SnapProtect questions - Page 4

peluso · ‎2011-05-31

Hi all,

You may have seen the latest announcement for our new product, SnapProtect. Please ask your questions - we have technical expertise ready to provide answers and point to useful information. I will post a few questions here as well to break the ice and open up the conversation. For more information about the product, start with our product pages. http://www.netapp.com/us/products/protection-software/snapprotect.html

Best,

Terri

Thanks so much!
Terri Peluso
Senior Community Program Manager

BCNINEAMS · ‎2011-06-17

I'm having quite a hard to to visualise exactly what SnapProtect is providing over normal SnapVault with SnapManagers and OSSV. The marketing info seemed to list advantages which are already applicable to SnapVault generally (Shrink Backup windows, etc...)?

Any chance you could list out usage (backup/restore) examples, with pros/cons of each?

mar · ‎2011-06-17

One of the key differences is that SnapProtect provides catalog and tape support so you have a single management framework to create and manage local Snapshots, replication (SnapVault or SnapMirror) to secondary storage and movement to tape. You also get extra application support such as DB2 and MSFT Active Directory. SnapProtect is best for customers who have a group responsible for backups across multiple environments (applications, physical, virtual). SnapManagers are appropriate is the backup responsibility is delegated to the application or DB admin who require that application-centric view. Additional capability beyond backup such as storage provisioning and cloning are available with this model. SMVI and SMHV when a virtualization-centric view is required.

Hope this helps.

sstafford · ‎2011-06-22

My question is this- If a customer wants to streamline their backup operation and use Simpana for their entire org including the NetApp peice, they would have to purchase through Commvault. Snap Protect will only protect the NetApp peice correct?

rdenyer001 · ‎2011-06-22

This not official from Commvault or NetApp, but the information I have heard would indicate that they are better to go Commvault. I have heard that you are only able to do "SnapProtect" backups - there is not the ability to deploy a "standard" Commvault iDA on a host and back that host up. Can someone from Commvault or NetApp confirm?

e_honcoop · ‎2011-06-23

I have talked to an CommVault Netherlands representative and they have confirmed the above.

rdenyer001 · ‎2011-06-28

I thought this was all answered - but a colleague found the below text in a NetApp FAQ (SnapProtect Technical FAQ Chris Blackwood, Mike Braden, NetApp May, 2011 Version 1.9)

“4.5 CAN I DO AN NDMP DUMP FROM AN APPLICATION BACKUP (OR FROM FILE SYSTEM BACKUP, LUN, ETC.)?

NDMP dump is performed only for data originating from the NetApp NAS NDMP iDataAgent. Other iDAs

use tape by streaming through the media agent.”

brianchama · ‎2012-12-27

Is media streaming through the media agent supposed to be so slow? Mine is operating at 20GB/hour,is there something I can do to improve this?

Thanks

HendersonD · ‎2011-06-22

I have been using Snapdrive, SMSQL, SME, and SMVI for several years. Each of these has their own interface, own prereqs, and oddities. I just upgraded to Simpana 9 SP2b from Simpana 8 and will be abandoning all the snap products for the single pain of glass for all of my backups. The upgrade went fine so the next step is to institute the SnapProtect piece. I run nearly all of my servers under VSphere including SQL and Exchange. The only thing that this does not support yet is having data on multiple volumes in my VM. For example, most of my VMs have a separate disk for the pagefiles and a separate disk for application data. Commvault is putting out an update in mid July that will allow SnapProtect to work with multiple discs.

I love my filers but I can honestly say that moving to an all Commvault solution should be better. I have been a Commvault customer for some time and like their product

mar · ‎2011-06-30

SnapProtect software news update:

SnapProtect software is now supported on Data ONTAP 8.0.1 7-mode. Additional ONTAP versions, including 8.0.2 and 8.1, are currently being qualified and will be supported at a future date.

mrettl · ‎2011-07-01

Mar,

but it is still NOT on the Support Matrix!?

http://now.netapp.com/NOW/knowledge/docs/olio/guides/snapprotect/SnapProtect_Interoperability_Matrix.PDF

Matthias

parrizas · ‎2011-10-19

Hi there,

Are secondary snapshots (snapvaulting) supported with SnapProtect and vfilers?

Thanks!

justinhurst · ‎2011-10-24

Quick question that I can't find an answer for in the documentation:

What about non-NetApp connected servers? I have a customer with field servers in five states, and we were planning on using OSSV, but it doesn't seem to interoperate with SnapProtect. Since it seems the NetApp-branded Simpana can't backup non-NetApp attached servers, what are our options? The way I see it:

1) Use OSSV and manage it separately from SnapProtect (which defeats the purpose...)

