Backup Exec vs. the NDMP agent

Once again I find myself slapping my forehead over the behavior of Backup Exec. In this episode, we find our intrepid administrator transitioning his NetApp Filer backups from traditional backups of CIFS shares to NDMP backup to a tape library attached directly to the filer. All appears well as the tape library is registered and shows up properly in the Backup Exec devices screen.

Flash forward to the weekend. All backups of the CIFS shares using non-NDMP methods fail. No NDMP backups have been configured. What could be the problem?

The problem appears to be that the Backup Exec agent and the NDMP agent share a port. Probably something within the bowels of the Backup Exec agent that it really is the bastard spawn of NDMP. However, what this means is that once you turn on NDMP on your NetApp filer, you can no longer do normal backups of CIFS shares from that filer!

It's just incredible to me that time and time again, I come across absolutely insane things that Backup Exec does. Why in the world would turning on NDMP on a filer *have* to require that Backup Exec now refuses to talk to the filer except via NDMP. Obviously this is some bug (one can hope) but upgrading to 12.5 from 11d isn't on my roadmap right now as that opens an entirely new can of worms.

Well, NDMP is now off until my new library license arrives along with my new stock of LTO4 tapes. Apparently it's all or nothing for NDMP and the filer.