Managing NetApp Data

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Overview

Prerequisites

• Planning
• System Requirements
• License Requirements
• User Credentials for Impersonation

Installation

• Cluster Considerations

Configuration

Operations

• Migration Archiving
• Recovery
• Migration Archiving and Recovery Considerations for FPolicy

Best Practices

Important Considerations

• General Considerations
• Considerations for Creating the FPolicy Subclient

Overview

The FPolicy Subclient feature allows the File Archiver for Windows Agent to archive and recover data residing on a NetApp File Server without the need to install the File Share Archiver Client component. The diagram on the right depicts a typical configuration for this feature.

Prerequisites

Consider the following before you begin using this feature:

Planning

Plan an archive and recover strategy as follows:

• Identify the shares that will be archived.
• Define the archive rules.

  To understand the archiving rules available with the software see Migration Archiving - File Archiver for Windows Agent.

• Establish policies to meet strategic Hierarchical Storage Management (HSM) goals.

System Requirements

• Verify that the computer in which you wish to install the software satisfies the minimum requirements specified in System Requirements - File Archiver for Windows Agent.
• The FPolicy Subclient supports file servers attached to the following operating systems:
  • Windows
  • MAC

License Requirements

The FPlocy Subclient feature requires the following license:

DataArchiver for Files - Network Storage for the capability of File Archiver for Windows to archive and recover data residing on NetApp File Server. One license is consumed when either a Network File Share or FPolicy instance is created. .

For more information on File Archiver for Windows licenses, see License Requirement.

User Credentials for Impersonation

The user account must have read and write permissions on the CIFS share and exported to the network storage file server/proxy. The user account must also have admin access to filer and read/write access to the Windows registry on the proxy computer.

Installation

No additional software is required to configure the FPolicy Subclient. Ensure that the File Archiver for Windows Agent is installed on the Client computer.

For more information on installing the File Archiver for Windows Agent see Deployment - File Archiver For Windows Agent.

Cluster Considerations

The driver for the File Archiver for Windows Agent must be installed only on the physical nodes of the cluster and then the File Archiver for Windows Agent should be installed on all the nodes (physical and virtual).

For step-by-step instructions on installing these components, see Installation.

Configuration

The following section provides the high-level steps for creating a FPolicy instance and a user defined subclient for archiving and recovery of data residing on a NetApp File Server.

1. From the CommCell Console create File Archiver for Windows Agent FPolicy Instance on the Client computer.

   See Create/Modify a FPolicy Instance for step-by-step instructions.

2. From the CommCell Console create the FPolicy Subclient on the Client computer.

   See Create a New Subclient for step-by-step instructions.

3. From the CommCell Console configure Filer Authentication Credentials on the Client computer.

   See Configure Filer Authentication Credentials for step-by-step instructions.

Operations

After installing and configuring the required components, data is ready for archiving and recovery.

Migration Archiving

The recovery administrator can schedule migration archiving jobs, similar to scheduling backup jobs for iDataAgents. To ensure that only successfully archived files will be changed into stubs, the migration archiving operation is divided into two phases: archiving and stubbing.

Refer to Migration Archiving for more information on archiving.

Recovery

File Archiver for Windows provides two ways to recover an archived file: by accessing the file with an Open operation (e.g., opening a stub in an application, double-clicking a stub in Windows Explorer) or from the CommCell Console (stand-alone application).

Refer to Recover Archived Data for more information on Recovery operations.

Migration Archiving and Recovery Considerations for FPolicy

• FPolicy instances for the File Archiver for Windows Agent take advantage of built-in services, available in supported ONTAP versions, called "FPolicy Screens" to allow archived data residing on a share to be recalled without the need for the File Share Archiver Client component to be installed on end-user workstations. It does this by eliminating the need for the CVMHSM Recall Service to be running on end-user workstations connected to those shares in order to perform stub recalls.
• To archive FPolicy data, you must first create an "FPolicy screen" service (using the name: CVNSDM) from the ONTAP Console in order for ONTAP to monitor shares for transaction requests; you must also configure an FPolicy instance from the CommCell Console and provide the Filer Name and a domain administrator level User Name, in order to recall the data.
• Each FPolicy filer should have one client computer registered to it. FPolicy must not be set to filter a particular volume or qtree. When running the following command, it should give an empty list:
  fpolicy vol inc show CVNSDM
  An empty list means that it's set to monitor all volumes.
• For FPolicy instance to work with File Archiver for Windows Agent installed on Windows 2008 system, the NetApp filers must be of version 7.3.2 and above.

• Set GXHSM_FPOLICY_REGISTER_FILERNAME key to default for FPolicy to work on a machine with Windows 2008.
• For Fpolicy to work on NetApp filers running ONTAP version 7.0, the following configuration is required:
  • Use filer's fully qualified domain name in instance properties and subclient content path.
  • Create registry key GXHSM_FPOLICY_EXCLUDE_NON_GENERIC and set it to N.
  • Create registry key GXHSM_FPOLICY_SCREEN_FS_OP_CREATE and set it to Y.
  • Restart DataArchiver services.

  If the client computer has both ONTAP version 7.0 and 7.2 or above, the registry key settings will affect all filers.

