What is NDAS?
NetApp Data Availability Services (NDAS) is a cloud-based backup orchestrator for hybrid cloud that allows you to manage data protection workflows from ONTAP primary to secondary storage systems to cloud. Data is replicated securely from any ONTAP storage directly to an object container (Amazon S3 Bucket) located in the cloud.
NDAS currently runs in AWS and supports ONTAP secondary clusters (which can be AFF/FAS/CVO/Select) running 9.5P6 or higher 9.5 patch release and default IPspace, with 9.6 qualification and additional IPspace support coming very soon.
NDAS currently runs in AWS and supports ONTAP secondary clusters (which can be AFF/FAS/CVO/Select) running 9.5P6 or higher 9.5 patch release and default IPspace, with 9.6 qualification and additional IPspace support coming very soon.
What's great about NDAS is the simplicity and intuitive way that it does this. The simplified management interface has been designed to look fresh and offers some powerful features that allows you to deploy and manage NDAS with just a few clicks. Using simple and intuitive automated workflows, you don't have to be a cloud wizard or ONTAP expert in order to protect your data; NDAS is very much aimed at the IT generalist, and no changes are needed to your existing ONTAP systems to extend their data protection to the cloud.
Data recovery is also just as simple. Using a built-in catalog you can use Google-like searches to rapidly and easily recover lost data (files, volumes, LUNs) to on-premises systems or in the cloud. As NDAS uses a scalable and flexible opex model, you also don't have to worry about buying any additional hardware infrastructure in your datacenter.
Data recovery is also just as simple. Using a built-in catalog you can use Google-like searches to rapidly and easily recover lost data (files, volumes, LUNs) to on-premises systems or in the cloud. As NDAS uses a scalable and flexible opex model, you also don't have to worry about buying any additional hardware infrastructure in your datacenter.
Use Cases
As well as backup and recovery of on-premises ONTAP storage replicated to the cloud, NDAS can also be used for Disaster Recovery and DevOps for the cloud.
As NDAS uses the Copy to Cloud (C2C) data transport technology to replicate Snapshot copies to AWS S3 object stores, “active data” copies in the cloud can be created, enabling you to develop or deploy cloud applications with direct access to these snapshot copies, as well as use them for software development, testing, analytics, and reporting, for things like elastic analytics applications used in artificial intelligence and machine learning.
As NDAS uses the Copy to Cloud (C2C) data transport technology to replicate Snapshot copies to AWS S3 object stores, “active data” copies in the cloud can be created, enabling you to develop or deploy cloud applications with direct access to these snapshot copies, as well as use them for software development, testing, analytics, and reporting, for things like elastic analytics applications used in artificial intelligence and machine learning.
How do I get NDAS?
You can use trial NDAS on a free basis by signing up here: https://www.netapp.com/us/products/backup-recovery/data-availability-services.aspx. You'll need an AWS account and a pre-configured Amazon S3 bucket.
How to Configure, Protect, Restore Data Using NDAS
In the example below, there are 6 unprotected volumes located on a production system called NDAS-Pri which is peered to a secondary cluster called NDAS-Sec.
Configuration
So let’s get started.
After signing up for the free trial, you can initiate NDAS using the launch portal URL that will be provided to you via email.
Note: You should have read the planning information in the NDAS documentation and determined the AWS pre-requisite resources required before continuing.
Once you've signed in with your AWS credentials and accepted the end user license agreement, select from pre-filtered choices for the NDAS deployment in your AWS environment. You'll then enter the information about your AWS environment and deployment size including:
So let’s get started.
After signing up for the free trial, you can initiate NDAS using the launch portal URL that will be provided to you via email.
Note: You should have read the planning information in the NDAS documentation and determined the AWS pre-requisite resources required before continuing.
Once you've signed in with your AWS credentials and accepted the end user license agreement, select from pre-filtered choices for the NDAS deployment in your AWS environment. You'll then enter the information about your AWS environment and deployment size including:
- AWS region where your NDAS instance will be deployed - NDAS is currently available in 6 different regions worldwide).
