Using NetBackup with NetApp's Data ONTAP 8.2 cluster mode

In the Clustered Data ONTAP (cDOT) 8.2 release, NetApp released an NDMP extension called Cluster Aware Backup (CAB). This extension allows backing up a Vserver (virtual server) or storage virtual machine (SVM) as an NDMP host (client) in a NetBackup policy. It is the default in new installs of ONTAP 8.2 and beyond. In environments where a cluster is upgraded from an older version of ONTAP, or in environments running multiple ONTAP versions, the behavior is to use node names as the NDMP host name. This is configurable using the following ONTAP command:

system services ndmp node-scope-mode [on|off]

Where on is Node-scope NDMP mode, and off is Vserver Aware NDMP mode.

ONTAP 8.2 C-mode (cluster mode) allows volumes to be moved from one node to another node in a cluster. Movement of volumes is performed to provide non-disruptive operations, high availability (failover), and resource balancing. NetApp automatically moves volumes during a failover. However, moving volumes to another node for maintenance or to provide load balancing will be performed by the NetApp storage admin.

NetBackup supports the CAB extension with the NetBackup 7.7 release. There are important considerations when configuring NetBackup to protect a NetApp Clustered Data ONTAP environment running in either node-scope NDMP mode or Vserver Aware NDMP mode.

In NetBackup, data is tracked by client name, which is the NDMP hostname that is used to access the data. In cDOT, data is associated with a Vserver and hosted on a physical node. These things need to be considered when configuring NetBackup.

Another consideration is the availability of resources from the cluster, as illustrated in Table: Availability of resources from the cluster:

An Intercluster LIF is very similar to a Cluster Management LIF, but needs to be configured on each node of a cluster.