best practices to backup NetApp?

[wuestenfuchs]

I've implemented and used TSM/SP for us and customers for many years already.
But I never so far had to back up a NetApp. Now I have to, for a customer.
I have browsed the manuals, looked for technotes, searched this forum a bit ...
There is a lot of information but what I am missing is what are the best practices.

So what I know so far is that the customer will want to back up their new NetApp into a SP directory container pool, e.g. with dedup and compression, together with all other stuff that goes there from other sources.
They will also want single file restore for the NetApp backups.

What would be the best approach? Is it better to perform the backup from the SP server or from a dedicated client? Both seems to be possible. But what is suggested to use?

I would be glad to get more insight, pointers to tutorials or "lessons learned" reports, your experience about the do's and dont's before trying it all out myself.
Thanks!

 

[moon-buddy]

I've implemented and used TSM/SP for us and customers for many years already.
But I never so far had to back up a NetApp. Now I have to, for a customer.
I have browsed the manuals, looked for technotes, searched this forum a bit ...
There is a lot of information but what I am missing is what are the best practices.

So what I know so far is that the customer will want to back up their new NetApp into a SP directory container pool, e.g. with dedup and compression, together with all other stuff that goes there from other sources.
They will also want single file restore for the NetApp backups.

What would be the best approach? Is it better to perform the backup from the SP server or from a dedicated client? Both seems to be possible. But what is suggested to use?

I would be glad to get more insight, pointers to tutorials or "lessons learned" reports, your experience about the do's and dont's before trying it all out myself.
Thanks!

We are a Netapp shop and if your customer wants to backup Netapp data the way you have described it, I don't think they understand the whole concept and/or setup of Netapp. Netapp is traditionally considered a NAS device - and this defines a lot of things around backup.

First of all, Netapp setups are designed to be build in pairs and each pair member replicates each other by default. There is also the concept of snapshots and snapmirrors wherein data can be held on defined hours or days for recovery purposes. Typical file-shared directories set on Netapp have versioning kept for as many as 30 days. With this, we don't backup shared directories anymore.

Second, typical Netapp footprints are huge. If your customer has a very small foot print, and they use this as a plain NAS, then you have only one option of backing it up - by using NDMP. UGLY! Also, be aware that dedup and compression goes away when you backup with NDMP. There is another caveat, file level restore cannot be done with NDMP unless the whole backup is retrieved first.

If the footprint is less than 500 GB, you can backup the Netapp file shares using a server as a bridge. Again, dedup and compression goes away on the backup.

Otherwise, revisit the whole "ask" and talk it out with your customer. In any regard, you have the options as listed above.

 

[marclant]

There is another caveat, file level restore cannot be done with NDMP unless the whole backup is retrieved first.

Or if a TOC is created at backup time: https://www.ibm.com/support/knowled...admin/c_ndmp_restore_file_level_planning.html

 

[RecoveryOne]

I debated posting this below because this is perhaps the worst of everything when it comes to the topic at hand. But here it is:

So several years ago we had a few NetApps, but weren't using NDMP. The site was a CommVault shop and I don't think they had the NDMP license. So the NA's were backed up via the CIFS mount points. Not ideal, but it did work. The task of restoring the whole filer via the CIFS scared me. We had to restore a partition of about 9TB from CommVault once, took forever. But had the data. In the end that's what counts sometimes, right?

What I'm trying to say is, if you must back up the filer via shares for whatever reason and they are treating it as a NAS expect poor performance. You could use a product like MAGS to help with backup times, but a restore will be still be painful.

marclant and moon-buddy have great info above, so don't discount what they are saying. Just take heed of my own experiences!

 

[wuestenfuchs]

With "a NetApp" I actually indeed meant "a pair of NetApps running as a cluster".
And it will not be small - I estimate it will end up (when everything migrated to it) around 30 to 50 TB.
Yes, we know we can keep a short term history on it for file recovery and this will probably be done.
But nevertheless, a complete off-device backup is desired.
NDMP backup apparently can be full and then incremental.

And according to this can go into a directory container pool - so dedup+compression should be possible?
https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/en/SSEQVQ_8.1.9/srv.admin/c_ndmp_storage_pool_types.html
Has anyone already done this?

 

[Aldini]

Ugh I am in the same boat trying to figure out how to back up 50 TB of Netapps (2 node cluster); we are a TSM shop using Directory container pool - we have no tape - I read the same article that says dedup and compression on 8.1.9 - 8.1.3 - is anyone using NDMP to a Directory container pool? Am I forced to resurrect an unsed decommed tape library for this (yikes) I have read Dave Daun from IBM and have "some" ideas" but looking for advice; when we tested Netapp to another disk based product it used a great deal of space. I am attaching Daun but woudl love to hear how someone implemented Netapp NDMP; TOC backup to a Directory container at 8.1.9