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Our NetVault license is about to expire within the next year, so what alternatives are there on Linux?

We have 20TB and many millions of files, so time on the backup window is important.

The backup is done to tape, where a full backup is done once a week and incremental each day.

The data is /home.

Amanda Enterprise have NDMP, so that could be an option.

Are there other fast options for Linux?

Sandra
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2 Answers2

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We have 20TB and many millions of files, so time on the backup window is important.

Sounds like it's pretty critical. I would renew your license if I were you.

MDMarra
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assuming you have a suitably large target to back up to, rsync (possibly broken up into chunks or managed by a set of scripts) may be suitable. (for the pedants in the crowd: it can still be used to make a backup, depending on how you structure the target, whether you use --delete or date stamping, etc.)

it's not clear from your question whether you're interested in backing up the current contents of your NetVault elsewhere, or if you're looking for a long-term replacement for the NetVault (sounds like maybe both?).

I have had good success in the past using ZFS on a suitably large disk array (a Sun Thumper at the time) running Solaris 10 as a feature-compatible NetApp replacement (at about 1/10 the cost). Depending on your feature requirements, this is worth looking into - zfs is pretty sweet (as are many of the other new technologies Sun introduced in Sol10).

darkuncle
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    also, without more details about the type of data, number and type of clients, backup time window and frequency, retention requirements, etc., it's difficult to be very helpful with a specific answer. – darkuncle Jan 06 '12 at 21:20
  • Update the post a bit. rsync is great, but scanning millions of files to changes, will take too long. It is a long term replacement for NetVault. Yes, ZFS with snapshots would have been great in this situation, but I don't suppose NetApp's own filesystem can do ZFS replication liek ZFs with send/receive commands? – Sandra Jan 06 '12 at 21:38
  • whether it takes forever depends a bit on how the filesystem is structured, and how many clients/servers there are (can you split up your rsync jobs across multiple heads? are you rsyncing from multiple clients to a single target or trying to replicate an existing target to a new destination? etc.). It can be done, but it's not pretty (used exactly this on a 350 million object filesystem once while block-based replication was unavailable.) this is why I asked for more details from the OP. – darkuncle Jan 06 '12 at 21:45