There was code around for a while, that compiled on Solaris, and could 
understand NetApp's (essentialy) ufsdump format. With this you could read 
an NDMP backup.

Skip foward a few years: Avamar's NDMP accelerator (a Linux box running 
custom code) can take in an NDMP stream  from a Celerra and output a 
stream equivalent to a normal (Avamar) file-level backup client. That 
product can do the same thing with NDMP backups from a NetApp filer.

I'm not advocating the product, or comparing it with Snapdiff, just 
pointing out that at least one other product can do something novel with 
the NDMP stream.

[RC]




wPrather AT ICFI DOT COM 
Sent by: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
02/09/2012 01:15 PM
Please respond to
ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU


To
ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
cc

Subject
Re: [ADSM-L] Isilon backup






If you are going to use a filer, EMC doesn't support backups of its NAS 
devices (that I have run into) except via NDMP dump.
Netapp on the other hand (or IBM-branded N-series, which is still a 
Netapp) supports the -snapdiff api.

I just helped a customer convert about 40 hours worth of NDMP dumps that 
normally took day,s to a single  2-hour -snapdiff TSM backup.  And size is 
down from Terabytes a week to a few Gigabytes a day, because the -snapdiff 
API lets you do a true incremental of the stuff living on the filer. ( See 
the windows backup client manual for the requirements, they are very 
minimal - essentially just requires 7.3 or higher of Ontap, and that's 
been out for a long time.  )

As far as what is good for  VM's (and I'm speaking from a backup/recovery 
perspective, I'm not a VMWare expert): no 2 filer-type devices are the 
same.  As long as you are talking really low utilization, almost anything 
will work.
If you are talking > TB of VM's, remember that for VM's we are back in the 
sad old world of needing to full dump all the .vmdks, usually every 1-2 
weeks.  So it's a matter have having the infrastructure IN the filer 
(drives, cache, paths) and the infrastructure TO the filer (fibre 
attachments or 10GigE between it and the TSM server) to get the throughput 
you need.

"Don't buy cheap, and expect to get fast.
Be most suspicious of the ones who claim it's simple."  -  me

W
-----Original Message-----
From: ADSM: Dist Stor Manager [mailto:ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU] On Behalf Of 
EVILUTION
Sent: Thursday, February 09, 2012 12:27 PM
To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
Subject: [ADSM-L] Isilon backup

This may be a bit off topic but consider this a thread bump....

We have about 25TB worth of unstructured data spread across seven windows 
servers using DFS.  We are using TSM with a monthly image backup as well 
as daily journal based backups to collect the data but I'm concerned about 
restore times.

I have convinced managment that we need a filer but they do not want to 
purchase a file JUST to for file server backup/recovery.   They now want 
to depoly test and dev VM's on the solution and possibly use the platform 
for virtual desktops (VDI) and maybe even a workstation backup solution.

I spoke with Gartner and without hesitation the recommended the ISILON 
over all other solutions.  For those of you that already have ISILON do 
you feel it was the right choice?

We are an EMC storage shop so ISILON would be easy to sell but I feel 
better about purchasing a proven solutions (NETAPP) rather than something 
that EMC may chew up and significantly change.

My primary concern is still with the backup of the data contained on the 
device along with virus protection and access control.  Please provide 
your feedback.

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