Hi, Hope you don't mind me jumping in on this question. As I see it Legato currently provide 4 ways to backup a NetApp filer:
1. BudTool 2. NFS 3. NetWorker NetApp Client 4. NDMP-compliant NetWorker
It would be interesting (to me at least) to hear experiences with each variant. Option 4 is essentially replacing option 1 since that option is being discontinued.
Cheers, Grant
=========== grant@netapp.com ========== Grant Melvin === === Software Development Manager === === Data Availability & Management === |\ | __ ___ /\ __ __ === Network Appliance === | \ | |__ | /__\ |__| |__| === 475 East Java Drive === | | |__ | / \ | | (R) === Sunnyvale === === California, 94089 === === Tel:(408)822-6761 =========== Network Appliance ========== Fax:(408)822-4578
-----Original Message----- From: Robert Alatorre [mailto:ralatorre@aperian.com] Sent: Thursday, February 08, 2001 2:08 PM To: toasters@mathworks.com Subject: legatto
Anybody have any bad or good experience using legatto as backup for the net app filer?
Bob Alatorre Systems Support Engineer Office 512-226-8753 Cell 512-658-9110 ralatorre@aperian.com
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On Thu, 8 Feb 2001, Melvin, Grant wrote:
About 2 years ago our department purchased a f740 for use as a /var/mail spool. Our main backup infrastructure is based on some tape robots and a solaris box running legato networker. We have not been real happy w/ backing up out netapp on legato. Legato was chosen many years ago due to the user available 'recover' command, which is critical w/ 25k+ users on some of our servers.
- BudTool
We have not tried this.
- NFS
This is what we are currently using. This is not great since the atime of mboxes is modified, confusing the users who constantly 'finger' each other to see who has read their mail.
- NetWorker NetApp Client
We spent a lot of time on this, with bad results. The filer would crash, the dumps would stop. The filer wouldn't start dumping again the filer was rebooted. We pursued the problems w/ both legato and networker with frustrating results. Legato told us to wait for next legato patch, or maybe next version of ONTAP. Netapp would tell us to upgrade version of ONTAP or perhaps wait for next legato patch. After several months and 3-4 iterations of this cycle we gave up. It seemed that neither tech support were really interested in the problem.
- NDMP-compliant NetWorker
We recently got legato 6 w/ ndmp support, and a sun e3500 + qualstar 412600 jukebox to test this option. Our backup guru's first attempt to connect to the f740 did not work for some reason, so I am going to read through all the legato docs ASAP. It would be nice if we could reliably backup up our netapp to a jukebox mounted off a sun (not attached to the back of the filer) using NDMP.
It is too bad we had such bad luck with option 3. The filer has performed fantastically, but our backup woes always come up when we discuss replacing old NFS servers.
It would be interesting (to me at least) to hear experiences with each variant. Option 4 is essentially replacing option 1 since that option is being discontinued.
Cheers, Grant
=========== grant@netapp.com ========== Grant Melvin === === Software Development Manager === === Data Availability & Management === |\ | __ ___ /\ __ __ === Network Appliance === | \ | |__ | /__\ |__| |__| === 475 East Java Drive === | | |__ | / \ | | (R) === Sunnyvale === === California, 94089 === === Tel:(408)822-6761 =========== Network Appliance ========== Fax:(408)822-4578
-----Original Message----- From: Robert Alatorre [mailto:ralatorre@aperian.com] Sent: Thursday, February 08, 2001 2:08 PM To: toasters@mathworks.com Subject: legatto
Anybody have any bad or good experience using legatto as backup for the net app filer?
Bob Alatorre Systems Support Engineer Office 512-226-8753 Cell 512-658-9110 ralatorre@aperian.com
******************* Internet Email Confidentiality Footer
Privileged/Confidential Information may be contained in thismessage. If you are not the addressee indicated in this message (or responsible for delivery of the message to such person), you may not use, copy, disclose or deliver this message to anyone. If you have received this message in error, kindly notify the sender by reply email or at the phone number listed above, and then delete this message.
/* Jason S. Cash - Systems Programmer IT/Network and Systems Services University of Delaware, Newark Delaware (phone number removed due to vendor trolling on the toasters mailing list.) */
On Thu, 8 Feb 2001, Melvin, Grant wrote:
Hi, Hope you don't mind me jumping in on this question. As I see it Legato currently provide 4 ways to backup a NetApp filer:
- BudTool
No opinion, although I've seen positive comments from others on this list.
- NFS
If you have a busy filer or large volumes, it will take a long time. This is the most "reliable" way of backing up a filer.
- NetWorker NetApp Client
Crap product, and not really supported well by Legato at all. It's unstable, the nsrexecd daemons that run on the filer need to be constantly restarted, it only works on select (and outdated) versions of ONTAP, and the save sets can terminate if the volumes sizes run over 100Gb (due to some internal array problem in the s/w)
- NDMP-compliant NetWorker
I have't tried out Legato's NDMP support, but then I'm having basic Networker problems (running 6.0.1) trying to backup my filers.
I've about given up on Legato and have been doing evaluations of Veritas NetBackup software. I've found it to be better than Legato, more robust, stable, and the NDMP work rather well. The only drawback to NDMP, and this isn't Veritas' fauly, is that you cannot have multiple save streams from the filer to the tape unit. NDMP only allows ONE stream from ONE filer. This is a bit of bummer because the DLT drives work better when you have a lot of streams being thrown at it, and if your filesystems on the volume you are backing up are a lot of small files and directories, the save stream from the one NDMP session can be rather anemic.
It will be nice when NDMP allows to have multiple concurrent save streams based on the filesystem and not just the volume. Netapp ONTAP supports mulitple NDMP session per filer, and Veritas can handle multiple streams, just no the protocol that bridges the two.
That's my take on it so far.
-Scott
- NDMP-compliant NetWorker
. . . stable, and the NDMP work rather well. The only drawback to NDMP, and this isn't Veritas' fauly, is that you cannot have multiple save streams from the filer to the tape unit. NDMP only allows ONE stream from ONE filer. This is a bit of bummer because the DLT drives work better when you have a lot of streams being thrown at it, and if your filesystems on the volume you are backing up are a lot of small files and directories, the save stream from the one NDMP session can be rather anemic.
As a several-year NDMP user (BudTool), I can tell you that the lack of multiple streams is not a problem. Our filer (F630) is capable of driving a DLT7k drive (direct SCSI-attached) at 6 to 7 MBytes/sec. The NetApp folks tell me it could stream two drives at once, if we wanted to go faster (one can dump more than one volume, or qtree, at the same time).
NDMP-users, don't forget to look at QuickRestore (worksta.com), SyncSort, BakBone (NetVault), and CommVault, in addition to the Legato and Veritas products.
Regards,
-
Jason S. Cash -
Marion Hakanson -
Melvin, Grant -
Scott Mikusko