I've been using Networker 6.1.1 (patched) since about September and am
really pleased with it. Most of the limitations I've seen are with the
NDMP protocol. The inability to make clones is definitely a big problem
but I've been told that's coming. I don't recall if that was a Legato
issue or the protocol. Legato was the first to offer Direct Access
Restore (DAR) and I've actually had the opportunity to use it on a number
of occasions and it is unbelievably fast. The inability to do a
rename-on-recover/non-destructive restore had me concerned as well but
it's never come up in the restores I've done. I'm inclined to say it's an
error in the documentation. As for being able to restore to another
filesystem, I'm getting conflicting answers about that but haven't had the
time to actually test it out. The separate tape pool doesn't sit well
with me. The NDMP tapes have to be formatted/labeled in the NDMP device
and supposedly can't be used except in another NDMP device (why????). One
thing Legato hasn't brought enough attention to is that you need dedicated
non-NDMP formatted tapes in the backup server that belong to the NDMP
pool. These tapes store the indexes and since many weeks can fit on one
tape if the tape goes bad you've "lost" all those indexes. It also makes
media management difficult. You have to keep these tapes separate from
the NDMP tapes. If you want to send a set of tapes offsite you need to
send the index tape(s) as well.
Networker and NDMP both have flaws but what they offer makes these
acceptable. I spent 4 months evaluating different products and found
Networker to be the most capable (Bakbone was my first choice because they
have a GREAT product but it's still lacking some features and the
company's stability is questionable. To be fair, they're a local company
and I know some former employees so I hear a lot of negative things
concerning their financial state that generally wouldn't be in the press)
Michael Cope
Unix Systems Administrator
Isis Pharmaceuticals
Marion Hakanson <hakanson(a)cse.ogi.edu>
Sent by: owner-toasters(a)mathworks.com
12/27/01 10:25 AM
To: toasters(a)mathworks.com
cc:
Subject: Legato Networker NDMP, anyone?
Folks,
I'm studying up on networker-6.1.1, in preparation for converting
from BudTool to NetWorker, and according to the docs, there are some
pretty serious (to me) limitations in Networker's NDMP support. I would
very much like to hear from anyone out there who is already using this
backup software with their NetApp (or with other NDMP devices), so I can
get a better idea about what's ahead for us.
Oh, you're probably going to ask me anyway, so here's my list of things
that NetWorker NDMP cannot do, which I can currently do with BudTool:
(1) Cannot clone (e.g. for offsite storage) NDMP backups.
(2) Cannot rename-on-recover; Non-destructive save-set recovery is
not supported; It looks like you might be able to work around this
by using a directed recovery (i.e. to non-original location), although
they indicate this is used to restore to a different NDMP host.
(3) Cannot backup to a remote (non-NDMP) tape device, unless you buy
an extra software module (SnapImage, which also does other stuff).
(4) Cannot send NDMP backups to a filesystem device (not even if you
have SnapImage).
(5) Must have separate (tape) pools for NDMP and non-NDMP backups.
Suggestions, corrections, and comments are welcome.
Regards,
--
Marion Hakanson <hakanson(a)cse.ogi.edu>
CSE Computing Facilities