netapp backup issues

[nita]

We need to take backup day by day and required to do it with minimal down time. We are using gtar command for it. Though about flexclone but we dont have license for it. So is there any other way. Can we use snapshot or snapdrive for it.

Will be grateful for your replies.

[paulstringfellow]

hi Nita,

not sure what you are trying to do, it sounds like you want to take a backup from the NetApp box to an external location.

so have done this a few times in the past for customers, with things like backup exec if they do not want to use NDMP.

What we have done is mounted a snapshot copy of the LUN we want to backup and mounted this to a backup server, we then backup the flat files on that LUN.

so no need for flexclone - use snapdrive to mount one of the snaphots, then backup the mounted snapshot.

hope that helps.

[nita]

hi,

Thanks for your response.

Actually we have 4 luns for our data filesystem. And for our business purpose we take backup before Close of Business, using gtar in server level which takes 4 hrs, as we are not utilizing any of the storage features.

We are not thinking of taking backup in external location but trying to minimize the down time by using storage features such as snapshot.

As come to know that DS series has flashcopy for this purpose.

Hope I have clarified myself.

[raj_shrivastava11]

Hi Nita,

Kindly describe Ur setup and from Where to where you are trying to take a backup.

There are multiple soultions available (OSSV -> for open system backup, Snapcreator-> for database and VMware backup, etc.)

Let us know the details and we can suggest accordingly.

BR

Raj

[nita]

Thanks Raj.

I will describe myself in more detail.

We are using power6 server for our banking database and Netapp N6060 for storage. We have to take the backup before doing Close of Business after office hour. We are not using any of the storage features for doing backup and take simple backup using gtar in server level which takes 4 hrs. At this time our system is down and we cannot provide any of the service like ATM and Internet Banking at this time.

We came to know that snapshot may be helpful for us as it takes the flash of data in a point of time. If we can take a snapshot and use this in other server or devices for backup purpose then we donot have to down the system.

We donot have flexclone license. But as I come to know that other storage for eg. DS series has flashcopy for the same purpose.

This has been critical issue for us.

Hope for your suggestions.

Nita

[raj_shrivastava11]

Hi Nita,

Which Database r u using as i see a critical part here about consistent snapshot of a database. There are products and ways we can take a backup of these databases.

Do you have SnapDrive License, as this way easy snapshots can be created and use for Restore for  LUN coming from Netapp.

BR

Raj

[aborzenkov]

Do you use NFS or FCP/iSCSI?

[nita]

We use FCP

[aborzenkov]

if you do not have flexclone license you can use lun clones to access data in snapshots. I assume you have 7-Mode.

[nita]

Yes we have 7-mode. Can you please explain it with details.

[aborzenkov]

It is described in details in documentation, SAN Administration Guide, LUN Clones. In summary, you create snapshot and then you create LUN clone for existing LUN which is "backed" by this snapshot.

snap create vol1 mysnap

lun clone create /vol/vol1/lun0_clone -b /vol/vol1/lun0 mysnap

Now you can map /vol/vol1/lun0_clone to host (it need not be the same host that is using /vol/vol1/lun0 itself), mount it on this host and copy data. You may need to quisce application or otherwise ensure data in snapshot is at least crash-consistent. In the worst case you may need to stop application, unmount LUN, create snapshot and then mount LUN and start application. This gives minimal possible downtime but gurantees absolute consistency of data in clone.

[nita]

Thankyou for your suggestion. I hope it will solve our issue.

[nita]

Our database is jbase, flat file system. We have snapdrive_unix license.

[aborzenkov]

Snap drive should actually transparently fall back to lun clone if flexclone license is not present; so it should also work. It automates all steps needed to create and aces snapshots, so it makes sense to use it if you can.