NetApp Drive Definitions

I always forget the NetApp drive definitions so i thought I would post the example I found here so I can recall it later. If any of you wondered which definition TSM uses or would like to know why here is your answer:


rst4l - rewind device, format is: H Format 30 GB
nrst4l - no rewind device, format is: H Format 30 GB
urst4l - unload/reload device, format is: H Format 30 GB
rst4m - rewind device, format is: H Format 30 GB
nrst4m - no rewind device, format is: H Format 30 GB
urst4m - unload/reload device, format is: H Format 30 GB
rst4h - rewind device, format is: H Format 30 GB
nrst4h - no rewind device, format is: H Format 30 GB
urst4h - unload/reload device, format is: H Format 30 GB
rst4a - rewind device, format is: H Format 60 GB comp
nrst4a - no rewind device, format is: H Format 60 GB comp
urst4a - unload/reload device, format is: H Format 60 GB comp

The one is red is the definition TSM uses since it rewinds the tape, but leaves the unload/reload to TSM and not the device itself.

NDMP Question

I have a customer who wants to have a copy of a NetApp volume. That's not a problem but my question is this, is an NDMP dump initiated by TSM capable of being restored without a TSM server? Since TSM labeled the tape is there any issue with trying to restore the data directly from a NetApp with a direct attached drive? Also when running an NDMP dump directly from the NetApp and not from TSM is the TOC/Catalogue stored on the same tape with the data? My thinking is that the NDMP dump even though initiated by TSM is still just an NDMP dump. My concern is the TSM labeling and if it would cause any readability issues for a NetApp based restore?

UPDATE!!!

I contacted Tivoli support and a NDMP backup is fully independent of TSM. I figured it was but wanted to make sure. The customer wanted us to backup a NetApp volume and send him the tape to hold indefinitely. Now I know I can just send him one of the older NetApp backups from the time period requested without needing to do anything special.

UPDATE on NDMP Problem!

Support has identified the NDMP problem exists in TSM 5.3.3 if the ONTAP version is lower than 7.1. If you have NetApps make sure your ONTAP version is at or higher than version 7.1 before you upgrade your TSM server to 5.3.3 or higher.

TSM 5.3.3 NDMP Issue!

We discovered a problem with TSM 5.3.3 and failed NDMP backups. It seemed to be occurring on large volumes. After investigating the issue support was called and through further investigation it was discovered that there is a bug in the implementation of TSM’s use of the NMDP 4 protocol. This bug will cause some NDMP backups to fail when the backup spans volumes (i.e. uses more than one tape to do the backup of the volume). The suggestion is to either stay at version 5.3.2 or to use the following option in the dsmserv.opt file:

(Note: there is no problem with data integrity of backups that show completed)

FORCENDMPVERSION3    YES

This option will use the older NDMP protocol and should resolve the failures until a fix is released.
    

NetApp TOC Issues

We have recently found out that the TOC file creation in TSM can fail when the NetApp volume has special characters in the filename.  The has led people to believe that the backups are unsuccessful and our group would be unable to restore data. That assumption could not be farther from the truth.  We can still restore an individual file, we just can’t load a graphical representation into the web based TSM client. Anyway, the response by Tivoli was that we could identify the file with the problem because an error will report when the TOC creation fails stating the filename that caused the problem.  So we would have to do this hundreds of times since we have, on our own, identified at least 400+ files with special characters. So I have good backups just can’t restore them easily, then the question is how does TSM react when trying to restore files with special characters?    

NetApp Filer TOC Issue

I thought I would pass along a notice that we have been informed of a problem with TOC file corruption on NetApp filers that have files with dates before Jan. 1, 1970, and after Jan. 19, 2038. Somehow it causes the TOC backup to abend. It also looks like the TOC can be corrupted when the bitfile in which the TOC file is stored is damaged. If this is the case and the corruption is recent it is possible that the TOC is undamaged on the copypool and could possibly be used for the restore. If the TOCs are unavailable then file level restore will need the absolute path to succeed.