NetApp Most Commonly Used Commands

NetApp Most Commonly Used Commands

man (man pages)
Browses through man(ual) pages of command documentation

sysconfig (-a, -r, -c, -t, -m)
Shows information about filer (hardware, disks, aggregates & RAID groups, ...)

options
Queries or changes values for various “registry” options setup. Walks through initial setup questions: filer name, IP addresses, etc., but does not erase any data

cifs setup
Walks through CIFS setup questions: domain/workgroup membership etc.

sysstat -x -s 1
Prints out all-round performance statistics

license
Adds/removes/prints licenses on filer

version (-b)
Prints out Data ONTAP & Diagnostics/Firmware version numbers

rdfile
Reads a text file and prints contents to console (Unix “cat”)

wrfile
Reads from console and sends output to text file (Unix “Cat >”)

snap (restore)
Performs snapshot operations, eg. restore from snapshot snapvault

snapmirror
Manipulates/controls SnapMirror/SnapVault/OSSV operations from the command-line

cf
Controls clustering, eg. enabling/disabling, forcing takeover & giveback

aggr
Creates/expands/destroys/manipulates aggregates, eg. change options

vol
Create/resizes/destroys/manipulates volumes, eg. change options

df
Shows free disk space (volumes, aggregates, also inodes)

qtree
Creates/manipulates qtrees (=special directories)

vif
Creates/destroys/manipulates virtual network interfaces (eg.team interfaces for failover or load-balancing)

ifconfig
Sets network IP configuration (put in /etc/rc to survive reboots)

ifstat
Shows network interface statistics

netdiag
Performs basic network diagnostic testing

ndmpd
ndmpcopy
Manipulates NDMP settings, or use ndmpcopy to copy files via NDMP

priv set
priv set advanced
priv set diag

Goes into advanced/diagnostics mode

Avamar Virtual Edition (AVE) and VM Backup Solutions

Avamar Virtual Edition for VMware also streamlines deployment. But instead of a hardware appliance packaging, the Avamar software is delivered as a virtual appliance that is able to run in a VMware virtual machine and leverage shared server and storage resources. Avamar Virtual Edition has the added benefit of introducing cost-effective virtual-to-virtual (V2V) or virtual-to-physical (V2P) disaster recovery through its replication feature.

Avamar’s de-duplication capability enhances other supported backup approaches for virtual server environments, including VMware Consolidated Backup, a backup agent in the ESX Service Console and a backup agent in the guest operating system. Data de-duplication reduces the traditional backup load on the virtual machine’s shared physical resources—CPU, memory, NIC and disk storage.

VMware Consolidated Backup (VCB) performs a snapshot of the production virtual disk (containing the operating system, applications and data for a virtual machine). The VCB snapshot is copied to a proxy server where the backup application can back it up. The virtual disk image (.vmdk extension file) appears as a new file every day, which traditional backup applications will back up every time. The VCB approach removes the backup processing burden from the ESX Server host by offloading it
to the VCB proxy server.  It also enables full-image backups of running virtual machines and file-level backups for Windows virtual machines, and eliminates the need to manage backup agents in each virtual machine for most scenarios.  Installing an Avamar agent on the VCB proxy server enables subfile de-duplication of files and the virtual disk (.vmdk) images.

ESX Server Service Console-Based Backup requires an Avamar software agent installed on the service console of each ESX Server host that needs protection. Using this method, de-duplication occurs at the ESX Service Console and the administrator can choose to back up the virtual machine either online or offline. Advantages of this method include less management overhead since backup agents are not needed inside the virtual machines; no backup proxy server or SAN required since backup occurs on the ESX Server host; and recovery is performed directly to the ESX Server host.
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Guest Level Backup requires installing a backup agent inside each virtual machine guest to communicate with the backup application (same general approach used to backup a physical server). This method enables full, incremental and application-specific backup, but it is very burdensome on the host system’s shared resources. Client-based de-duplication such as Avamar’s helps significantly. Installing an Avamar agent within each virtual machine guest enables de-duplication within and across
virtual machines to significantly reduce the backup strain on shared physical resources and applications, as well as the amount of data stored to disk.

Avamar and VMware

Avamar software quickly and efficiently protects VMware Infrastructure environments by reducing the size of backup data within and across virtual machines - using agents in the virtual machines or on the VMware vStorage APIs for Data Protection proxy server.

For virtual machine backups, Avamar eliminates traditional backup bottlenecks caused by the large amount of redundant data that must pass through the same set of shared resources - the physical server's CPU, Ethernet adapter, memory, and disk storage.

Avamar reduces the traditional backup load - up to 200 percent weekly - to as little as 2 percent over the same day period, dramatically reducing backup times and resource utilization.

