IntelliSnap Backup for CIFS Shares synthetic full backup on NetApp

Hi @MaxJamakovic 

Thanks for the question, I’ve been checking resources around CIFS data protection:

NAS Solutions - A Commvault Engineering White Paper

IntelliSnap - Advanced Configuration - Windows File System iDataAgent

This page shows the supported features for Windows File System iDA and suggests Synth Full and Intellisnap are supported, but doesn’t explicitly show the combination of CIFS, Intellisnap and SythFull.

Supported Features - Microsoft Windows File System iDataAgent

I haven’t found anything to suggest this combination isn’t supported, so let me do some more research internally in support and get back to you.

Thanks,

Stuart

Hi @MaxJamakovic 

After some research and checking with people internally in support, it appears Synthetic Full is available on CIFS subclients, but when Intellisnap is also enabled, Synthetic Full option is then disabled.

I’ll need to check further on this and find out what is happening or if there are plans around this feature.

Thanks,

Stuart

Hi Stuart , it seems that backup copy only runs on full backup, I tried to run backup copy on incremental snap it skips. So I can see why is disabled. Can you verify on what type of snap  backup copy operation is supported on CIFS Windows Agent, my storage is NetApp each snap backup creates the clone of source volume.

Thanks

Hi,

You will need to set two additional settings in order to get synthetic full option with IntelliSnap backup.

• FSSnapSCSynthFull
• bEnableFSSnapSyntheticFull

More info: https://documentation.commvault.com/11.24/expert/36787_intellisnap_advanced_backup_windows_file_system_idataagent.html

Also don’t forget to set appropriate aging rule for a snapshot copy on the storage policy (Retain Snaps by Number of Jobs).

We’ve been using this setup for quite some time without issues.

Hi Mike,  how many snaps I have to keep on netapp, after running incremental snap backup with backup copy enabled will that start backup copy of incremental job to commvault disk library 

Note: To run incremental backups forever, make sure that you use a snapshot copy on the storage policy and specify a data aging rule that includes the Retain Snaps by Number of Jobs option with a number of jobs that matches your backup cycle. This ensures that the previous backup jobs are pruned on a regular basis. For more information, see Data Aging for IntelliSnap Snapshots.

It really depends on your cycle and backup frequency.

Example: daily incremental backups with weekly (synthetic) full = 7 backup attempst = 7 snapshot copies

Mike if my SP retention is 30days 0 cycle on primary copy and 1 day on snap copy, as for ruining full intllisnap backup this work as soon the backup copy is done the snapshot is deleted from netapp. My goal is to to keep only snap on netapp for backup copy. Can backup copy is running on incremental jobs? 

I’m testing right now, it’s good to know that SnapDiff won’t work with spool copies, I’ll change that to number of snaps 

The snap retention is set to spool, if I delete the snapshot and run incremental snap than backup copy the scan detects all files and backup copy runs as full. 

“CWorkerAdvanced::ProcessPathsUsingSnapDiff(337) - Couldn't find snapshot information or previous snapshot name is not present, LocalScanPath=[], PrevSnap=[EMPTY]; Run other scan method”

and scan adds all files and folders on volume to backup

@MaxJamakovic , this is likely due to deleting the Inc which will force a full (we won’t know what files were backed up and where to continue).

Does this work as @euMike suggested if you don’t delete the Inc?

Which copy are you deleting it from?

I deleted from Snapshot copy, during the scan phase it’s trying to locate the previous snapshot to use SnapDiffV2 on NetApp volume, if snap is not present the scan adds all files to backup copy 

@MaxJamakovic I would expect that to happen if you delete the Inc.  Does everything work as expected if you don’t manually prune off any of the snaps?

Yes it dose  

Ok, good.  Are you good with that outcome or is your issue that you need to manually prune jobs occasionally?  Want to be sure we are addressing your needs!