NetBackup for NDMP Agent
The NetBackup for Network Data Management Protocol (NDMP) Agent reports data using the accurate licensing method when capacity licensing is used. After backup is complete using the policy for Network Attached Systems (NAS), the captures the size of data that the policy protects. The data is reported to the master server.
Accurate licensing for NDMP is specific to an policy type. This type of licensing collects the front-end data size (FEDS) based on the backup selections that are defined in the backup policy types.
Following are some of directives, wildcard characters, and path names that are available as backup selections in NDMP workload.
Directives
The directive provides a method to include all file systems and volumes on an filer in an backup policy. You can exclude specific volumes from an backup selection if you do not want to back up every volume on an filer. Use the directive for this purpose.
The directive is used when is enabled otherwise it is ignored. In this mode, following can occur:
The backup splits into separate stream in backup selections wherever directive occurs.
All file paths between directives belong to the same stream.
Start of defines the end of previous stream.
The last stream in the backup selection list is terminated by the end of backup selection list.
Wildcard character
Regular expression containing the wildcard character is used to match the NDMP backup selection for all volumes or folders present on the filer. However, regular expression matching cannot be used for files and is not supported for NDMP workload.
If a filer has three volumes /VolumeA , /VolumeABC and /VolumeDEF and each volume having folders with names prefix as Folder, then the following selections are valid:
/Volume* matches all the volumes prefixed with Volume that present on the filer
/VolumeA/Folder* matches all the folders prefixed with Folder in VolumeA that present on the Filer
Regular expression containing the wildcard character is used to match the NDMP backup selection for all volumes or folders present on the filer. However, regular expression matching cannot be used for files and is not supported for workload.
If a filer has three volumes /VolumeA , /VolumeB and /VolumeC and each volume have three folders Folder1, Folder2, and Folder3, then the following selections are valid:
/Volume? matches all the volumes present on the NDMP Filer with prefix as Volume and having any single character after that.
/VolumeA/Folder? matches all the folders having prefix as Folder in VolumeA and having any single character after that.
Regular expression containing the wildcard character is used to match the backup selection for alphanumeric pattern match. Regular expression containing the wildcard cannot be used for files and is not supported for workload.
/fs[1-9] matches all paths that begin with the literal characters /fs and end with any single numeric character from 1 through 9.
For example, /fs1, /fs2, and so on up to /fs9 match the specified pattern /fs[1-9]. However, /fs0 and /fsa do not match the specified pattern.
/vol/ndmp[0-9] matches any volume name that begins with /vol/ndmp and ends with a single numeric character 0 through 9.
/vol/ndmp[0-9][0-9] matches any volume name that begins with /vol/ndmp and ends with the two-digit numeric characters 00 through 99.
/vol/ndmp[0-9][0-9][0-9] matches any volume name that begins with /vol/ndmp and ends with the three-digit numeric characters 000 through 999.
Pathname
/volumeA matches all the files or folders in the VolumeA that present on the filer.
/volume/FolderA matches all the files in the folderA that present on the filer.
/volume/FolderA/FileA matches the file FileA only that presents on the filer.
The reports actual data usage without overlap by calculating the accurate data size using the related backup files and policies. Following rules are applied to guarantee data size accuracy:
If the data size backed up by a policy with directive is greater than the sum of other policies, the data size of directive is counted.
If identical policies are taken, then the policy with higher size is counted.
The uncounted policies are displayed with 0 data size in the report.
If data size backed up by policy P1 is consumed in another policy P2, then the data size of policy P2 only is counted.
If data size is overlapped in multiple policies, then it is counted only once.
System administrators can use the following ways to verify the correctness of the data size reported by accurate licensing.
To verify the size of volumes with filer, log on to filer and run the following command:
volume show -fields size,used,available,percent-used.
Alternatively, administrator can mount the volume of filer (Provided NFS protocol is enabled for that Volume) on any Linux/Unix based client and execute the following commands:
o du -sh o ls - lh
When backup agent fails to post licensing information to database, one of the following error messages is displayed in the activity monitor:
The message indicates that the backup agent is encountered an authorization issue, with a certificate expired or account password expired.
The message indicates that the backup agent is encountered a service offline issue, with the service NetBackup web console not running. For more information, see the Veritas NetBackup Status Codes Reference Guide.