command you can run, to browse a backup policy (and find out what filepaths are currently configured within the policy) - this is for step 4A.

/usr/openv/netbackup/bin/admincmd/ bpplinclude is the command you can run to add/remove filepaths in a backup policy - for step 4B and 4C.

/usr/openv/netbackup/bin/bpbackup is the command you can run to initiate a manual run of a backup policy  - for step 5.

Please be advised - bpbackup can do two things, firstly it can start a user-initiated backup with filepaths specified and seconly it can initiate a manual policy run.

As we discussed earlier, user-initiated backup is not an option with NDMP backups, so don't bother looking at first form of bpbackup command syntax usage, what you'll want is "bpbackup -i" which is the second form of bpbackup command syntax in the man page.

If you want more commands to play with backup policies, following binaries are also available from /usr/openv/netbackup/bin/admincmd directory.

bpplcatdrinfo
bpplclients
bppldelete
bpplinclude
bpplinfo
bppllist
bpplsched
bpplschedrep
bpplschedwin
bpplvalid

Happy scripting!

Abe