Dave Hitz hitz@netapp.com writes:
It remains to be seen whether or not we're crazy, but perhaps I can convince you that we're not *completely* crazy.
I understand your skepticism, because running the entire backup data flow through Java would probably not result in acceptable performance.
Our idea is to use Java to execute the Legato daemons, and to direct the data movement, but to provide new primitives in WAFL that allow Java to say things like: "stream the data from this inode to this network connection." I'm not sure what all WAFL primitives Jim ended up adding to boost performance, but hopefully you get the idea. We're not talking about the normal Java I/O library here.
So Java orchestrates the backup, but the data flow itself goes directly from WAFL to the network, using the same basic code path as NFS, CIFS or HTTP.
Dave,
This seems like marketing-deal-driven engineering.
A backup system that requires every client to run a specialized daemon (which must be ported every time you want to use a new type of client) seems really broken to me. We're quite happy here using dump, restore, and (nowadays) NDMP.
I'm worried that these additions will not only cause us problems on our filers, but will encourage Legato to kill off BudTool.
Most of all, I don't really understand the effort being applied to Java/Legato when other simple, useful, and important protocols like SNTP, SNMP, and rsh are unsupported or neglected.
- Dan
We're quite happy here using dump, restore, and (nowadays) NDMP.
I wish all of our customers were like you! Life would be much easier.
Backup seems to be difficult in large part because different people have such different needs and desires. I know that our priorities and roadmap will never make everyone happy, but I can share at least some of the thinking that's gone into our decisions.
This seems like marketing-deal-driven engineering.
I would call it "customer-driven" engineering, although it's certainly true that customer requests are often delivered via marketing.
I love NDMP, but the fact is that Legato is a very strong player in the backup market, and many big companies want support for native Legato backup protocols.
Customer feedback to us indicates that backup is one of the single most important issues on the filer (and probably on *any* file server), so we have prioritized backup above many other issues.
We have concluded that there is probably no "silver bullet" for backup. Different companies have chosen different corporate standards, and they have different feature requirements. As a result, we can't rely on a single solution (like NDMP or dump/restore), but must support a wide variety of solutions.
I'm worried that these additions ... encourage Legato to kill off BudTool.
I don't know Legato's plans with respect to BudTool, but I do know that they have been getting quite a bit of pressure about NDMP (thanks everyone!), and I believe they are taking it seriously.
Dave
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Daniel Quinlan -
Dave Hitz