- VPC in your region - only VPCs with at least 2 subnets configured are shown.
- A subnet in each of two availability zones - The NDAS app and first copy of the file catalog will be created in the first availability zone, and a second copy of the catalog will be created in the second availability zone; Only subnets with at least 10 available IP addresses are displayed.
- Choose either a small or medium NDAS configuration - The configuration determines the number of Terabytes of front-end data which can be protected.
- Personal key pair - Used to connect to the NDAS app if required.
- AWS Certificate - If you do not enter a certificate A-R-N, a self-signed certificate will be generated.
- Security Group - The launcher portal filters for Security groups with the required ports enabled. If there are no eligible security groups, you will be prompted to create a new one.
Now you’re ready to launch NDAS.
The launcher will create and startup the AWS resources and services and after some minutes the provisioning screen will display showing various startup messages. At the end of the provisioning process, you will see a Green box with the SUCCESS message at the top of the screen; It provides a hyperlink to your new NDAS app, which you should bookmark as it is your permanent NDAS link.
The launcher will create and startup the AWS resources and services and after some minutes the provisioning screen will display showing various startup messages. At the end of the provisioning process, you will see a Green box with the SUCCESS message at the top of the screen; It provides a hyperlink to your new NDAS app, which you should bookmark as it is your permanent NDAS link.
On your first login to the NDAS app, you need to create an ID using a unique username, your email address and a password. You'll then be redirected back to the login screen.
Congrats, you have successfully deployed NetApp Data Availability Services in just a few minutes.
After logging in, the dashboard displays.
Since this is a new NDAS deployment …. no Jobs have run yet, and the Protection Environment is grayed out.
The only available operation is to Register a Disk Target; This is the secondary ONTAP cluster which will provide an on-premises copy of the production data.
Since this is a new NDAS deployment …. no Jobs have run yet, and the Protection Environment is grayed out.
The only available operation is to Register a Disk Target; This is the secondary ONTAP cluster which will provide an on-premises copy of the production data.
NDAS generates a single-use registration key, which encodes all the information needed for the onsite clusters to securely communicate with NDAS in the cloud.
Copy the key and using System Manager on the ONTAP secondary cluster, paste in the NDAS key at the Cloud Registration pane – new for ONTAP 9.5.
Complete the registration – this step is performed only once, and all further tasks will be in the NDAS app.
Copy the key and using System Manager on the ONTAP secondary cluster, paste in the NDAS key at the Cloud Registration pane – new for ONTAP 9.5.
Complete the registration – this step is performed only once, and all further tasks will be in the NDAS app.
Once the secondary cluster has been registered in NDAS, enter the cluster credentials for the cluster in to the targets panel in the NDAS portal; NDAS needs the credentials of the ONTAP clusters so that it can send backup and restore commands to them.
NDAS will now automatically discover all the peered primary clusters and updates the Targets pane. Select each peered cluster and provide its admin credentials.
NDAS will now automatically discover all the peered primary clusters and updates the Targets pane. Select each peered cluster and provide its admin credentials.
NDAS updates the protection environments, and the production cluster is being discovered, including all its data volumes, SVMs and any existing SnapMirror policies and relationships.
To complete the protection environment, register a Cloud Target; A cloud target is the destination object store for the cloud backups.
An existing, dedicated, empty, AWS S3 bucket is required and you'll need to enter the bucket name, access key and secret key in order to register it.
To complete the protection environment, register a Cloud Target; A cloud target is the destination object store for the cloud backups.
An existing, dedicated, empty, AWS S3 bucket is required and you'll need to enter the bucket name, access key and secret key in order to register it.
The protection environment is now complete and the dashboard is automatically updated to show that no secondary volumes are protected in the cloud.
