Overview - NetApp File Archiver Agent

Table of contents 

Introduction

Key Features

Terminology

Introduction

File Archiver for NetApp Agent is installed as a stand alone archiving agent to archive and recover data residing on a NetApp File Server. The Data is always archived on  CIFS share.

The Archived data allows preservation, transparent retrieval, and discovery of information held within file system environment. It reduces the size of data on the primary storage and decreases the duration of backup operations by the corresponding iDataAgent. Migrating data from file systems to secondary, tiered-storage maximizes storage utilization across the enterprise.

The File Archiver for NetApp can optionally create stubs that contain information about the archived data to facilitate end-users with non-browse recovery operations from third-party applications. Migrated data can also be recovered from the CommCell Console using the browse recovery operation whether the stubbing feature is enabled or disabled. Additionally, it employs centralized, policy-based storage to reduce costs and simplify management.

Key Features

The NetApp File Archiver involves the following key features:

Recall Throttling

You can configure the stub recovery parameters, such that, you can set the Maximum Number of Stubs in a Recall Job, Time between recalls and Time to wait after maximum successive recalls limit is reached.

Point in Time Restore

You can restore the system state of a client, backed up on a specific date and time.

Stub Pruning

In the archive phase, File Archiver for NetApp will archive files meeting the pre-set archive criteria and, if applicable, put them into a list for the stubbing phase and prune the expired stubs. This helps in secondary storage space reclamation.

Terminology

The NetApp File Archiver documentation uses the following terminology:

Proxy Client

A proxy client is any computer on which the File Archiver Agent is installed to archive and recover data residing on a NetApp File Server.

Migration Archiving

 Migration archiving is a process of periodically moving unused or infrequently used NetApp data on a host computer to secondary storage, thereby reducing the size of data on the primary storage.

Stubbing

 The stubbing phase starts after the archive phase succeeds. Stubs are placeholders of the original data after it has been migrated to the secondary storage. Stubs replace the archived files in the location selected by the user during the archive.  However, stubs will only be created if the subclient properties were configured to create them during archive.

Data Recovery

 

 The archived and migrated data can be recovered in any of the following three methods:
  • Recovery of archived files per file paths provided using the CommCell Console.
  • Browse and Recovery of archived files using the CommCell Console.
  • Recall of archived files from stubs using third-party applications like: Windows Terminal or Console window.

Stub Recovery

 If the subclient is configured to create stubs, you can perform a recall operation from a Windows workstation for recovering the stubs. A recall is any action that causes an open and read to be executed on the stub, which automatically initiates a recovery operation.

Persistent Recovery

 Multiple stub recoveries are submitted to the Job Controller as one job called a Persistent Recovery job. The job will wait for approximately 5 seconds in order to allow other stub recovery requests being submitted on the same client to be batched into the same job.