I have a general question in regards to backup solutions for NetApp filers.  

We have a client that is in the process of purchasing a FAS-2240-2 HA, and will be purchasing a FAS2220 for a DR site later this year.  We are getting the complete license bundle to have SnapManager backups for VMWare, Exchange, etc to local disk, and licensing SnapMirror on the FAS2220 for replication of current data.  It is our intent to implement some slower SATA disks to maintain longer retention windows.  However, this environment is very interested in additional backup measures beyond that.  

Historically we have been using BackupExec, using agents on physical servers and VMs, to backup to both a NAS device and LTO autoloader.  

I am a little confused on how we can effectively accomplish an efficient backup of these filers outside of the netapp ecosystem.  

I have seen evidence of other users with older or larger models using direct-attach SCSI tape autoloaders (or FC autoloaders) with NDMP. We can't implement the SCSI cards in the 2240, and we don't wish to have the budgetary hit of implementing FC solely for tape connections.  We were prefer to avoid tape altogether, if at all possible, as these filers will be in collocation facilities that we don't otherwise physically visit.

Some other background: most\all of the data on these 2240s will be VMWare VMs stored on NFS (thin) datastores.  There may be one or two iSCSI connections from VMWare for SQL and Exchange for SME reasons.  The environment is a MS shop, with Sharepoint\SQL being the critical business application.

Does anyone have any recommendations about other ways to backup our data?  We hope to rely on the NetApp replication and SnapManager\SnapRestore\SnapVault for most of our normal recovery needs, however require the safety net of a weekly or monthly backup to some other media.  We also hope to avoid something that is too difficult to manage, and were hoping for a commercial solution.  Backup Exec with appropriate agents and a local NAS device or something along those lines is what I was thinking.  Does anyone have any experience with tape devices connected to a media server backing up NetApp filers?  Can NDMP stream the content to the NDMP backup server with a locally attached autoloader?   How about some other sort of disk target (e.g. cheap NAS appliance connected to the backup server via cifs \ iSCSI)

I've reached out to my SE, who indicated that most organizations are either using FC\SAS\SCSI autoloaders with NDMP or are relying on the built-in NetApp SnapVault solution.

I would welcome any guidance or experience that anyone can share.  

Thanks,

Mike Gossett