topic Re: Backing up CIFS shares (currently using Unitrends) Options? in ONTAP Discussions

Backing up CIFS shares (currently using Unitrends) Options?

SteveAPMA — Wed, 04 Jun 2025 14:25:32 GMT

We have a FAS2552 that contains all our data and VM's. The servers are about 1TB, and CIFS shares are about 9TB. We are using a Unitrends appliance that is up for renewal, and is getting maxed out on space. Unitrends wants to sell a larger appliance, about 26TB (current box is 13TB usable), but may be cost prohibitive.

Our backup needs include:

-Offsite daily, via cloud or disk (currently do full backups on weekends, archive to disk; weekdays differentials and incrementals archived to disk)

-Rotating Monthly/quarterly/annual backups offsite. Keep annuals forever.

-We mainly use the backups for DR, as the Netapp previous versions and snapshots work very well.

I know what Unitrends is offering, but wondering about other options:

-Purchasing some software and building my own storage (Storageworks said they could not do Netapp CIFS shares, but we could set up a file server, attach the shares and backup from there - seems cumbersome to me; Veeam is supposed to have the ability to backup CIFS shares in the next version?)

-Use a 2nd NetApp for Vaulting and Mirroring - either purchase a 2nd appliance and install at a remote office, or my NetApp service provider has a cloud package I could mirror to. I would still need to do some backups to disk for permanent archives.

Budget wise, hoping to find something for under $25k.

Unitrends does NOT do incremental forevers on the CIFS, which is annoying - would love to have that feature.

Any suggestions are welcome. Thanks.

Re: Backing up CIFS shares (currently using Unitrends) Options?

SteveAPMA — Thu, 02 Nov 2017 14:35:24 GMT

Anyone? If I cannot find something, another consideration is replacing my NetApp with different storage, and converting the Netapp to storage for my backups.

Re: Backing up CIFS shares (currently using Unitrends) Options?

TMADOCTHOMAS — Thu, 02 Nov 2017 18:04:27 GMT

We've SnapMirrored our production volumes (all of them, not just CIFS) offsite to a NetApp system in a DR facility for years now. It works great, highly recommended. OnTAP Cloud would probably work as well but I've not tried it.

Re: Backing up CIFS shares (currently using Unitrends) Options?

SteveAPMA — Thu, 02 Nov 2017 20:33:51 GMT

Do you do any archive backups to disk or tape? If so, how do you do that?

Thanks.

Re: Backing up CIFS shares (currently using Unitrends) Options?

TMADOCTHOMAS — Fri, 03 Nov 2017 12:47:39 GMT

No I'm afraid not, but if we did we would likely use SnapVault.