Wednesday, January 18, 2012

EMC VNXe3100 Backup of CIFS Shares

This article is in relation to the VNXe 3100 and Backup Exec 2010. I am sure with NDMP being a standard protocol for performing backups of SAN/NAS CIFS shares it could be applied to other backup or SAN products.



I configured Unisphere to enable NDMP under "Settings-->Shared Folder Server Settings". Select Enable NDMP and set a password under “Set Password” for NDMP.

I created an account on the Backup Exec console with the user name “ndmp” and specified the same password I configured in Unisphere under “Set Password” for NDMP (shown above).



This is an article from Symantec explaining the basics of the configuration from the Backup Exec console: http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH48957 It does not appear to be the 2010 version referenced in the article, but the process is essentially the same.

I am sure I probably could have mapped a drive from the backup server to the share and done the backup, but I am not sure how effective that would have been in regard to open files. It seems pretty efficient at this point, but is an added cost due to the NDMP option having to be purchased as an add-on for Backup Exec.