NDMP Incremental Backup with TSM

[arbo]

Hello,

Is there a way to do an incremental backup using NDMP in TSM?

There are all kind of forum posts saying that it's possible, but when I look on the "BACKUP NODE" command syntx (both TSM 5.5 and 6.2) it seems that only full and diff backups are available.

 

[Tiger22]

Via NDMP you can only do full and diff backups. However if you have a NetApp filer you may be able to take advantage of performing an incremental backup of a mounted filesystem (via CIFS or NFS) using the NetApp SnapDiff API support. The snapdiff option when performing an incremental backup is only available in certain 6.x releases.

 

[randyman]

So the diff backups are not like the regular tivoli incr forever philosophy? Should it be set up with 1 full followed by 6 diff backups, or something to that affect?

 

[Tiger22]

So the diff backups are not like the regular tivoli incr forever philosophy? Should it be set up with 1 full followed by 6 diff backups, or something to that affect?

It depends what your requirements are. A diff will backup every changed file since the last full so you will only ever need two backups to restore a full system. On the other hand if you are required to keep a number of versions of a file then you will want to be running more diffs to backup those versions.

I usually monitor the size of diffs for NDMP backups as they eventually grow quite large when compared to the original full - then it is usually time for another full to reduce the size of subsequent diffs. No need however to run a full every week if the size of the diffs remains small.