This is kinda long, so i appologize ahead of time...
We are running OnTap version 5.2.1 on a 740. When we ordered the system we got an autoloader backup (powerstor L500). Unfortuantly, Ontap can't handle the loader to meet our needs. So, as a solution, we attached the device to an NT server running BackupExec 7.2. I was thinking that in order to get a good backup of the system i could share out the .snapshot/nightly.0 as shapc$. This would give me a look at the system from the the root directory. At first it appeared that this would work fine, the CIFS SHARE command shows the snapc$ share as always being mapped to the nightly.0 directory, even after the nightly.0 is changed to nightly.1.
However, when i did a snap list command, it shows that the nightly.1 is "busy". When i do a backup, it backs up the OLD snapshot directory and when i open the directory, i confirm that it is the old data. It seems that the Netfiler remembers which directory is mapped regardless of the name. I have found that when i reboot, the share is recreated to the correct directory, but rebooting every night is not an option. I have also changed the saved nightly snapshots to 1. The system will not create a new snapshot because the old one is busy and of course, having only one nightly snapshot is not an option.
Is there any way to get the netfiler to refresh the share automatically? ---or make it stupid and not remeber that today's nightly.1 is yesterday's nightly.0?
Any input would be appreciated. --Patrick Day Sys. Admin Bayer Corporation
Patrick Day B Patrick.Day.B@bayer.com writes:
This is kinda long, so i appologize ahead of time...
You're an NT shop, eh? I really strongly recommend using the Unix dump/restore facilities built into Data ONTAP -- it's *much* faster, it takes much of the complication out of the process, it preserves both NT and Unix attributes, and it works. Also use a Unix backup server (Solaris is probably best). For backup software, we have pretty good results with BudTool.
Anyway, I think the way to do what you're trying to do is this:
- create a share of / (actually, any directory, but the example here is /) - prior to backup, create a named snapshot ("mybackup.<num>") (this is what effectively happens when using dump) - backup from /.snapshot/mybackup.<num> or /.snapshot/mybackup.<num>/dir, - after backup, remove the named snapshot
This way, you don't have to worry about the backups changing out from under you, and the CIFS locking of shares shouldn't affect you.
However, I really want to warn you away from this... IMO, these are the basic mistakes made when backing up NetApps (in order of most bad to least bad):
1. backup up over a network filesystem (NFS or CIFS) instead of dump/restore 2. backup using NT backup host instead of Unix 3. backup across network instead of directly attached SCSI jukebox 4. backup from scheduled snapshots instead of manual ones (or ones created automatically by dump) 5. backup using rsh instead of NDMP 6. (for sites with more than a few hundred GB) backup using non-scalable home-grown scripts instead of "real" backup software 7. lesser mistakes: small blocksize, too large or small of a tree in one dump, backing up during the day, etc.
I'm sure our backup guru would have a few items to add. :-)
- Dan
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Daniel Quinlan -
Patrick.Day.B＠bayer.com