> As mentioned in some other replies there are options for doing this.
> 
> 1) NFS backup         (blows chunks)
> 2) CIFS backups               (blows chunks)

> I'm sure you can tell that I am not a proponent of options 1 and 2.
And
> they aren't even options if you do multi-protocol access.  So just
> forget those unless you're really into pain.

I've used them in the past.  I don't prefer them (mainly for overhead of
remembering that the netapp isn't the client, the mounting server is),
but I don't know why it's not an option for multi-protocol.

All the NFS metadata is stored (and recovered) as a CIFS hidden
attribute, so that should be usable for some folks.  


"...unless you're really into pain."  Part of my big concern in this
scenario is data consistency, there's no guarantee.  There isn't on most
unix and windows systems either but those don't generally see the data
change rate that a filer does.  Snapshots are crucial for data integrity
and you can't get them over CIFS/NFS.  You could of course backup an
existing snapshot but now you're into more pain.

So, I mis-represented it.  It's an option but ....

~JK