Using NetApp SMTAPE Backup Option

The SMTAPE backup option essentially makes a raw binary dump of the selected NAS partitions (volumes). The big advantage of the SMTAPE feature is the speed, especially for volumes with millions of files on them. The standard backup option (DUMP) is much too slow to effectively backup large, multi-terabyte volumes, which are the norm these days. For Full backups, SMTAPE will significantly outperform DUMP on speed. Also, because it includes the entire snapshot history, users can reduce the number of snapshots they keep on their primary volume since the backups include them.

For example, keeping 30 days worth of snapshots on your filer and doing monthly full backups with SMTAPE, and keeping those for years would give you access to your entire snapshot history for the time period without taking up excessive space on your primary volumes. With large capacity tapes, that turns into a pretty granular data protection setup. If you had hourly snapshots, you could potentially get anything back from any hour going back many years just by doing a full backup every month. The recovery path is a bit complex but manageable.

Available since Bacula Enterprise 12.4.0

Recent versions of SMTAPE now support the Incremental backup feature.

There are pros and cons to both approaches, but SMTAPE as an NDMP backup method solves a particularly painful problem for many enterprise users. It is a useful feature, and as long as NetApp is supporting its use by backup applications, it should be considered as first choice backup method.

See the section about SMTAPE Incremental/Differential configuration SMTAPE Incremental/Differential Configuration for more information.