Thanks to the following people who replied: Aaron Hill Bill Holland
It turns out that at the end of the day, using SnapVault was not the most straighforward solution. We simply wish to copy an EOM (end-of-month) snapshot to the R200 temporarily to conserve snapshot space on the production filer whilst getting our backup problem fixed.
The use of Snapvault did not meet our need to duplicate the whole volume when compared to how how SnapMirror duplicates its volume. One of the significant difference between the two is that the basic unit in Snapvault is NOT the valume, but the qtree. As such, a transfer must be made to replicate each qtree. It was also pointed out that complexity is added to the restoration process because a snapshot from SnapVault is essentially restored and Snapvault has its way of doing its thing. A third point of complexity is configuring Veritas NetBackup to backup the snapshot - an option that we are not willing to experiment with.
So, what are we doing? We have two volumes that are running low on disk space on the Production filers. We have created two volumes on the R200 to reflect those on production and we are snapmirring these across. Once the data is replicated, we remove the older EOM snapshot to free disk space. Backups of the snapshots are then done via 3-way-NDMP. A much more simple and elegant solution.
Cheers Clarence.
-----Original Message----- From: Ngoh, Clarence [mailto:clarence.ngoh@cba.com.au] Sent: Friday, 28 January 2005 2:51 PM To: toasters@mathworks.com Subject: Archiving, R200 and SnapVault.
G'day toaster folks,
Our backups in Lidcombe are having issues completing its backups - the cause is yet unknown. As a result of our EOM backups not completing successfully, it is eating into our snapshot space. We have raised a case with NetApp and we are trying to isolate the root case of the problem. I am not after suggestions to fix this at the moment. Rather ...
We have just purchased a R200 for achiving purpose and we are thinking of utilising this to alleviate the issue we are having. We wish to dump some of the EOMs to this box and backup to tape when we resolve the backup issue.
Our scenario is common ... A production site and a DR site.
We backup our EOMs at the DR site. We are wondering if the process is as simple of copying over the EOM snapshots from the DR filer to the R200 via SnapVault and configuring our backups (Veritas NetBackup) to backup from the R200 to cassette.
Question : From what I have read, backups to cassette can be done straight from the R200. Any real life experiences to share? Are they any caveats that we should be aware of?
Sorry if this question seems somewhat simple -- I am still ploughing through a pile of whitepapers at the moment, but because this issue is somewhat urgent, any suggestions would be much appreciated.
Cheers Clarence.
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