I understand *now* that this has been acknowledged as an ONTAP bug. That was not the case (or VERITAS support did not know that) when I opened my case two weeks ago. I have email from my case owner that 5.3.4R2 is currently being tested. That is where that came from.

My point in going to an unqualified release as a concern is that I have been stuck in the middle in the past. If I proceed to a version of ONTAP and backups break, then downgrading to fix backups is not necessarily a pretty thing to do. I guess my biggest concern is... if backups can break, so can restores...

I have been backing up filers with NetBackup and NDMP for almost two years. I have seen a lot of the good, the bad and the ugly :-). I tend to be cautious as a result. Perhaps I should not have said "in a supported mode" but rather, in a "known working configuration". In general, backups are still working. We run a script every three hours that ups the drives, and any backups suspended by a downed drive pick up and proceed.

And I agree... testing every version of ONTAP would be impossible.

Kelly

--

Kelly Wyatt, Kelly.Wyatt@SAS.com Systems Programmer Integrated Solutions Consulting SAS Institute Inc. / SAS Campus Drive / Cary, NC 27513 http://www.sas.com The power to know TM

-----Original Message----- From: Steve Kappel [mailto:steve.kappel@raistlin.min.ov.com] Sent: Tuesday, May 02, 2000 2:46 PM To: Kelly.Wyatt@sas.com; Klaus.Micheler@infineon.com Cc: toasters@mathworks.com Subject: RE: Network Appliance Upgrade to ONTAP 5.3.4R3P2 and Backups

Kelly Wyatt wrote:

Keep in mind that VERITAS currently has no plans to qualify any 5.3.5 release. If you are concerned about keeping NetBackup and ONTAP in a supported mode you need to be at 5.3.4 (qualified). (They are currently qualifying 5.3.4R2 per email I received from VERITAS support.

I don't know where this information is coming from but nothing beyond 5.3.4 is being qualified by VERITAS at this time. There are no plans to qualify any 5.3.4x or 5.3.5 release. Obviously we will be qualifying some future release at some point.

Klaus Micheler wrote:

I hope Netapp and Veritas will improve their quality with better certifications in the near future and tell us facts, not feelings.

Please remember that the absence of qualification of a particular release is not the same as not supporting it. When VERITAS identifies an OnTap release as qualified, it means that we have done a level of testing within VERITAS to suggest to us that the release meets the minimum standards for use with NetBackup for NDMP. It does not mean that there are no issues. Releases that we have not qualified have not been tested by VERITAS.

The lack of qualification does not automatically mean we don't support that release. It means that NetApp should be your first contact if you run into a problem that is new with that release.

The simple truth is that it would be impossible for VERITAS to test every OnTap release. At some point we must assume that NetApp maintains full upward compatibility with subsequent releases and that reasonable regression tests have been performed. I would point out that the problems that have been seen have been identified by NetApp as an OnTap bug. This problem affects more than one backup application. The fix does not include a new version of NetBackup for NDMP or a NetBackup for NDMP patch. This is strictly an OnTap issue.

If you have futher questions about this, please contact me directly. I'm the project lead and developer for NetBackup NDMP.

__________________________________________________________________________ Steve Kappel steve.kappel@veritas.com VERITAS Software steve.kappel@iname.com (Personal)