E-Series and EMC Networker compatibility

[IMO]

Hi All,

I have a customer who has EMC storages, EMC data domain, EMC Networker and HPE Tape Library. They want to stop using tapes and move to a disk based storage for archiving. I proposed the NetApp E-series for this. 

EMC says Networker is not compatible with the E-series. Is this true? Does anyone have a customer that uses Networker and E-series? Customer doesnt want to change the backup software (EMC Networker).

Thanks in advance for your response.

Imo.

[AlexDawson]

Networker can be configured to either backup to NAS or to local files. For local files it just writes into the filesystem of the server. So if the E-Series is connected locally via FC/iSCSI/SAS, I can't see why it wouldn't work. I would look for them to provide a list of solutions that do work - if it includes Dell Powervault, E-Series should work too. In the end, for support purposes, that is a Dell/EMC decision though.

[steiner]

That's ridiculous. If they're archiving to disk, you just need capacity. The vendor shouldn't be relevant. I was a Networker customer at one time, and I never heard of a limitation like this. It's possible the EMC rep was deliberately misunderstanding the question and assuming you want to use some kind of unusual capability that requires a specific vendor. There are features like Boost and such that allow some advanced device-to-device communcation that speeds things up. Maybe that's what they're getting at.

Are we talking about an Networker AFTD volume? If so, ask EMC where it's stated that only specific vendors are supported. Their own documentation looks silent on that, and they even have examples with generic NFS shares.