NetApp SMTape or NDMP backups

[jettman96]

We are trying to find the best solution to backup our NetApp to tape. We currently snapmirror our volumes to our DR site and we would like to take advantage of those snapmirrors to backup the NetApp to Tape. The problem I have run into is that the NDMP backups won't backup the snapmirror volumes. I can backup a regular volume but not the SnapMirror. Based on the error I'm suspecting it is a conflict with the Snapmirror process.

So, this ran us down a path for other solutions. We found out that NetApp has a built-in functionality to write SnapMirrors to Tape called, SMTape.

Does Veeam have the capability to leverage the SMTape functionality?

Thanks,
Nik

[Dima P.]

Hello Nik,

Unfortunately Veeam B&R does not provide integration with SMTape feature of NetApp. Looks like you can either use NDMP to tape or regular file level backup to tape. Can you elaborate on what content is stored on the these NetApp volumes? Thanks!

[jettman96]

Hi Dima,

The content is several TB consisting of a wide variety of files but mostly smaller files. I discussed the file level backup as a solution for another issue with our technical rep and the problem with that is the number of files we would be backing would cause our Veeam Database to grow to an unmanageable size.

As far as I have tested, NDMP won't support writing our snap mirrors to tape.

[Dima P.]

Nik,

NDMP won't support writing our snap mirrors to tape

True, NDMP can do a volume dump to tape.

several TB consisting of a wide variety of files but mostly smaller files.

That's indeed might be challenging for file to tape engine, mind me asking if you run you Veeam B&R on a bundled SQL Express or you have dedicated SQL server installation to keep the backup server DB? Thanks!

[jettman96]

Dima,

We are running our Veeam B&R on a dedicated SQL Server installation.

We are currently looking at Catalogic as an alternative to accomplish this solution since it will supports SMTape.

Thanks,
Nik

[jettman96]

I would like to officially request support for NetApp's SMTape protocol. Is there another avenue I need to take to make this official?

We would like to use SMTape to write our Snapmirrors in our DR sites to write directly to tape as our final copy of the data. With Snapmirrors enabled it doesn't make much sense to backup the data a second time over the same WAN link (especially when talking about TB).

Essentially, we will have to use an additional Tape Backup solution to accomplish this along with partition our tape library to accommodate a second backup solution.

Regards,
Nik

[veremin]

I would like to officially request support for NetApp's SMTape protocol. Is there another avenue I need to take to make this official?

No, the forum is official enough to make us track this request. Thanks!

[jettman96]

Thanks Veremin!