How to backup SMVI snaps to tape using NDMP?

[acistmedical]

I have a SMVI running on NFS datastores every day at noon, i keep 7 days retention.

I need to backup the snap to tape for long term retention every night using NDMP.

My tape backup software (Commvault) does not let me backup entire .snapshots directory because, i have to specify the folder within the .snapshot directory.

So, looks like to only one i can specify is the "_recent" one because this is the only one that has the consistent name, so i can only choose this one.

I understand that there will be a new, newest, most recent snap in this "_recent" directory, so is it OK if i back up only this directory to tape every night?

am i going to have the new snap backed up to tape every night?

Thanks

[kevingolding]

Hiya, when a new snapshot is made with a generic timestamp, it creates a new snapshot with a _recent stamp, then renames the 'old' _recent snapshot name.  So the answer is yes, if you just target the _recent snapshot this will be the most recent snapshot created by SMVI.

Kev

[acistmedical]

OK, so if i will be backing up only most recent snaps to tape how will i be able to restore it?

looks like i would have to rename it before restoral, but what name should i give it so it will show up in SMVI gui?

[kevingolding]

when restoring from tape, the snapshot isn't restored as a snapshot, when writing to tape NDMP dumps it to tape as if it were the active file system, or rather it backs up the files as per the snapshot point in time.  So when restoring, you are restoring the files as they were at the snapshot point in time.

[acistmedical]

So if i restore from tape, where should i restore it to?

.snapshot directory?

and will it ever show up in SMVI gui?

[radek_kubka]

Hi,

You can't restore anything to .snapshot dir, as it is read only.

All NDMP restores, be it file-level, or volume-level have to go to the live file system, i.e. they will overwrite files in your volume.

As far as I know there is no neat way of making SMVI aware of either backups or restores via NDMP.

Regards,
Radek

[acistmedical]

Ok, so that means that i have to restore to the volume, thats fine, i can rename the restore folder so it will not overite anything.

But how will i recreate a VM?

Can i just create it manually and then point HDD to the restored .vmdk? that should work, shouldn't it?

[kevingolding · Accepted solution]

There's no real neat way of restoring from NDMP, it's a file level backup/restore protocol. So when you restore it, restore it into an empty volume and NDMPCOPY the file on the filer to where you want it.  Or you could just restore it to the original volume, but I would do this VERY carefully.

Dont restore it into a snapshot folder, as these are read only, but restore it into the base volume.

The volume that you restored to could then either be mounted as a new NFS datastore or copy the file...

SMVI wont know about it unless you mount it as a datastore, then do a refresh on SMVI.

Because NDMP is a file based copy protocol, if the volume contains a LUN, the LUN has to be restored, and if you backup CIFS/NFS volumes then files can be restored individually.