Netapp Plug-In for Symantec NetBackup and SMTape

[GCNICHOLSON]

I am trying to provide a solution to a customer that involves SMTape to seed SnapMirror (VSM) relationships across a slow network connection between TX and KY.  I've found some really good docs about doing this.  However,  I would like to be able to leverage the customer's existing Symantec NetBackup and tape library solution to avoid having to procure/connect new tape drives to the six (6) storage controllers in this environment.  Is it possible to use NetBackup to trigger SMTape?  So far I'm not seeing "YES" in any of the documentation so before I assume "NO" I wanted to bring it up in the community...  Perhaps someone out there has solved this for their customer or can provide some insight as to how best to deploy SMTape for this situation.

Ontap 8.2P3 (7-mode)

FAS3250 HA pair in TX (PROD)

FAS6220 HA pair in TX (DEV)

FAS3250 HA pair in KY (DR)

Symantec NetBackup v7.3

Thank you!

Greg

[ahmada]

Hi Greg,

Yes it is supported, you may refer to the following tr from more details:-

http://www.netapp.com/us/media/tr-3815.pdf

If you already started doing backups, please share your experience   

Regards,

Ahmad

[thorsten_pfeifer]

Hi Greg

Hi Ahmad

I'm also interesting in doing a SMTape using NetBackup. It should be used to get a LPAR Filesystem ( no database) to tape. All should be managed using Snap Creator. Here my theoretical steps

• Snap Creator triggers LAPR to get file systems consistent via pre command
• Snap Creator triggers snap shot
• Snap Creator triggers NetBackup to run job via post command netbackup/bin/bpbackup -i -p policy_name -s schedule_name -S....

The specifiy NetBackup policy is careate with the set type - smtape option and the whole source vol is selected. Currently this job failes with "Error ndmpagent(pid=3144) source servername: DATA: Backup terminated: backup configuration failure (2) on RPC error: ERROR: BAD ENV OP (for /vol/volname)" Any idea?

Furthermore I want to have used the snapshot created by Snap Creator for the smtape process. I've see that there are environmen variables available e. g. SMTAPE_SNAPSHOT_NAME but how I have to use them? And is there any NetApp licensing needed? In document it says no but the NetApp option snapmirror.enable can only be set to on with a vailed license.

Thanks for any feeback

Thorsten