Restoring with NetApp SMTAPE

The SMTAPE option using the path to the root of the volume (e.g., /vol/foo) will back up and restore complete volumes. This is closer to backing up and restoring a hard disk partition using dd or partimage. Bacula has no knowledge of the internal structure of the SMTAPE data because, when the volume is brought back online after the restore, the filer will simply recognize it as a WAFL filesystem and proceed on its own.

To restore a NetApp volume with the SMTAPE option, the target volume volume must have the type Data Protection (DP) and needs to be restricted, which can be done with the volume command on the NetApp host:

netapp> volume create -volume restore -aggregate agg1_data -size 5GB
   -state online -policy default -type DP -autosize-mode grow_shrink
   -snapshot-policy none -foreground true

netapp> volume restrict -volume restore
Volume "restore" is now restricted.

Then, it is needed to specify where=/vol/restore in the restore command.

Warning

With this method, any data on the volume would be overwritten by the previously saved data.

After restore is complete, the volume is in a read-only state. To make the volume writeable, you need to either submit the snapmirror break command or use the Data ONTAP APIs.