Is there any backup software out there that can do on-line backups of Domino 6.5.X and 7.X database files on Network Attached Storage (NAS)? We have evaluated software from several vendors and have found that IBM Tivoli Storage Manager for Mail, BakBone NetVault APM for Lotus Notes/Domino, and CommVault Galaxy Protection for Lotus Notes are all incapable of handling this configuration. For some reason the Domino plug-ins they supply can’t seem to “see” the NSF files. I don’t think this is just a configuration problem because we checked with vendor and reseller technical support engineers and they couldn’t make it work either. This failure seems odd to me because the Lotus C API Notes/Domino 7.0 includes a sample program called “BACKUP” that works just fine in a NAS environment. I can’t really understand how these vendors could build backup applications that don’t even work as well as a free sample. Can anyone suggest an alternative product that would work?Here are some more details about our configuration. Our Domino servers are a mix of 6.5.X and 7.X running on Windows 2000 and 2003. The database NSF files are stored on NetApp Filers. The Domino servers communicate with the Filers through a mix of iSCSI (SAN) and CIFS (NAS). (This is a supported configuration according to Technote 7005236). In order to simplify our systems we would prefer to eliminate iSCSI and rely entirely on CIFS, however the lack of available backup software is proving to be somewhat of an obstacle. The commercial backup applications listed above can run Domino on-line backups when the NSF files are accessed through iSCSI, they just don’t work with CIFS.
What we will probably end up doing is running periodic volume snapshots on the Filers and then backing those up, thereby bypassing Domino altogether. But that approach lacks some of the features we could get by running through the Domino Backup and Recovery API.