Don't know if this setup will work for you but there was a good discussion about how someone else backs up lun the other day on the mailing list. The thread can be found here:
http://www.nabble.com/Mounting-read-only-snapshots-using-open-iscsi--td20460...
Romeo
On Wed, Nov 19, 2008 at 9:30 AM, Paul Letta letta@jlab.org wrote:
Hi all, We are pretty new to using iSCSI here. I have another question about backing up the LUNs. My backup software uses NDMP (with direct attached drives on the filer) and that's how I do the other volumes on this filer. But the LUNs are just one big file. If I want to do weekly full and daily incremental, how does that work ? NDMP/dump is file level, so each night an incremental will really be a full. Is a client side backup program my only solution to get file based backups from a LUN ? The Lun will hold an NTFS file system.
Thanks.
Paul
specifics:
Windows machine, using iSCSI initiator mounts LUN on filer as D drive. I need to do file level backup/restore of this D drive.