Troubleshooting NetApp NDMP backup performance - perform a dump to null

#Filer> dump 0f null /vol/vol0

This will dump /vol/vol0 to the null device, and record the backup information in the /etc/log/backup file.

It will generate information such as this:

dmp Fri Mar  5 13:15:05 CST /vol/vol0/(0) Start (Level 0)
dmp Fri Mar  5 13:15:05 CST /vol/vol0/(0) Options (b=63)
dmp Fri Mar  5 13:15:05 CST /vol/vol0/(0) Snapshot (snapshot_for_backup.5, Fri Mar  5 13:15:05 CST)
dmp Fri Mar  5 13:15:06 CST /vol/vol0/(0) Tape_open (null)
dmp Fri Mar  5 13:15:06 CST /vol/vol0/(0) Phase_change (I)
dmp Fri Mar  5 13:15:10 CST /vol/vol0/(0) Phase_change (II)
dmp Fri Mar  5 13:15:10 CST /vol/vol0/(0) Phase_change (III)
dmp Fri Mar  5 13:15:23 CST /vol/vol0/(0) Phase_change (IV)
dmp Fri Mar  5 13:23:00 CST /vol/vol0/(0) Phase_change (V)
dmp Fri Mar  5 13:23:00 CST /vol/vol0/(0) Tape_close (null)
dmp Fri Mar  5 13:23:00 CST /vol/vol0/(0) End (7276 MB)

Based on this, it can be concluded that the overall backup took 8 minutes, roughly 15.16 MB/sec. This is the maximum speed at which the NetApp filer can read the data from disk, but should not be considered the maximum speed of a Network Data Management Protocol (NDMP) backup or a dump to tape.