We use a similar config to Ronny.
We have clustered 940's (so that's 2 NDMP licenses) with an LTO-2 Overland
Data Neo 4100 library attached directly to one of the filers via FC
(that's a 64-slot library license). Clustered filers provide for a
"three-way" backup. The filer that's not connected to the library can
back up to it via NDMP over the network. Like Ronny, I believe this is
the only scenario where you can go directly to a library via TCP/IP. This
method has consistently provided the best performance of everything we've
tried. It's also 100% supported by both Legato and NetApp.
You don't have to have an entire library dedicated to the filers. This is
true for both FC and SCSI libraries. However, you do have to have drives
dedicated to them (This has been our experience, can anyone else
confirm???). In one branch, we have a library's robotics and two drives
connected to the Legato server. The other two drives in the library are
connected directy to the filers (one each). This gets around the cost of
a separate library license (still need the NDMP license(s)). It also
keeps any backup data completely off the network (each filer can go to its
own drive).
The one thing to consider when directly attaching tape drives/libraries to
a filer is FC vs. SCSI. Both work very well and can provide great
performance. However, SCSI has limitations when tape drive/library
configuration changes happen. Let's consider a failed tape drive as an
example. In a FC-attached scenario, you can simply off-line the FC
adapter in the filer, replace the drive, and bring the card back online.
There's no need to reboot the filer. In a SCSI-attached scenario, this is
not true. To replace a failed tape drive you can do it with the filer up,
but it will not see the change until the SCSI bus is reset. There is no
way to offline a SCSI adapter on a filer, so the only reset method is a
reboot or cluster-failover and giveback (which causes a reboot).
A less-expensive, but much slower method, would be to pull the data across
the network using one of your storage nodes. We did this for quite a long
time on a non-critical filer. Backups took forever due to network
limitations (and so did large restores - no GbE), but on this filer, we
didn't care about impact to the network or backup windows running long.
This was done on Legato 6.1.4 running on Solaris over NFS. Depending on
your environment, this could have a large impact on network performance.
It could also tie up your tape drives for long periods of time (due to
network speed limitations) which in turn could impact your other backups.
I'm not sure if this is supported by Legato or NetApp, but can be an
alternative for non-critical systems. I would *not* recommend this for
production backups.
Jeff Mery - MCSE, MCP
National Instruments
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Allow me to extol the virtues of the Net Fairy, and of all the fantastic
dorks that make the nice packets go from here to there. Amen."
TB - Penny Arcade
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ronny Egner <ronny.egner AT SIV DOT DE>
Sent by: Legato NetWorker discussion <NETWORKER AT LISTSERV.TEMPLE DOT EDU>
08/24/2005 07:51 AM
Please respond to
Legato NetWorker discussion <NETWORKER AT LISTSERV.TEMPLE DOT EDU>; Please
respond to
Ronny Egner <ronny.egner AT SIV DOT DE>
To
NETWORKER AT LISTSERV.TEMPLE DOT EDU
cc
Subject
Re: [Networker] Best Method to backup NetApp Filers....
Srinivas Rao wrote:
> Dear Networkers,
> As I am new to NetApp filers and NDMP, I would like to know the best
cost
> effective method to backup NetApp Filer by using Legato Networker.
Please
> also let me know the licenses required.
Hi,
we backup our NetApp filer by using NDMP. So far no problem.
The tape device is connected to the filer directly via fc.
AFAIK legato does not support serverless backups (i.e. the data
flows from the netapp filer directly into the tape library over
tcp/ip)....
You need one NDMP licencse per filer (i.e. if you have a clustered
filer you need two ndmp licences...)
Hope that helps....
--
Mit freundlichen Grüßen
Ronny Egner
SIV.AG
Konrad-Zuse-Straße 1
18184 Roggentin
Telefon: +49 (0)3 81 / 25 24 422
Telefax: +49 (0)3 81 / 25 24 399
mailto:ronny.egner AT siv DOT de
http://www.siv.de
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