What is the primary goal of enterprise storage management? To back up and restore information in an intelligent, secure, timely, cost-effective manner over all enterprise-wide operating systems.

Companies need high-performance backup and the ability to back up data to local media devices, without network traffic. While the data itself may be distributed throughout the enterprise, its cataloging and control must be centralized. The emergence of network-attached storage and dedicated file servers makes storage management more challenging.

The current practice for all storage management vendors is to adapt their architecture to the operating systems they support. The result is an implementation with layers of OS dependencies that require the user to change workflow and make concessions to departmental systems in the enterprise.

The Network Data Management Protocol (NDMP) is a new approach. Recognizing that these issues must be addressed, Network Appliance and Intelliguard have pioneered a network-based protocol that can be used for communications by all centralized backup applications and all agents on file servers. NDMP will create the first opportunity to provide truly enterprise-wide heterogeneous storage management solutions. The paradigm now shifts, permitting platforms to be driven at a departmental level and backup at the enterprise level.

NDMP will allow administrators to back up critical data using any combination of compliant network-attached servers, backup devices, and management applications. The protocol addresses the user's need for centralized control of enterprise-wide network data management while minimizing network traffic.

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