Alan,

 

I agree with your recommendations.  However, I usually leave keep a couple of snapshots that were used for backs around for even quicker restores, instead of going to tape.  I also use a naming pattern similar to NetApp and create a hidden share to the .snapshot directory as each volume has it’s own.

 

Ie:

 

rsh filer snp delte dailybackup.1

rsh filer snap rename dailybackup.0 dailybackup.1

rsh filer snap create volname dailbackup.0

backup \\filer\snapshare\dailbackup.0

 

Regards,

 

Alan Biren

Senior Systems Engineer/Storage Architect

AMC Corporation

48 West 37^th Street

New York, NY 10018

 

(212) 736-0111

 

www.amccorp.com

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-toasters@mathworks.com [mailto:owner-toasters@mathworks.com] On Behalf Of Alan.McLachlan@didata.com.au
Sent: Tuesday, October 05, 2004 12:38 AM
To: toasters@mathworks.com
Subject: Re: Backups of Snapshots

 

Kevin,

This isn't what Jack's trying to acheive. However, besides that it's a dangerous recommendation.

Automatic scheduled snapshots are rotated out by their naming convention. i.e. "nightly.0" is always last night's midnight snapshot. So, if for some reason the backup takes more than 24 hours to write to tape, or is delayed by a sheduling issue or a downed drive or whatever, you run the risk of a temporally inconsistent backup on tape after the snapshot rotation occurs. This might be made obvious by errors occuring because a file that was in the original directory map and was deleted during the backup disappear from the "nightly.0" snapshot when it's rotated for the next night (the previous night becomes "nightly.1").

i.e. you should always backup using the automatic "snapshot for backup.x" created by the NDMP client in Data OnTap, or use a manual snapshot. It is never wise to use the built-in scheduled snapshots for anything other than point-in-time restores from disk, because their contents will change at the next shedule period.

I agree with your comment about using a static name. But you need both the name _and_ the *contents* to remain static, which isn't the case with the OnTap sheduled snapshots.

A manual snapshot is always best for this, i.e. a script like: (using the snapshot name "dailybackup"

rsh filer snap delete dailybackup          ;(delete previous manual snapshot you've hung on to for restores)
rsh filer snap create dailybackup
backup /filer/.snapshot/dailybackup/  ;(or for Windows create a share that always points to the root of the snapshot and use that)

regards,

Alan McLachlan
___________________________________
Solution Architect - Data Centre Solutions
Dimension Data Australia
Alan.McLachlan@didata.com.au
Tel. +61 (0)2 61225123
Fax +61 (0)2 62486346
Mobile 0428 655644

----- Forwarded by Alan McLachlan on 05/10/2004 02:20 PM -----

"Kevin Mascarenhas" <KMascarenhas@syncsort.com> Sent by: owner-toasters@mathworks.com 01/10/2004 11:28 PM Please respond to "Kevin Mascarenhas"

To:        "Jack Lyons" <jack.lyons@martinagency.com>         cc:        <toasters@mathworks.com>         Subject:        Re: Backups of Snapshots

Hi Jack,

One other option you can consider is specifying an existing snapshot as your
NDMP backup source. For example, if you configured your filer to take
nightly snapshots at say 11:00pm and had your scheduled NDMP backups start
at sometime after that, then you could configure the backup job to use the
"nightly.0" snapshot as the backup source. When a snapshot is specified in
this way, NDMP driven dump will not create another one for backup.

Any backup software should allow you to define a job that uses an existing
snapshot (or a snapshot that will exist at the time the job will run) for
backup. Of course it's simplest if you configure the job to use a static
snapshot name rather than one which will change each time the job is run so
NetApp scheduled automatic snapshots will work perfectly.

HTH.

Kevin

Kevin Mascarenhas
KMascarenhas@syncsort.com

Syncsort Inc.
50 Tice Blvd.
Woodcliff Lake, NJ 07677
Tel: (201) 930-9700
http://www.syncsort.com


----- Original Message -----
From: "Jack Lyons" <jack.lyons@martinagency.com>
To: "Paul Galjan" <galjan@gmail.com>
Cc: <toasters@mathworks.com>
Sent: Friday, October 01, 2004 6:45 AM
Subject: Re: Backups of Snapshots


> I guess that makes sense.  it would have been nice to be able to look
> restore a snapshot directory from 4 months ago!
>
> It looks like I could do a monthly snapshot manually and see how much
space
> it takes up.  Right now, my snapshots are only taking up 23% of the space
> allocated for snapshots.  I am going to experiment with taking 6 "monthly
> snapshots"
>
> Jack
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Paul Galjan" <galjan@gmail.com>
> To: "Jack Lyons" <jack.lyons@martinagency.com>
> Cc: <toasters@mathworks.com>
> Sent: Thursday, September 30, 2004 7:23 PM
> Subject: Re: Backups of Snapshots
>
>
> > Hi Jack,
> >
> > The snapshot directory is not included as part of the NDMP dump.  When
> > the filer is told to do an NDMP dump, it actually takes a snapshot,
> > then dumps the data from that snapshot.
> >
> > --paul
> >
> > On Thu, 30 Sep 2004 18:41:11 -0400, Jack Lyons
> > <jack.lyons@martinagency.com> wrote:
> >> I had a user request a file from 4 months ago.  The tape backups
happened
> >> at
> >> 11:00 PM but the file they needed was earlier in the day.  I was
thinking
> >> that the backups might have included the snapshot directory but it
> >> didn't?
> >> Is that configurable?
> >>
> >> Jack
> >>
> >>
> >
>




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