NDMP Talking Points

[n9kws]

Hi all --

I have been asked by management to research the pluses and minuses of NDMP backups. So, I figured I would ask you guys since your doing it already. Our environment will consist of TSM on an SUSE Linux box and NDMP connections to either a NetApp NAS head or an EMC Celera NAS head.

In your responses, I am looking for your views on the good, bad and the ugly of NDMP backups, and any suggestions on where the break points are for data volume (IE at 5TB the cost > benefit, but at 50Tb NDMP Rocks, etc).

Since I have to present this to management any relevant citation sources are welcome along with your comments. I look forward to hearing your input,
Andy.

 

[toxy13]

http://www-01.ibm.com/software/tivoli/products/storage-mgr/network-data-mgt-protocol.html

- NDMP can only backup directly to tape
+ you can use LanFree backup method

 

[dynamox]

i use NDMP to backup my EMC Celerra. Celerra currently has a limit to where it can only backup 4 file systems at the same time so if you have a really big NAS unit it's something you have to keep in the back of your mind. Another thing that i hate is that NDMP can not perfrom incremental backups, i have to do either full or differential. WHen you talk about multi terabyte NAS units ..you are going to be eating up a lot of tape/vtl space.

Other then that it works fine, easy to setup in TSM, can be integrated with built-in snapshotting of your NAS unit so that it will backing up a snapshot of the file system which gives you a trully point in time backup of the file system.