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backup NAS from mount points instead of using NDMP

FlyMountain
Moderator
Moderator
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Since VERITAS NDMP license is expensive and restore will need to overwrite the original files. We started back up some small to mid-size NAS file systems from mount points instead of from NAS using NDMP. Both mount points and NAS servers are all located on same local LANs, the filesystem size is less then 1TB.

We haven't see any disadvantage so far, but is there anything we will need to be careful by doing so?

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

Accepted Solutions

schmaustech
Level 5

Performance could become a problem down the road.  The idea with NDMP backups is you can offload them to a tape device attached via fiber to your Netapp filer.   In your case you are backing up the mount points via Windows host (if CIFS) or a Unix host (if NFS) and are essentially using that host as a proxy to pull the data from the Netapp filer.  Some things to consider:

-Pulling data through the proxy host could impact performance on that host and the applications it servers out.

-Pulling backup data through the same network interfaces that the NFS/CIFS are shared out on could cause contention for the backup jobs and users trying to access the filers on the files.

-The speed of your backup will potentially be slower over this setup.  As your dataset grows your backup window could start to get longer and longer.

-You lose the ability to backup NDMP snapshots.

-Your proxy host and/or the media server could potentially become contention points as well whereas using NDMP will offload this problem given it is sending data directly to the tape device.

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2 REPLIES 2

schmaustech
Level 5

Performance could become a problem down the road.  The idea with NDMP backups is you can offload them to a tape device attached via fiber to your Netapp filer.   In your case you are backing up the mount points via Windows host (if CIFS) or a Unix host (if NFS) and are essentially using that host as a proxy to pull the data from the Netapp filer.  Some things to consider:

-Pulling data through the proxy host could impact performance on that host and the applications it servers out.

-Pulling backup data through the same network interfaces that the NFS/CIFS are shared out on could cause contention for the backup jobs and users trying to access the filers on the files.

-The speed of your backup will potentially be slower over this setup.  As your dataset grows your backup window could start to get longer and longer.

-You lose the ability to backup NDMP snapshots.

-Your proxy host and/or the media server could potentially become contention points as well whereas using NDMP will offload this problem given it is sending data directly to the tape device.

FlyMountain
Moderator
Moderator
   VIP   

Thanks.

Schmaustech. Some good points. Since we have multiple sites each has small NAS servers, we may be fine with mount points backup in short term. We will consider to switch to NDMP as time being.