Has anybody had any thoughts or done any testing with the following configuration? Basically connecting a Netapp into a SAN for backups not storage.
One Netapp F760 One extra Fibre Card in the Netapp One Firbre Switch (Brocade or Ancor) One Tape Library connected into the Fibre Switch. Veritas Netbackup and NDMP Solaris or NT Netbackup Master and several Media servers
Connect the Netapp into the swtich with the extra fibre connection. Zone the switch so the Netapp and two tape drives are tied together. Backup driectly to the tape drives by using NDMP.
My questions to Netapp are: 1) Is this possible? 2) How would the Netapp log into the switch? As a Loop or Fabric? 3) What is the solution for backing up a Netapp directly to Fibre tape drives? 4) What is supported?
I am going to test what I thank will work but any thoughts or ideas would be helpful.
Jason Middlebrooks Systems Engineer Datalink Corp. 888-933-9327 x2970
Contact:
Ron
Voice 301.205.0079
NTAP recently announced that you could do this but only with a Vixel switch:
http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/000509/ca_quantum_3.html
I haven't seen anything official about what other configurations are/will be supported.
Bruce
When I attempted to do this I was informed by Spectralogic (one of the approved tape library vendors) and Netapp (including the product manager responsible for this "product") that this solution was basicaly a one-off using experimental code which wasnt even close to being released.
I was given several different stories, one of which was that it wouldn't be supported until a software release planned for September, >6 months after its availability was announced. At this point I have no idea when or if they'll ever be able to support this. They're saying that they have a "better" solution coming down the line more quickly than this one, but I've yet to hear any kind of details. I'll ping Netapp folks to see if anything has changed since last time we talked.
As far as I know, there still exists no sane backup strategy for multiple filers, unless you think having one tape library per filer or backing up multiple terabytes of data over the network and through some kind of backup management box is sane.
This makes me cranky. This also makes me want to invite all of the other vendors back in for a chat.
-Brian
Bruce Sterling Woodcock wrote:
NTAP recently announced that you could do this but only with a Vixel switch:
http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/000509/ca_quantum_3.html
I haven't seen anything official about what other configurations are/will be supported.
Bruce
As far as I know, there still exists no sane backup strategy for multiple filers, unless you think having one tape library per filer or backing up multiple terabytes of data over the network and through some kind of backup management box is sane.
It can be, considering that often it is cheaper to buy the hardware to set up your own dedicated backup LAN than buying the hwardware to set up your own dedicated backup SAN.
But if you have a pre-existing SAN and a Vixel switch, NTAP's new solution seems ideal.
Bruce
As far as I know, there still exists no sane backup strategy for multiple filers, unless you think having one tape library per filer or backing up multiple terabytes of data over the network and through some kind of backup management box is sane.
You don't need a tape library per filer if you use NDMP compliant backup software. NDMP supports SCSI pass-through so that the backup software can co-ordinate tape loading activities across multiple hosts mounted on multiple drives, filers included. You only need one drive per filer.
With three-way NDMP, you don't even need a dedicated drive per filer, but the filers would be chatting over one of the networks between them. On the other hand, that could be a dedicated link if you want.
The key to NDMP is that the backup management box doesn't need to touch the data. It handles scheduling, indexes, and logs, but otherwise just tells hosts to back up to either their own local drives or some other NDMP-compliant host's drives.
You should never need to resort to a library per filer.
Regards, Garth.
-- Garth T Kidd garth@netapp.com Mobile: +61-411-596-593 Consulting Systems Engineer, Asia Pacific Mobile Fax: +61-3-9228-9732 Network Appliance http://www.netapp.com/
I think NetApp has a configuration like this, but I'm not sure whether it is production quality. There is a slight difference between arbitrated loop which the Filer uses and fabric login which is used in a switched network, there were some tweaks you had to do to your switch to make it work.
I'll let NetApp fill in the blanks for you.
Tom
On Wed, 17 May 2000 jmiddlebrooks@datalink.com wrote:
Has anybody had any thoughts or done any testing with the following configuration? Basically connecting a Netapp into a SAN for backups not storage.
One Netapp F760 One extra Fibre Card in the Netapp One Firbre Switch (Brocade or Ancor) One Tape Library connected into the Fibre Switch. Veritas Netbackup and NDMP Solaris or NT Netbackup Master and several Media servers
Connect the Netapp into the swtich with the extra fibre connection. Zone the switch so the Netapp and two tape drives are tied together. Backup driectly to the tape drives by using NDMP.
My questions to Netapp are:
- Is this possible?
- How would the Netapp log into the switch? As a Loop or Fabric?
- What is the solution for backing up a Netapp directly to Fibre tape
drives? 4) What is supported?
I am going to test what I thank will work but any thoughts or ideas would be helpful.
Jason Middlebrooks Systems Engineer Datalink Corp. 888-933-9327 x2970
-
Bruce Sterling Woodcock -
foo -
Garth T Kidd -
jmiddlebrooks＠datalink.com -
Ron Neuenberger -
tkaczma＠gryf.net