Backups for NFS

The server plan that you select for a Nutanix Files NFS subclient manages scheduled backups. You can also perform on-demand backups at any time.

Access Node Failure During Backup Operations

During backup jobs, if one of the access nodes fails or is unreachable, the next backup job does not back up the failed files from that particular access node.

Backup Process

Backups include the following stages:

1. Creates a snapshot.

2. Performs a snapshot backup operation.

   • For a full backup, a snapshot is created at the NFS share level. A recursive scan is performed, and the data is backed up from the snapshot.

   • For an incremental backup, another snapshot is created at the NFS share level. A SnapDiff operation is performed with the snapshot of the previous backup. The changed files are determined by the file server, and the list of changed files obtained from the file server is backed up from the snapshot.

   At any point in time, 3 or fewer snapshots are available for each subclient: 1 for the full backup, 1 for the previous incremental backup, and 1 for the current incremental backup.

   The snapshots of the incremental backups are not deleted immediately after the backup job because the next incremental backup must compare them to find the new, modified, deleted, and renamed files. The snapshots of the incremental backups are deleted when they are not needed for comparison anymore. For example, if you have three successive snapshots of incremental backups, inc1, inc2, and inc3, where inc3 is the current incremental backup, inc1 is deleted but inc2 and inc3 are not deleted because they are needed for comparison.

   Since there is a limit on the number of snapshots that can be created per share, add the Nutanix Files share as content for a single subclient. Do not split the folders in your share across multiple subclients.

IntelliSnap Support

You can configure Nutanix Files NFS subclients to perform IntelliSnap backups. From the snapshot or backup copy, you can restore the contents of the entire subclient or restore particular files.