I agree with Wanda. Our strategy for our filers (BlueARC, Isilon) is to
backup at the file-level exclusively, using NFS. Modern TSM servers support
no-query restores well enough that we can get a restore of the latest data
very quickly (make sure you have plenty of CPU and memory, along with very
fast database disks). To perform the backups efficiently, you might want to
think about splitting your data up into separate nodes or filespaces,
backed up with independent schedules, so that you're not bottlenecked on a
single component.

As far as I can tell, NDMP was written by storage vendors to make one buy
more expensive storage, and more of it than one needs.

On Thu, Feb 13, 2014 at 09:03:15PM +0000, Prather, Wanda wrote:
> You don't have to use tape.
> You can do NDMP backups via TCP/IP to your regular TSM storage pool hierarchy.
> But AFAIK you still have to do it at the volume/share level that the NAS 
> device understands, I don't think you can do it at the root.
>
> Using "virtualmountpoint" is for backing up incrementally at the *file* level 
> via NFS or CIFS mounts, not NDMP, so I'm not sure which way you are headed.
>
> Question is, what are you doing this for?
> NDMP is a stupid, simplistic protocol.  You won't like what you have to do to 
> achieve an individual file restore.  If you are trying to get DR capability 
> to rebuild your NDMP shares in case of an emergency, it makes sense.  If you 
> are just trying to provide backup coverage to restore people's files like you 
> would from a file server, it may not.
>
> If you want to do NDMP via TCP/IP instead of direct to tape, reply with your 
> TSM server platform and server level, and I'll send you back the page 
> reference in the manual you need...
>
> W
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ADSM: Dist Stor Manager [mailto:ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU] On Behalf 
> Of Dury, John C.
> Sent: Thursday, February 13, 2014 2:11 PM
> To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
> Subject: [ADSM-L] file system backups of a Dell NDMP Equallogic device
>
> We have two Dell NDMP storage devices and a TSM server at both sites. We'd 
> like to be able to root file level (image backups don't help much) backups 
> (and restores if necessary) of the entire  NDMP device to the local TSM 
> server. Can someone point me in the right direction or tell me how they did 
> it? NAS/NDMP is pretty new to me and from what I have read so far, the 
> documentation talks about backing up directly to tape, which we don't have 
> any more.  All of our storage is online.
>
> What I was originally planning on doing, was creating all of the NFS shares 
> on one linux server, and backing them up as /virtualmountpoints. I'd like to 
> setup just one which points to the root of all the NFS systems on the NAS 
> device but I see no way to do that either.
> Any help is appreciated.

--
-- Skylar Thompson (skylar2 AT u.washington DOT edu)
-- Genome Sciences Department, System Administrator
-- Foege Building S046, (206)-685-7354
-- University of Washington School of Medicine