Is it worth installing NDMP plugin on Smart client if this is the library is attached? (4046449)

A customer had the backup library attached to the Smart client and had installed the NDMP plugin on this machine in the belief that this would increase performance through having a more direct data channel between the data source and the device.

The main raison d'être for the NDMP plugin is to allow the filer to dump it's own data and stream this directly to a device hanging locally on the filer itself so that the backup channel is completely local. The NDMP plugin does nothing more than instigate the dump command on the filer. If the filer data is backed up to another library on the Netvault server or other client machine then the data could conceivably be backed up in the same way using the filesystem plugin to back up the filer data from a share on a client machine.

Installing the NDMP plugin on the Smart client where the device is attached will bring no performance benefits as the data channel once established by the dump routine on the filer runs directly from the filer to the device. Having the NDMP plugin on the Smart client also means only one volume at a time can be selected for any one job. Multiple volume backup jobs using subjobs can only be run if the NDMP plugin is on the Netvault server as for subjobs to run they need to have direct access to the Netvault server schedule manager. Advice would therefore be to always install the NDMP plugin on the Netvault Server regardless of where the storage device is attached.