Key Avamar benefits include:

• Up to 10x faster daily full backups
• Up to 500:1 reduction in required daily network bandwidth
• Up to 50:1 reduction in required global backup storage media
• Encryption of backup data in flight and at rest
• Fault tolerance across Avamar nodes and elimination of single points of failure using the patented RAIN technology
• Scalable grid architecture
• Daily server integrity and data recoverability checks
• Simple one-step recovery
• Flexible deployment options, including EMC Avamar Data Store and EMC Avamar Virtual Edition for VMware (a virtual appliance)
• Improved physical server consolidation rations

Avamar Integration with Data Domain

Starting from Avamar release v6.0 onwards, not only comes with more new features, Avamar provides support for integration with Data Domain.

On the hardware side, this release offers higher density nodes with greater performance. Nodes are now offered in 4 different capacities: 1.3 TB, 2.6 TB, 3.9 TB, and 7.8 TB. The standard Utility and Accelerator nodes continue to be available and serve the same function in Avamar v6.0 as they did in previous releases. What is more, is the performance of the node relative to important internal system maintenance and upkeep scales with capacity. The 7.8 TB node offers twice the performance of the 3.9 TB node. For some important tasks like garbage collection and file system checks this means there is no longer any good reason not to use the highest density nodes even for data with exceptionally high change rates.

Even better, prices have declined while capacities have gone up-in some cases the cost per TB has improved by more than 20%. And the power consumption per TB has also dropped considerably-by as much as 65% in the case of the 7.8 TB nodes. All this equals bigger grids which cost less to acquire, less to power and cool in the data centre, and use less of your valuable raised floor square footage to store data.

Under the covers there are lots of significant performance improvements to the new nodes to make sure that things work better than before: EMC has leveraged the Intel multi-core architecture to speed up startup and checking of data stripes. Memory utilization is improved, and overall backup performance increases.

One of the biggest changes that many customers willnotice will be the changes to the networking architecture. The lines between internal and external networks are no longer blurred. There is a network that is clearly an internal management and administration network (which is redundant). And customers will connect an Avamar grid to their external network to provide for backup bandwidth and redundancy if desired. (As an aside, for those of you that want Cisco everywhere in your network, it is now possible to connect your Avamar Data Store nodes directly to your Cisco network. You can maintain the homogeneity of your IP network and continue to manage and support only Cisco devices.)

On the software side, the improvements are every bit as significant:

• Support for EMC Secure Remote Support (ESRS)
• A new installer/updater service for client and server code upgrades and patches that is customer accessible
• An Avamar client manager that enables management of large groups of clients with a single pane of glass, and allows wizard driven task execution against groups of clients. (Another aside: it also allows moving a client or a group of clients from one Avamar grid to another. For those of you managing large numbers of desktop and laptop clients, or desktop and laptop clients for a globally distributed workforce, this will be a particularly welcome addition that will make administration a lot easier.)
•  Overall, there have been a least a dozen significant enhancements (and many minor updates) to the desktop and laptopbackup experience with the Avamar DT/LT client that will make Avamar easier, faster, more flexible, and easier to support for these environments. From an end user perspective, the self-service recovery window has been improved, which is a welcome upgrade. From an administrative point of view, the administration of large numbers of clients has been made easier too.
• Improvements have been made across a wide range of general clients, and specific modules, including the backup of Oracle systems, Oracle RAC systems, NDMP backups, backups for Iomega ix12 systems (a very cool feature which essentially puts an Avamar client on the Iomega storage system for powerful remote backup of these systems), VMware Image Backup enhancements, Windows 2008 server backups, SQL server systems, Exchange backup, and a host of others. I will return to the topic of Windows applications backup and VMware backup in the near future, because there is enough good stuff there to warrant a separate discussion.

And, to leave the best for last: Avamar is now offering integration with Data Domain systems.

With release 6.0 of the Avamar software, EMC will now support Data Domain systems as a backup target. This combines the performance and scale of the Data Domain systems with the ease of use and simplicity of the Avamar software. Now any application, of any size, can be protected with Avamar. And the scale of Avamar grows very significantly-with the addition of up to 285 TB of capacity per Data Domain system (and up to 4 systems supported per Avamar server).

In the initial release, EMC is supporting the backup of Oracle, SQL, Exchange, SharePoint, and VMware Images to Data Domain systemswith Avamar software. The Avamar GUI will manage the backup, restore, and replication of data for these systems, as well as monitoring and reporting on the Data Domain systems that are the backup targets. Avamar clients get an embedded DD BOOST v2.3.1, which is responsible for actually sending the backup data from the client to the target Data Domain system. Now, even very largedatabases and database with very high daily change rates can be easily integrated into Avamar.

Overview of Avamar

Overview of Avamar - Avamar Node Types and Processes
There are several different types of Nodes within an Avamar Server.

Utility Node - The identity of the Avamar Server which provides the bulk of the internal Avamar server processes such as: Avamar Administrator (used to manage the Avamar Server from a gui), cron jobs, DNS, NTP, external authentication, web access, MCS and EMS.

