CIFS Share Backup with extreme Retentions [ Edited ]

[#1]

Hi Guys

One of our Customers wants to migrate some File-Servers to native CIFS on our NetApp.

All together we talk around 24TB of User-Data (Profiles, Documents, private Archives).

Putting it on one or two Volumes with Deduplication enabled and doing Snapshots for 30 Days shouldn't be the Problem there.

The special requirement we are not sure on how to implement is the monthly and yearly Backup they have on the old Servers.

Obviously they want something similar on the new Solution for legal requirements.

The two Options that come to mind are SnapVault and Snap2Tape, both I'm not quite sure how to implement.

Updating the Vault only once a month probably causes major problems with the data-transfer taking days and the vault-lag alarms driving storage admins nuts.

But when updating it daily with the normal Snapshots, maybe with only keeping one version on Vault I'm not sure it would help the monthly/yearly Jobs.

Probably we would have to configure it in separate SC-Configs with different Snapshot-Names (but the same Source and Target Volumes/FIlers), don't know how that impacts everything.

For the Snap2Tape Option we probably have to mount a Snap to a MediaServer that writes out and indexes the Data or use NDMP.

Both Options require separate Scheduling and Mechanisms for restoring Data. Anything there to integrate it directly to SnapCreator or attached Tools?

In case it helps here the current "classic" Backup Schedule in place:

Daily differential Incremental to Tape, Retention 1 Month

Weekly Full Backup to Tape, Retention 1 Month

Monthly Full Backup to Tape, Retention 1 Year

Yearly Full Backup to Tape, Retention 10 Years

Thanks for any suggestion

BR Stefan

[#2]

Hello,

SC can run your snapvaults and manage the retentions on the vault copy. Not sure about yearly support, but you could make a policy and call it yearly. Updating the vault copy every day and only keep 1 daily, as you described will keep the transfer time smaller. Using NTAP_SNAPSHOT_RETENTION_AGE in conjunction to the policy retention, will allow runing ad-hoc backups and not cause scheduled snapshots to be deleted prematurely.

Thanks,

--

Chris

[#3]

Snap Creator does not have a yearly policy yet.

You may definitely use what Chris is suggesting and keep ad-hoc backups for a longer duration.

[#4]

Any suggestions on an Tape-Out Option?

[#5]

Stefan,

We have a few customers that are sending Snapshots to tape using the CLI commands of their tape utility and calling those commands through Snap Creator.

One customer users Snap Creator to quiesce the database, takes a snapshot using SnapDrive, unquiesces the database, then mounts the Snapshot copy to a drive letter or mount point.

Since they have the Snapshot mounted to a specific drive letter they then use their tape utility to schedule a job through that tool to send to tape.

The next time Snap Creator runs the first action is to unmount the drive letter/mount point, then quiesce/Snapshot/unquiesce/mount

The reason for doing the tape operation outside of Snap Creator is that the tape operation take a long time to run, and this prevents any time out issues from occurring in Snap Creator.

Snap Creator really doesn't have any integrated tape options, so a product like SnapProtect might be better if tape is a big concern and you only want one product to manage.

Thanks,

John