Veritas NetBackup™ for NDMP Administrator's Guide

DAR (Direct Access Recovery)

DAR is an optional capability of NDMP data and tape services where only relevant portions of the secondary media are accessed during recovery operations. The NDMP host positions the tape to the exact location of the requested file(s), reading only the data that is needed for those files. Restore times can be reduced from hours to minutes.

NDMP (Network Data Management Protocol)

NDMP is a widely used protocol through which an NDMP-conformant backup application can control the backups and restores for an NDMP host.

NDMP client

An NDMP client is an NDMP-compliant backup application (also known as a Data Management Application or DMA) that is an NDMP server application client. An NDMP client sends commands to the NDMP server application to control the backups and restores on an NDMP host.

NetBackup for NDMP allows NetBackup to act as an NDMP client.

NetBackup for NDMP server

A NetBackup for NDMP server is a NetBackup master or media server on which NetBackup for NDMP software is installed.

NDMP host

An NAS system that serves files to clients using HTTP, FTP, CIFS, or NFS protocols. It also runs an NDMP server application that communicates with NDMP client backup software to configure and perform backup and restore tasks. NAS systems provide fast, multi-protocol file access and cost effective data storage to workstations and servers in the network or across the Internet.

In a NetBackup configuration, the NDMP host is considered a client of NetBackup. However, NetBackup client software is never installed on an NDMP host.

NDMP multiplexing

NDMP multiplexing concurrently writes multiple backup streams to the same Media Manager tape storage device from the same client or different clients. NDMP multiplexing improves overall NetBackup performance by more efficient use of the storage unit drives. State of the art storage devices can typically stream data faster than client agents can create backup streams. Therefore, multiple data streams can be sent to and effectively processed by a given storage unit. Only remote NDMP multiplexing is supported.

NDMP server application

An NDMP server application runs on an NDMP host and runs backup, restore, and device control commands that it receives from an NDMP-conformant backup application. The backup application (NetBackup) is considered an NDMP client. A separate instance of an NDMP server process exists for each connection to an NDMP client. That is, if two backups are in progress, an NDMP server process exists for each backup.

NDMP storage unit

An NDMP storage unit stores the backup data for an NDMP host. The tape drives in this storage unit attach directly to the NDMP host or can be configured on a SAN. Note that NDMP storage units cannot be used to store data for non-NDMP hosts, and NetBackup disk storage units cannot be used for NDMP tasks.

Redirected restore (to a different client)

In a redirected restore, files are restored to a client other than the one from which they were originally backed up. In NetBackup for NDMP, the restore data travels from an NDMP host (or NetBackup media server) with a locally attached storage device to another NDMP host on the network.

Remote NDMP

A form of three-way backup and restore also known as NDMP backup to Media Manager storage units. Data travels from an NDMP host to a tape drive that is attached to a NetBackup media server.

See Configuring NDMP backup to Media Manager storage units.

Three-way backup and restore

In a three-way backup or restore, data travels between an NDMP host and a storage device that is attached to another NDMP host or to a NetBackup media server. This backup contrasts with local NDMP backup or restore where the data travels between an NDMP host's disk and a storage device directly attached to the same NDMP host.

Virtual Tape Library (VTL)

A virtual tape library is a storage system that uses disk-based technology to emulate a tape library and tape drives. For secondary storage, NetBackup can copy VTL images directly to a physical tape or to another VTL by means of NDMP DirectCopy.