Good evening!
So this is a doozy.. we are fielding a new backup solution for our PKI. In our environment, our NetApp datastore sits behind a backend switch, which has our hosts on the other side of it. Those hosts then have additional connections to a production network facing switch. We manage the NetApp via Jumpbox that sits on both networks but remains offline until we need it. In our previous solution (AD CS), we could export our CA databases and configs onto a share we are using SVM DR with. This new solution runs as a Linux based VMware VM and unfortunately can only really be restored as an entire VM, so throwing our config/database backup on our share will no longer work. We have another site which would be perfect to do some Unified Replication to, we would just need to hook up the NetApp to the network facing switch and set it all up.
Unfortunately due to the nature of the data we are protecting, leadership is completely against moving the NetApp outside of that backend network so here we are. Looking for some guidance/advice on backup solution for my unique use case. Obviously leveraging any one of NetApp's robust backup solutions would be ideal, but I need to find a way to back up data. FWIW, we are really only concerned with backing up that one VM, all of the other VM's on that stack could actually be easily rebuild and the services we provide have geographical site redundancy. I've looked a bit into NDMP backup.. but that seems to be more for tape to tape backup? It seems the solution that I need seems to be.. the ability to export a volume into some kind of file, move it off the NetApp, move it off the backend network and onto our production network, then manually put it on a NetApp at a different site. Then be able to import that data onto its original NetApp to restore the VM to a previous state should we need to. I honestly have no idea if this is something that can be done but I thought i'd try my luck. Thanks in advance