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@cse.ogi.edu Sent by: owner-toasters@mathworks.com 12/27/01 10:25 AM
To: toasters@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,