Storage array snapshot integration

NGBackup integrates natively, over each vendor’s management API, with the snapshot engines of hardware storage arrays. Backups offload snapshot creation to the array itself, so the production volume is frozen for milliseconds and the backup reads from the array-side snapshot — minimizing I/O impact on production workloads while keeping the whole lifecycle orchestrated from a single job.

Capabilities

• Native API-driven — the plugin talks directly to the array’s management API; no manual snapshot scripts
• Array-offloaded snapshots — snapshot creation, tracking and release happen on the array, keeping the production datapath untouched
• Pre/post-job lifecycle orchestration — create → mount/track → back up from snapshot → release, fully automated per job
• Application scenarios — agent-based Windows server backups, and agentless VMware, Hyper-V and Nutanix AHV virtual machine backups
• Consistent recovery points — the backup is taken from a stable snapshot image, not from a live, changing volume

Supported storage families

Vendor / family	Integration
NetApp ONTAP	ONTAP REST/ZAPI snapshot engine
HPE 3PAR / Primera / Alletra	WSAPI virtual copies
HPE Nimble	REST API snapshots
Dell EMC Unity / PowerStore	Unisphere REST API snapshots
Pure Storage FlashArray	Purity REST API snapshots

How a job runs

1. Create — at job start the plugin calls the array API and takes a hardware snapshot of the volumes backing the protected data (Windows volumes, or the datastores/containers hosting the VMs).
2. Mount / track — the snapshot is exposed and tracked for the duration of the job.
3. Back up from snapshot — data is read from the array-side snapshot, not from the production volume.
4. Release — on job completion the snapshot is released on the array, leaving no residue.

Configure

Add the plugin line to the FileSet of an agent-based Windows job or an agentless VM job:

FileSet {
  Name = "vmware-on-netapp"
  Include {
    Options { Signature = SHA256 }
    Plugin = "storage-snapshot: array=netapp-ontap mgmt=filer01.example.com user=svc-backup password=secret volume=vm_datastore01"
    Plugin = "vsphere: server=vc.example.com user=svc@vsphere password=secret vm=*"
  }
}

All parameters are space-separated key=value pairs. Set array= to netapp-ontap, hpe-3par, hpe-nimble, dellemc-unisphere or pure-flasharray. See the Content reference for FileSet options.

Restore

Restores are unchanged: recovery points captured from array snapshots are browsed and restored exactly like any other backup — full VM, BMR or granular. See Restore, Instant Recovery & V2V.