Joni,
We are also wrestling with the pros/cons of using NDMP. As you
mentioned, the biggest "con" in my opinion is the inability to make
copies for offsite storage. It really puts a big hole in a DR plan.
We are trying to get around this by putting a large NetApp R200,
TSM server and library at a remote site, connected to our main site with
dark fibre. We are just in the initial stages (we just established
connectivity between the filer and the tape drives yesterday), so I'm
not sure how it is going to go.
The TSM portion is just a piece of the DR puzzle. We have a
large R200 filer at a remote site which we snapmirror our many NetApp
filers to already for DR. The next step we are taking is the
installation of TSM and a library at that remote site and attempting to
NDMP the data from the R200 to TSM. If it all works, it meets the DR
requirement by being remote enough so we will not need to worry about
duplicate copies.
Another "con" is just the nature of NDMP, with the "fulls and
incrementals" methodology of backups. It is a step backwards from the
normal TSM backups and we expect it will cause us to have to store more
data on tape.
Another thing I'm currently trying to get figured out is
management classes. It looks like you have to use clientoption sets on
the server for NDMP, but can we still have different files bound to
different retentions? How does that work with the TOC that you create
and their retention?
Like I said, just this week we started poking around with it in
earnest, so hopefully I will get it all figured out.
Our environment (for the remote NDMP backups).
TSM server - Sun V240 w/ 2CPUs & 4GB RAM, 2 2GB FibreChannel cards.
TSM software - TSM 5.2.4.0
Tape library - IBM 3584 w/ 4 LTO2 FC drives.
Filers - Various NetApp filers snapmirroring to a monster R200 at the
remote site and NDMPed from there to the remote TSM server and library.
Ben
-----Original Message-----
From: ADSM: Dist Stor Manager [mailto:ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU] On Behalf Of
Joni Moyer
Sent: Wednesday, February 09, 2005 2:16 PM
To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
Subject: NDMP backups
Hello All!
I am very conflicted about how to use NDMP backups for my environment.
Here is our config:
TSM AIX 5.2.2.5 server
EMC NS704G with 3 datamovers and 1 failover Windows 2003 TSM Client at
5.3.0
I was wondering if we will have to mount the filesystems on a Windows
server and just back the filesystems up as a regular server through TSM
instead of using NDMP backups?
We had wanted to use NDMP backups for offsite/DR recovery and use the 7
days of the EMC snaps for onsite recovery, but we realized that if a
customer wants an individual file restored back more than 7 days ago we
would have to revert to the NDMP backups, which we plan to send offsite
for DR purposes. Now, this isn't within a copy pool, but within a
sequential tape pool that I would just have to query the tapes - update
them to offsite - then send them to our vaulting service center.
My next issue is due to the fact that you cannot make a copy of the NDMP
backup we would be forced to bring that tape back onsite for the restore
of the file. We are then faced with the situation of knowing which tape
is needed to be requested from our vaulting service to restore the file
to our gateway filesystem? We were using the toc and the Windows client
gui to due individual file level restore and cannot see how we would
view what tape is required?
Thank you very much for any help/guidance you have with this issue! The
idea of NDMP backups is very new and confusing and I am not quite sure
that this is what our environment wants/needs.
Thanks again!
********************************
Joni Moyer
Highmark
Storage Systems
Work:(717)302-6603
Fax:(717)302-5974
joni.moyer AT highmark DOT com
********************************
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