Protect Production Data
In this example, NDAS has 6 discovered production data volumes. Each volume is represented by a card, and each card has three shields. These shields indicate the protection that is currently inplace for that volume:
In this example, NDAS has 6 discovered production data volumes. Each volume is represented by a card, and each card has three shields. These shields indicate the protection that is currently inplace for that volume:
- Local Snapshot
- SnapMirror replication to Secondary cluster
- Cloud Backup
To protect a volume, simply select its card and click the Protect button; if you wanted to protect more than we volume in a single workflow, we can select more than one volume and then click the Proect button.
Note: We can change which volumes are displayed using the view and group by options in the Data Protection View.
Note: We can change which volumes are displayed using the view and group by options in the Data Protection View.
The protection strategy appears for the selected volumes.
Note: NDAS includes default backup policies, which includes the destination target, time and frequency of recurring backups and how long to keep each version for. A separate policy controls each of the backup phases, local snapshots, backup to disk (SnapMirror) and backup to cloud. We can create additonal policies if required.
In this case accept the default policies and click Protect to kick off the data protection workflow for the selected volumes.
There is where the simplicity comes in, as it takes just one click to backup your production volumes to the cloud, no matter how many volumes that are included.
The workflow automatically initiates and a full snapshot is taken and copied. Subsequent backups will be incremental and only changed blocks are copied, just like SnapMirror.
The status message shows that the backup is underway and progress can be monitored on the Activity tab.
In this case accept the default policies and click Protect to kick off the data protection workflow for the selected volumes.
There is where the simplicity comes in, as it takes just one click to backup your production volumes to the cloud, no matter how many volumes that are included.
The workflow automatically initiates and a full snapshot is taken and copied. Subsequent backups will be incremental and only changed blocks are copied, just like SnapMirror.
The status message shows that the backup is underway and progress can be monitored on the Activity tab.
The second shield for each volume automatically turns green to show secondary protection is in place, and the backup to cloud starts automatically shortly after.
Note: Backups to cloud may take some time.
Once backup to cloud completesm the third shield turns green and the dashboard is automatically updated to show the cloud protected volumes.
Note: Backups to cloud may take some time.
Once backup to cloud completesm the third shield turns green and the dashboard is automatically updated to show the cloud protected volumes.
Subsequent backups will continue automatically according to the policy schedule.
In the background, NDAS updates the cloud resident catalog with metadata for all the cloud backups; this catalog is used to provide Google like search capabilities for quick and easy restores.
In the background, NDAS updates the cloud resident catalog with metadata for all the cloud backups; this catalog is used to provide Google like search capabilities for quick and easy restores.
Search and Restore Production Data
Using the inbuilt catalog search functionality in NDAS, we can restore individual files, LUNS or complete volumes to the original location, or an alternate location. This means we could even spin up an Instance of Cloud Volumes ONTAP to perform data recovery in the cloud.
In the example below, a wild card volume search is performed to display all volumes backed up to the cloud and then the volume is resoted to an alternate location on the original cluster.
Using the inbuilt catalog search functionality in NDAS, we can restore individual files, LUNS or complete volumes to the original location, or an alternate location. This means we could even spin up an Instance of Cloud Volumes ONTAP to perform data recovery in the cloud.
In the example below, a wild card volume search is performed to display all volumes backed up to the cloud and then the volume is resoted to an alternate location on the original cluster.
Use the Activity tab to monitor the restore.
Note: Restores from cloud will take some time.
To allow client to access the data you can simply mount the volume using System Manager.
This concludes the demonstration of configuring, backing up and restoring data using NetApp Data Availability Services.
You can watch the full video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaWPZUw7qNo
David Brown is a Technical Consultant for Proact UK and a member of the NetApp A-Team.
Twitter: @dbtechone
Note: Restores from cloud will take some time.
To allow client to access the data you can simply mount the volume using System Manager.
This concludes the demonstration of configuring, backing up and restoring data using NetApp Data Availability Services.
You can watch the full video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaWPZUw7qNo
David Brown is a Technical Consultant for Proact UK and a member of the NetApp A-Team.
Twitter: @dbtechone
Screenshots of video used with permission