2) Buy regular Simpana and the Snap-enabling licenses from Commvault.

Is there a better way?

mar · ‎2011-11-03

Those are the two best choices today.

UPADHYAYULA · ‎2012-01-24

You can use NetApp Syncsort Integrated Backup (NSB) solution

lmunro_hug · ‎2012-01-26

Hi,

Can anyone let me know how SnapProtect works in the following
scenario? We are using block based storage for our VMFS datastores. We are not
using the Snapmanager for SQL/EXCH as they are too cumbersome and waste so many
LUNs in our VMware clusters, we just use the VSC based backups. If for example
with have a 2TB LUN that is not thin provisioned with 100GB of VMs on it. How
much data will SnapProtect write to tape when backing up this LUN to tape assuming
it is a FULL type backup?

Does SnapProtect have visibility into VMFS/NTFS and will it
only backup the used blocks instead of the entire LUN? Can it do single file/application
object restores from tape without restoring back to the filer first? Does it do
multiplexing to tape?

Many Thanks

lmunro_hug · ‎2012-01-26

Hi,

Can anyone let me know how SnapProtect works in the following
scenario? We are using block based storage for our VMFS datastores. We are not
using the Snapmanager for SQL/EXCH as they are too cumbersome and waste so many
LUNs in our VMware clusters, we just use the VSC based backups. If for example
with have a 2TB LUN that is not thin provisioned with 100GB of VMs on it. How
much data will SnapProtect write to tape when backing up this LUN to tape assuming
it is a FULL type backup?

Does SnapProtect have visibility into VMFS/NTFS and will it
only backup the used blocks instead of the entire LUN? Can it do single file/application
object restores from tape without restoring back to the filer first? Does it do
multiplexing to tape?

Many Thanks

bwood · ‎2012-01-27

If you have a 2TB LUN and only 100GB are used, then only 100GB would be sent to tape for a full backup using the Virtual Server Agent. SnapProtect has visibility into a VMFS/NTFS VMDK for single file restore.

As far as your question "will it only backup the used blocks instead of the entire LUN?"... It backs up what is used, so 100GB vs 2TB. You can also do an incremental backup which would send less data to tape than the full would.

Yes, it can do single file / application object restores from tape without restoring back to the filer first.

Yes, it can do multiplexing to tape.

Thanks!

cgeck0000 · ‎2012-03-27

Hi bwood,

With regard to how a NetApp snapshots work with SnapProtect. I know NetApp snapshots happen at the volume level so say I have a volume with 8 virtual machines and I only want 1 virtual machine backed up will the NetApp snapshot only consist of the blocks related to the single VM with the SnapProtect software installed or does the entire volume get snapped and the software is there to differentiate which files are with which VM?

I am trying to understand if it is beneficial to put everything into one volume or if it is more cost effective to separate virtual machines out based on what is backed up. If there is documentation for achieving this please point me in that direction.

bwood · ‎2012-03-28

You are correct. The snapshot is at the volume level so you need to consider that when planning your layout. In most cases it makes sense to protect at the datastore level (using "datastore affinity rules" set on the backup set within SnapProtect). If you're using VMFS datastores you'll want to limit to one VMFS datastore per NetApp volume. NFS datastores are straight forward.

When protecting at the datastore level, all VMs within that datastore will get protected by the same policy, the same schedule, the same retention, the same replication strategy, etc. So, that is another thing to consider when grouping the VMs. For example, if you have some VMs that need to be kept for 10 days and some that need to be kept for 60 days then you'll want to split those into different datastores. If you have some VMs that need to be replicated and some that do not then you'll want to split those into different datastores.

GLIDIC_ANTHONY · ‎2012-04-10

I just install snapprotect with thin provisioning VM last week. And i have found some trouble with the backup copy functionality.

I have Thin provisioned Vm (500Gb but only 13Gb used) and when the backup copy start (to copy data on disk), i can tell you it will moove the 13Gb but snapprotect try to search data on the 500Gb.

So a backup who will take 1h with a simple vsa agent now take 10H with snapprotect.

I open a ticket at commvault support last week about this issue.

bwood · ‎2012-04-11

If this is NetApp SnapProtect then I think you should be calling NetApp for support. However, I just tried this in my lab and the backup only copied the used data (not the entire provisioned amount).