OSSV and Mac OS

bcstorage · ‎2013-07-31

I have an Apple server that is currently being backed up by Time Machine to an external USB hard drive. Works great but doesn't provide much protection in the event of a major disaster. All of my Windows servers are connected to our NetApp filers which are replicating to another site. Currently, there is no connectivity between the Apple server and my NetApp filers. I'm looking at a couple different ways to improve our recoverability for the Apple server utilizing the NetApp storage. One thought I had was SnapVault OSSV. I see that it can be used with Unix and Linux but I don't see anything about Mac OS. Does anyone know if OSSV can be used to back up a Mac OS machine?? Has anyone ever tried it to see if it would work??

If anyone has any thoughts about this I would appreciate hearing them. Or, if you have an idea for other ways I could address the recoverability issue, please share.

Thanks in advance,

Bill

scottgelb · ‎2013-07-31

No OSSV Support for OSX. There are some hacks that allow a NAS target for time machine though...that might be the easiest way to use a netapp export as the target (I tried it a year or two ago and got it working with some google searching). You won't get support for it but a direct way to write to the NetApp.

bcstorage · ‎2013-09-22

Scott,

Thanks for the reply. I did find some info on Google as you suggested and I was able to present the storage to the Mac server. My sys admins were hesitant to use it however as the Mac server wanted to format it with a Mac file system. They were concerned because everything else we have on the NetApp is Windows base. Will it cause any issues if we go ahead and format it for Mac? My guess is no since it is essentially Unix and you can mix Windows and Unix. Any insight you can provide would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Bill

scottgelb · ‎2013-09-22

As long as the target volume (did you create a LUN? sounds like it) isn't used by anything else it won't hurt...but again if any issues there is no support.