SnapManager for Exchange to Tape

[ttrulis01]

Is is possible to use SME to back up Exchange and put it on tape as a destination? Can someone provide documentation if this is possible?

Thanks,

[adamfox · Accepted solution]

Sure.  You can backup SME snapshots.  That's one of the reasons they are there.  There are 2 ways to do this.

1. Image backup.  You can simply dump the snapshot of the volumes to a tape.  This will dump the LUN image.

Upside:  Very simple

Downside:  You must restore the entire LUN if you choose to restore off of tape.

2. Dump the contents of the LUNs to tape.  To do this you will need to clone the LUNs (or the volumes) based on the snapshot to have a r/w copy of that snapshot (most hosts need this).

Then you can mount up those LUNs on any host and back them up like a local disk.  You can blow away the clones when you are done.  Since you are just backing up, the clones will take up no additional space!

Upside:  More flexible restores.  Restore any part of the LUN you like from tape.

Downside:  More complex process than step 1.

Hope this helps.

Both are valid.  And you may not care about restoring the entire LUN assuming you are keeping a few snapshot copies around anyway.  It's up to you and your strategy.

[ttrulis01]

Can you point me towards documentation on how to do both methods you suggested? Also will I require additional software for my filers to do either of these methods? Thank you!

[adamfox]

I don't know of a document that lists out those steps.  There may be an Exchange expert that has these things.

But you can look up the docs for LUN clone as well as FlexClone.  LUN clone is included with any SAN protocol.  FlexClone (cloning the whole volume) is an ONTAP license.

The command 'lun clone' as well as the 'vol clone' are the commands you can find in the docs.  Then the dump command can be used (or an NDMP-based backup product) to backup a particular snapshot.

[__COLIN_GRAHAM_14270]

As has already said above you wont find much documentation about it.

Which route you choose will mainly depend on your existing tape infrastructure and scripting skills. the "run command after backup complete" option in SME can pass required variables like vol and snapshot names to a script.. this could be used to kick off a backup application.

We currently do a NDMP to tape from the snapshots of a full backup (which are named _recent)  - its quite important to get a decent consistant snapshot as snapdrive will not mount it unless its snapdrive-consistant.

another option is possibly a snapmirror to tape, which will dump the whole volume + all snapshots.. although this will mean restoring the full volume if required, and is usually slower than a straight NDMP backup anyway.

[radek_kubka]

Hi,

Well, you can always use a third party, NDMP-aware backup application for proper management of tape backups.

Here is the list:

http://www.netapp.com/us/solutions/a-z/backup-to-tape/backup-to-tape-ndmp.html

Same of them can actually manage SM2T as well (definitely CommVault can).

Regards,

Radek

[ttrulis01]

I am trying to use the dump command but to a path instead of a device. Is this possible?

From Linux guest I am trying to do the following:

debian:/# ssh 192.168.10.10 "dump 0ufbB /mnt/backupserv 63 2097151 /vol/recorder/.snapshot/hourly.0"

Where /vol/recorder/.snapshot/hourly.0 is the snapshot I want to dump.

/mnt/backupserv is the mounted drive where I want to dump to.

Is there  a better way to do this? I just want to dump a snapshot to a windows drive. Maybe a copy command from filer to windows share?

NDMPCOPY - found it. nevermind!

Thanks