[Veritas-bu] NetApp backup options

Greetings,

I'm trying to figure out a way to extend the life of our backup disk space on a NetApp filer. Unfortunately all the things that I can think of don't seem to work as I would hope. I'm not familiar with many of the newer Veritas features and whether they would properly work for what I want to do. Any suggestions would be appreciated, including other news groups you think would be more appropriate.

Our current environment has a pair of 6030 filers in a cluster. We have a third 6030 with a NearStore personality. We currently use SnapVault to transfer data from the primary to the secondary filer. Our retention period for all data is 90 day. We have maxed out the disk count on the primary cluster at 840 disks and have close to 100 TB used. There is about a 5% change rate per day on the overall data. We currently have ~500 TB for the NearStore. With our expected growth rates we are looking at ways to stretch the disk space. I currently have an older Veritas 5.1 in place doing other backups. If I can find something that would work with Veritas I would create a completely new installation with server, tape library, etc.

What I was wanting to do was to keep data on the NearStore as backups for 30 days. After 30 days I would like to move that data to tape and retain it for the remaining 60 days. One problem that I have is that I only have 1 2gig onboard port available on each primary filer for connecting a tape drive there. I have some 4 gig ports available on the secondary. Even if I decide to do backups from the secondary it backs up files that changed and not blocks. That would result in a full backup every time I try to do a backup. I could try and do nfs mounts to a backup server but I'm concerned about trying to drag that much data across the network and killing the filers while it tries to figure out everything that changed.

Unfortunately I don't have a tape library with compatible fibre bridges to connect to the NetApps. This has greatly limited my NDMP backup experience. If I use NDMP over fibre or ethernet, is the filer still the one doing most of the work figuring out what needs to be backed up?

Thanks,

Jeff

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Jeff Cleverley
Unix Systems Administrator
4380 Ziegler Road
Fort Collins, Colorado 80525
970-288-4611
jeff.cleverley AT avagotech DOT com

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