Table of ContentsView in Frames

Data backup to tape using the SMTape engine

SMTape is a high performance disaster recovery solution from Data ONTAP that backs up blocks of data to tape. It is a Snapshot copy-based backup to tape feature. In releases earlier than Data ONTAP 8.0 operating in 7-Mode, SMTape is referred to as SM2T.

You can use SMTape to perform volume backups to tapes. However, you cannot perform a backup at the qtree or subtree level. SMTape supports level-0, differential, and incremental backups. Using SMTape, you can back up 255 Snapshot copies. For subsequent baseline, incremental, or differential backups, you must delete older backed up Snapshot copies.

When you perform an SMTape level-0 backup, you can specify the name of the Snapshot copy to be backed up to tape. When you specify a Snapshot copy for the backup, all the Snapshot copies older than the specified Snapshot copy are also backed up to tape.

If you do not specify a Snapshot copy for the backup, the following happens:

When you perform an SMTape incremental or differential backup, the NDMP-compliant backup applications create and manage Snapshot copies.

You can perform an SMTape backup and restore by using NDMP-compliant backup applications or by using the smtape backup and smtape restore Data ONTAP CLI commands operating in 7-Mode. However, if you want to perform an incremental backup, you must perform both baseline and incremental backups by using only the NDMP-compliant backup applications.

These commands replace the snapmirror store and snapmirror retrieve commands in releases earlier than Data ONTAP 8.0 operating in 7-Mode.