Protection Method

Advantages

Disadvantages

Client-Based NAS Attach

• Supports backup and subsequent restores to different NASs.
• Supports concurrent backups for higher performance.
• May use native CIFS or NFS.
• Indirect protection; increases load on customer’s computer.

•  Indirect protection; decreases performance.
• With CIFS or NFS extended ownership and permission attributes may not be supported.
• Does not offer Microsoft VSS-level open file protection.

Direct NAS Attach

• Direct protection; no load on customer’s computer.
• Direct protection; faster performance due to direct D2D copy.
• Supports backup and subsequent restores to different NASs (no vendor-proprietary lock-in.)
• Supports concurrent D2D backups for higher performance.
• May use native CIFS or NFS.open file protection.
• If used with byte-level (content aware) deduplication, will have better deduplication ratios.
• If used with intelligent compression, will have better compression ratios.

•  With CIFS or NFS extended ownership and permission attributes may not be supported.
• Does not offer Microsoft VSS-level open file protection.

NDMP

• Direct protection; no load on customer’s computer.
• Direct protection; faster performance due to direct D2D or tape copy.
• May use native NDMP; extended ownership and permission attributes may be supported.
• Sometimes supports multiplexed streams for faster performance via concurrency [not available on many implementations.]

• Not implemented on all NASs, particularly more affordable NASs.
• Can be difficult to perform file-level restores given the underlying implementation of NDMP (which is typically just a batched “dump” command.)
• Does not support backup and subsequent restores to different NASs (vendor proprietary- lock-in.)
• Many versions do not support concurrent D2D backups for higher performance (originally designed for tape.)
• Does not offer Microsoft VSS-level open file protection.