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Lookout NDMP backup, with snapshots your birthdays are numbered!

Randy_Serafini
Level 2
Employee
‎08-13-2012 09:18 AM

In case you didn’t know…  NDMP was conceived in 1995 and celebrates its 17th birthday this year.   In dog years that would make it 119 years old.  In tech years, more like 170 years, which is probably a light estimate.  And while NDMP may be getting long in the tooth, data growth is causing NDMP backups to age even faster.  I mean depending on who you listen to, as the global collective, we’re generating gazillions, upon gazillions of bytes of data each year.  Yep, not very technical but somehow easier to grasp than the reported 2.5 quintillion bytes of data we created just yesterday.  In the two days it’s taken me to write this blog along with everything else, as a collective genius, we’ve created 5 quintillion bytes of data.  So let me get to the point here before we create another…

Backup is a crazy business.  Not only do we generate massive amounts of data, but someone came along and suggested it might be a good idea to protect it too.  Oh, and by the way did they mention it needs to be cheap, completed on time within the incredibly shrinking backup window, and whatever you do, don’t slow anything down.  Sound familiar? So let’s talk about NDMP backup.

How many of you wish you could speed up your NDMP backup by simply installing a turbo charger on it, or just take the easy way out and give it a quick shot of steroids?  For those of you that are looking for the easy way out, I think we’ve got a pretty good solution for you.

If you’re using NetApp FAS appliances and their industry leading snapshot technology you’re almost there.  Snapshots are a growing component for modern Data Protection strategies within the Enterprise and come integrated with virtually every storage array vendor’s solution.  The reason for this growing use of snapshots is simple, they are efficient, and very fast which mean minimal impact on production performance.  The only downside is they are not well integrated into the overall backup infrastructure making them harder to manage from a global perspective.

Now, if you’re using to NetBackup to protect your enterprise, you’re there.  You get to leverage the best of both.

Here’s where NetBackup comes in, the world’s most popular  global data protection platform (yes, a plug), now with Replication Director, the uber snapshot and replication manager for the global enterprise.  By leveraging the existing snapshot and replication technology, along with your existing NetBackup Platform infrastructure, you now have a very cost effective, and very, very fast way to efficiently backup your NAS Filers.  Backups of these filers can now happen in minutes, not hours, days, or weeks as is typical with traditional NDMP backups. 

While speed is good.  Recovery is Better.  Simple and Fast.  Using the Storage Lifecycle Policies (SLP) available as a standard feature in the NetBackup Platform, policies can be pre-defined to automatically manage the entire lifecycle of snapshots, including initiating, replicating, movement and backup to any tiered storage, and their expiration, all from a single management console.  The recovery part, well this is where it gets even better, in addition to automating snapshot management and protection, from within NetBackup you can search and restore down to the file level within minutes.  That’s search and restore any version, from any snapshot, from anywhere. 

I’m hoping you’re getting the picture here.  Now, instead of trying to keep track of where all your snapshots and replicated snapshots are located from within a point tool (meaning it’s not integrated into your global backup infrastructure) and hoping you can find the right version quickly, because your CEO is breathing down your neck because she (or he) lost their analyst briefing for the quarterly call last night, NetBackup can help you get the hero points because it’s now possible  to easily find and display every snapshot, every replicated snapshot, of every version of that file, and restore it in minutes from NetBackup’s global management console.

Simple formula for success for NetBackup and NetApp customers:

A few benefits you might see with NetBackup Replication Director:

  • Faster Backups and Faster Recoveries
  • Better Backup and Recovery SLA performance (including RPO and RTO)
  • Get more out of your existing infrastructure – Reduced OPEX and CAPEX
  • Better NAS consolidation and efficiency through better backup
  • Recover time to celebrate your own birthdays…

Maybe it’s time to start sending your NDMP backups on retirement… and modernize.

My 2cents worth.