Storage Node - This node run a process called gsan.  This service communicates with the avtar command on the individual backup clients.  Avtar communicates with a storage nodes gsan process, then that storage node spreads the data across the available data nodes.

Spare Node - An active node that  is present in a multi-node RAIN (Redundant Array of Independent Nodes) grid.  The interesting thing about the Spare Node is that it is NOT a hot spare.  There is a procedure in place that needs to be followed when a failed Storage Node occurs.  In fact, the Avamar Server doesn’t even care if the Spare Node is powered on, so if you are a “Green” conscience company, feel free to leave the Spare Node powered down.  EMC Best Practice is to leave the Spare Node up and active though.

Avamar Backups clients can be installed with 2 different types of client plug-ins: File System and Databases.  The Avamar client uses 2 processes in the backup and restore process: Avtar and Avagent.  The Avagent process listens for backup/restore work orders from the MCS service on the Utility Node using port 28002 and executes the avtar command that handles the backup/restore processes and communicates with the gsan service on the storage nodes.  This process is depicted in the included picture above.

MCS (Management Console Server) provides centralized management including scheduling of backups, restore of backups, monitoring and reporting.

EMS (Enterprise Manager Server) provides web based management for multiple Avamar Servers as well as monitoring and configuration for Avamar Replication.

Web Access provides access to documentation, backup plug-ins as well as remote File System  restore access to end users.

EMC Avamar Deduplication

EMC Avamar enables fast, efficient backup and recovery by reducing the size of backup data at the client—before it’s transferred across the network and stored. Avamar's variable-length deduplication dramatically reduces network traffic by only sending unique blocks, compressed and encrypted over local area networks (LANs) or wide area networks (WANs). Blocks that were previously stored are never backed up again.

Avamar is a sourcebase global deduplication solution which enables fast, efficient backup and recovery by reducing the size of backup data at the client before it is transferred across the network and stored. Avamar’s data deduplication dramatically reduces network traffic by only sending unique blocks over LAN/WAN. Blocks that were previously stored are never backed up again.

This means huge savings in bandwidth for backup, a lot less disk storage needed on the back end, and most importantly very fast backups often as much as ten times faster.

Avamar backups can be quickly recovered in just one step eliminating the hassle of restoring full and subsequent incremental backups to reach the desired recovery point. Backup data is encrypted during transit across the network and at rest for added security.

There are three ways to define data deduplication:

File-Level 
File level deduplication reduce storage needs for file servers by identifying duplicate files and providing an efficient mechanism for consolidating them. The most common implementation of single instance storage is at the file level. With this method, a single change in a file results in the entire file being identified as unique. Example: If there were 3 versions of a file in a backup environment, the 3 files in their entirety are stored.

Fixed Block 
Fixed block deduplication is commonly employed in snapshot and replication technologies. This method breaks a file into fixed length sub-objects. However, even with small changes to the data, all fixed length segments in a dataset can change despite the fact that very little of the dataset has actually changed.

Variable Block 
With variable block level deduplication, a change in a file results in only the variable-sized block containing the change being identified as unique. Consequently, more data is identified as common data, and in the case of backup, there is less data to store as only the unique data is backed up. This is the method used by Avamar

NetApp Common Terminology

NetApp Common Terminology  - Storage Terms

storage controller
The component of a storage system that runs the Data ONTAP operating system and controls its disk subsystem. Storage controllers are also sometimes called controllers, storage appliances, appliances, storage engines, heads, CPU modules, or controller modules.

storage system
The hardware device running Data ONTAP that receives data from and sends data to native disk shelves, third-party storage, or both. Storage systems that run Data
ONTAP are sometimes referred to as filers, appliances, storage appliances, VSeries systems, or systems.

Cluster and high-availability terms below:

cluster

• In Data ONTAP 8.x Cluster-Mode, a group of connected nodes (storage systems) that share a global namespace and that you can manage as a single virtual server or multiple virtual servers, providing performance, reliability, and scalability benefits.
• In the Data ONTAP 7.1 release family and earlier releases, a pair of storage systems (sometimes called nodes) configured to serve data for each other if one of the two systems stops functioning.
• In the Data ONTAP 7.3 and 7.2 release families, this functionality is referred to as an active/active configuration.
• For some storage array vendors, cluster refers to the hardware component on which host adapters and ports are located. Some storage array vendors refer to this component as a controller.

HA (high availability)

• In Data ONTAP 8.x, the recovery capability provided by a pair of nodes (storage systems), called an HA pair, that are configured to serve data for each other if one of the two nodes stops functioning.
• In the Data ONTAP 7.3 and 7.2 release families, this functionality is referred to as an active/active configuration.

HA pair 

• In Data ONTAP 8.x, a pair of nodes (storage systems) configured to serve data for each other if one of the two nodes stops functioning.
• In the Data ONTAP 7.3 and 7.2 release families, this functionality is referred to as an active/active configuration.