Dear all,
This post describes the background, definition, and benefits of the NDMP feature.
Background
As digital information becomes the trend, users attach more importance to data and are more demanding on data security. Data loss due to hardware faults and misoperations must be prevented. Data backup is a means to retain data and use the retained data to recover data lost after a system damage or other faults. Data backup prevents data loss or corruption caused by unexpected accidents, ensuring data security.
To address the urgent need of data backup, a large number of backup software products and solutions appear on the market. However, a storage system is hardly compatible with all the backup software products and solutions, and data backup using the Common Internet File System (CIFS) or Network File System (NFS) protocol consumes a large amount of network and server resources. To address these problems, a data backup and recovery technology based on Network Data Management Protocol (NDMP) emerges.
Definition
Network Data Management Protocol (NDMP) is an open protocol used for enterprise-class data management. This protocol defines a network-based control mechanism to control data transmission between Huawei storage system and tape libraries during backup and recovery. Also, NDMP allows storage systems to directly transmit data to tape libraries or backup servers over a network, without the need of backup clients or consumption of network and server resources.
NDMP has five versions, ranging from V1 to V5. Each version is optimized from its predecessor to provide more functions and enable easier backup. NDMP V5 is immature and therefore NDMP V4 is widely used in the industry. An OceanStor storage system supports NDMP V4.
Only file systems support the NDMP feature.
Benefits
Table 1-1 describes the benefits provided by the NDMP feature for customers.
Table 1-1 Benefits of the NDMP feature
Benefit | Description |
|---|---|
Zero data loss and service downtime | By controlling data transmission and communications between devices, the NDMP features ensures data availability and integrity during backup and recovery, preventing service downtime after data loss. |
Multiple backup software products are supported, saving investment. | The backup media can be shared across clusters. In addition, existing third-party backup software (as long as it is NDMP compatible) can be reused to cut down costs. The following backup software is compatible with the NDMP feature: NetBackup, Commvault, and TSM. |
Thank you.