• For re-stubbing to work on FPolicy, fully qualified filer name must be used instead of the (short name).
• The FPolicy sparse stubs will not appear to be sparse when they are viewed in Windows Explorer. They will appear to have the same size as the original file. Set GXHSM_FPOLICY_CREATESPARSE to Y to create sparse stubs.
• The Windows 2008 hosts file must be edited with the IPv4 address, the fully qualified name, and the short name and the following line should be commented out:
  #::1 localhost
• Data is always archived on a CIFS share. For recalls from CIFS clients, the volume or qtree does not need to be a mixed mode type on the filer. For recalls from NFS clients, the volume or qtree must be a mixed mode type on the filer. Refer to vendor documentation for instructions on configuring mixed mode.
• We recommend using the File System iDataAgent that is installed on the same client as the File Archiver for Windows Agent to back up the stub files residing on CIFS shares, except for Celerra stubs. This can be done by specifying the UNC path for the CIFS share, where the stub files reside, as subclient content for that File System iDataAgent. Using any other iDataAgent to back up the stubs will execute unintended recalls from the stubs instead of backing them up.
• The NAS NDMP iDataAgent can be used to back up Celerra stubs without executing unintended recalls.
• Do not recall FPolicy stubs on the same computer on which the File Archiver Agent is installed as the presence of the agent prevents from triggering the recall.
• When files are archived with sparse logic disabled, stubs are created as 2KB. Certain applications such as PowerPoint, Access, Window Picture and Fax Viewer may not be able to recognize 2KB as a valid file size and fail to open the recalled file. Archiving these files with sparse logic enabled, maintains the original file size so that these applications can properly open the files after recall.

Best Practices

Best practices guidelines include the following:

• You can create additional user-defined subclients to distribute the data for archiving. A useful way to distribute subclient content of a File Archiver for Windows client is by directory, as shown in this example:
  • User-defined subclient: Subclient-Directory-1
    Content: \\file_server1\dir1
  • User-defined subclient: Subclient-Directory-2
    Content: \\file_server1\dir2
  • User-defined subclient: Subclient-Directory-3
    Content: \\file_server1\dir3
• Distributing the client data using subclients in this way can help improve archiving performance by balancing the processing load into logical groupings.
• A NetApp (Fpolicy) filer is set up in NTFS or Unix mode and can archive both Windows and Unix files. When a user requests access to a file, the filer compares the user’s security information against the permissions associated with the file. Windows supports the authentication via Active Directory (AD), whereas UNIX uses NIS (Network Information Services). Both authentication styles - AD and NIS - have their own authentication domains and are not aware of each other’s users and groups rights and permissions. For recall to work properly by Unix users, both AD and NIS should be configured on the filer and the usermap.cfg file on the filer must be set up so that the filer can map an AD user/group with NIS user/group.

  Example

  "Bob Garg" == bobg maps NT user Bob Garg to UNIX user bobg and vice versa
  mktg\Roy => nobody allows mktg\Roy to login, but only with the privileges of UNIX user nobody
  engr\Tom => "" disallows login by NT user engr\Tom
  uguest <= * maps all other UNIX names to NT user request
  *\root => "" disallows NT logins using the name root from all domains

Important Considerations

When creating and configuring subclients, keep in mind the following considerations:

General Considerations

• You need to establish the archiving rules for the subclient in addition to specifying the subclient name, storage policy association and content.
• If you enable the Do Not Create Stub or Archive Files Only rule option, a non-browse recovery operation would not be possible and archived data will have to be recovered via the browse/recovery operation from the CommCell Console.
• It is recommended to use NAS NDMP agent to backup NetApp FPolicy as using UNC paths with File Archiver for Windows Agent may trigger recall.

Considerations for Creating the FPolicy Subclient

• When you configure subclient content, you can either manually add content or browse the directory tree structure of the NetApp File Server and select the folders/directories you want scanned for archiving. The resulting content will display the folder/directory names similar to the example shown below:

  \\file_server1\dir1
  \\file_server1\dir2
  Note that the depiction of content in the above example varies by File Server and operating system.

• Although one subclient may be sufficient to meet your archiving needs, you can create additional user-defined subclients to distribute the data for archiving. A useful way to distribute subclient content of a File Archiver for Windows client is by directory, as shown in this example:

  User-defined subclient: Subclient-Directory-1
  Content: \\file_server1\dir1

  User-defined subclient: Subclient-Directory-2
  Content: \\file_server1\dir2

  Distributing the client data using subclients in this way can help improve archiving performance by balancing the processing load into logical groupings.

• Subclient-level Archiving Filters are available for this agent to exclude specified files/folders/patterns from being scanned for archiving. For example, suppose the dirl folder contains a subdirectory called Temp Files that you do not want archived. You can add a subclient filter for the user-defined subclient Subclient-Directory-1 to exclude the Temp Files subdirectory from being scanned for archiving. For more information, see Filters.
• Wildcards and regular expressions are supported by the subclient in the subclient filter:

  For example the asterisk (*) wildcard can be used in the Exclude these files/folders/patterns field when filtering data using subclient-level archive filters to exclude file patterns and folders/directories from being scanned for archiving. For example:

  • To exclude all files of a certain type, you could enter the following regular expression: *.doc
  • To exclude all files within a directory called "my_folder", you could enter the following regular expression: my_folder/*.*

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