Solved: NDMP backups and snapshots - Page 2

davidste1 · ‎2011-04-07

Hi,

I've got a couple of questions regarding NDMP backups and Backup exec NDMP option.

1) I see that only the whole volume can be backed up so I need to add exclusions if I want specific folders. However there's also the .snapshot folder visible under the volume too. Does this mean that if I leave a volume selected, it will also backup each snapshot too? Seeing as the snapshot is a view of the whole volume, and there are maybe 5 snapshots, does that mean i'll be backing up each bit of data 6 times per backup job or is the ndmp agent clever enough to know which parts of the snapshot are the differences?

2) Is is possible to backup and restore a whole volume "natively", complete with snapshot history to another netapp.

e.g. a 100GB volume, with 10GB used in 5 snapshots, can this be restored to a new 100GB volume with the same 5 snapshots occupying 10GB?

aborzenkov · ‎2011-04-07

1. Normally when native NDMP backup is initiated a new snapshot is created and backed up. So other snapshots are not touched. It is also possible (depending on client application) to ask to backup specific snapshot by name, in which case first step is skipped.

2. Not using NDMP. You can copy whole volume using “vol copy” or SnapMirror, but with NDMP the only way is to restore each backup and making snapshot after each restore.

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