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NetBackup™ NAS Administrator's Guide

Last Published: 2025-08-12

Product(s): NetBackup (11.0.0.1)

About existing NetApp cDOT configurations before you upgrade

This topic describes how to upgrade NetBackup with a NetApp cDOT system. If you use a NetApp cDOT system, review the following information before you upgrade to NetBackup 7.7 or later.

If your NetApp cluster is set to node-scope-mode and you have not yet installed NetBackup, your environment should be set up as follows before the upgrade:

The client name that is used in the backup policy is the node-management LIF.
Only the volumes that are hosted by the node that hosts the LIF are available for backup or restore. Each node must have a node-management LIF in the client list of the policy.
Tape devices that are attached to a node are available for backup or restore.
- The NDMP host name that is used for the device configuration is the node name (node-management LIF).
- The tape devices are available only to the nodes to which they are connected.

After you upgrade to NetBackup, everything works as it did before the upgrade until you enable the NetBackup cDOT capabilities by disabling node-scope mode.

To start using the NetBackup cDOT capabilities, do the following:

Back up the catalog.
(Optional) Create a detailed image catalog report that provides the following:
- Collects information, such as NDMP host names, policies, and backup selections, that can be used when you create the new cDOT backup policies.
- Determines the client names to search for when you restore the pre-cDOT backups in the new cDOT environment.
Upgrade all of the NetBackup media servers that are authorized to access the cluster. Upgrades do not have to occur at the same time, but must be done before the following step.
Enable the Vserver aware mode on the cluster by disabling node-scope-mode. Please see your specific cluster documentation.
If there are tape devices attached to the cluster, you must reconfigure your tape devices to use the cluster-management LIF as the NDMP host for the device configuration.
Caution:
NetBackup only supports the use of the cluster-management LIF for device configurations.
Note:
For each node in the cluster that will have tape devices, be sure to configure all of the tape devices available to the cluster on that node. Any node that has access to a tape device should also have access to all of the tape devices.
Enable the NDMP service on the cluster for each data LIF that will be used for backups. See the NetApp documentation for more information.
Authorize the data LIF as needed for NetBackup access.
Add, delete, or update the old storage units that are using the node names of the cluster.
Add, delete, or update the old policies that back up the cluster.
- You must use either the data LIF or the cluster-management LIF as the client name. NetBackup does not support use of the node name for the client name.
- Backup selections may also need to be adjusted.
Note:
The use of the data LIF as a client will protect and catalog all volumes associated with the data LIF's Vserver under this client. The use of the cluster-management LIF as a client will protect and catalog all volumes on the entire cluster under this client.
To read the old images, you may have to use alternate client restore. For more information about alternate client restores, see the NetBackup Administrator's Guide, Volume I

If your NetApp cluster is set to Vserver aware mode, and you have not yet installed NetBackup, your environment should be set up as follows before the upgrade:

The cluster is in Vserver aware mode. The Cluster Aware Backup (CAB) extension is enabled on the filer. NetBackup does not use the CAB extension.
The client name used in the backup policy is the data LIF associated with a Vserver or the cluster-management LIF.
Only volumes (that belong to the Vserver) hosted by a node that hosts the data LIF are available for backup or restore.
The tape devices that are attached to the cluster are not available for backup or restore.

After you upgrade to NetBackup, the behavior is different and you need to make some changes. NetBackup now uses the CAB extension and enables it by default. Because of this, the following occurs:

NetBackup uses all of the volumes that belong to the Vserver.
NetBackup uses the volume affinities.

As a result of this change, the following occurs:

When the ALL_FILESYSTEMS directive is in use by multiple policies for the same Vserver, NetBackup may back up the same volume multiple times under different policies. And further incremental backups may not be reliable.
Multi-streamed backup jobs will start failing with status code 99. The following message is displayed in the job details for the failed jobs:
```
12/10/2014 14:42:11 - Error ndmpagent (pid=29502) NDMP backup failed, 
path = /vs02/vol1:PARAMETER:AFFINITY=4ac6c4b6-7e99-11e4-b3b6-1779f43af917
```
This happens because some components of NetBackup are not told to use the cluster in the Vserver aware mode. It is highly recommended to upgrade and enable the cDOT capabilities as soon as possible.

To start using the cDOT capabilities, you must do the following:

Back up the catalog.
Create a detailed image catalog report (it can be referenced later for read operations).
Upgrade all of the NetBackup media servers that are authorized to access the cluster. All media servers should be upgraded at the same time to avoid inconsistent behavior.
Run the tpautoconf -verify ndmp_host command for each pre-existing LIF that is configured in NetBackup. This command must be run from the media servers that have credentials to the LIF. After the command is successfully run, the nbemmcmd command should display output similar to the following example:
```
servername1@/>nbemmcmd -listsettings -machinename machinename123 -machinetype ndmp
NBEMMCMD, Version: 7.7
The following configuration settings were found:
NAS_OS_VERSION="NetApp Release 8.2P3 Cluster-Mode"
NAS_CDOT_BACKUP="1"
Command completed successfully.

NAS_OS_VERSION displays the NetApp Version.
NAS_CDOT_BACKUP tells us if NetBackup uses the new cDOT capabilities.
```
Note:
The tpautoconf -verify ndmp_host command is not required when a new Vserver is added.
You can now add devices to the NDMP cluster and access them using the cluster-management LIF. If you add devices, you must discover the devices.
Add storage units for the newly discovered devices.
Add, delete, or update the policies that reference the cluster as needed. Start using the cluster in Vserver aware mode.

If you do not want to enable the cDOT functionality immediately; for example, you want to upgrade the media servers in phases, you can disable the cDOT capabilities by doing the following:

Create the following touch file on all of the media servers that are authorized to access the NDMP host. This causes NetBackup to disable the CAB extension for all of the NDMP hosts for that media server.
- On Windows: install_path\NetBackup\db\config\DISABLE_NDMP_CDOT
- On UNIX: /usr/openv/netbackup/db/config/DISABLE_NDMP_CDOT
You can disable the CAB extensions for specific NDMP hosts by creating the following file on the media servers with one or more NDMP host names (one per line):
- On Windows: install_path\NetBackup\db\config\DISABLE_NDMP_CDOT_HOST_LIST
- On UNIX: /usr/openv/netbackup/db/config/DISABLE_NDMP_CDOT_HOST_LIST
  An example of the content of the file is as follows. NetBackup disables the CAB extension only for Filer_1 and Filer_2.
```
Filer_1 

Filer_2
```
  To enable the cDOT functionality, these files must be deleted and you must follow all of the steps explained in the previous upgrade procedure.

More Information

About Media and Device Management configuration

Authorizing NetBackup access to a NAS (NDMP) host