There are many cases when one would want to back up NFS file
spaces. I can immediately think of two that we have encountered:

1) In order to back up unsupported filesystems, such as a
   Veritas File System under Solaris 2.6; until the VXFS
   support is added in May, we can create a loopback NFS
   mount on the Solaris servers and back the filesystems
   (with no additional network latency).

2) In order to get files backed up by logical mountpoints
   instead of physical mountpoints using loopback NFS. Part
   of our load balancing strategy among our file servers
   includes moving data across different mount points on
   the same server, and to different servers all together.
   The logical file name does not change, nor does the
   data, yet doing backups via the physical file name will
   introduce a full backup. When you're moving 50GB of
   data per day, you don't want to see ADSM attempting to
   backup all of that data when it has a perfectly good
   copy of it already.

I'm sure other customers can think of other reasons to back up
NFS filesystems.

 -- Tom

"It's a dog eat dog world,                Thomas A. La Porte
 and I'm wearing milkbone underwear."     DreamWorks SKG
              - Norm Peterson             <tlaporte AT anim.dreamworks DOT com>

On Thu, 16 Apr 1998, Simon Watson wrote:

>Russell,
>
>My understanding is that NFS filesystems won't be backed up by default.
> There is however a way to back them up if I recall being told by an
>IBM ADSM guru.  There is a switch or something that needs setting.
>Sorry I can't help more than that.
>
>Anyway, why would you want to?  Back them up from the system that they
>are local to otherwise you are hampered by slow NFS performance, you
>hit the network twice and it's definitely not as reliable.  Maybe the
>data is already being backed up from the NFS Server anyway!
>
>Simon
>(Very new to ADSM)
>----------
>| From: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU; russell_bears AT HARVARD DOT EDU
>| To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
>| Subject: NFS filesystems not getting backed up
>| Date: Thursday, 16 April, 1998 4:17AM
>|
>| Hello,
>|
>| I have a user who is complaining that his NFS mounted
>| filesystems are not getting backed up. Does anyone know
>| why? I cannot find anything in the manuals. He tried listing
>| the filesystems in an include statement, but he said that
>| doesn't work. Any help would be appreciated.
>| Thanks,
>| Russ
>|
>|
>| The client is a DEC Alpha running Digitalunix 4.0, our server
>| is MVS 5.2 ESA running ADSM V2R1.
>|
>