The requirement is to store physical hard copies of data off-site, which in the context of data centers, refers to tape backups. Network Data Management Protocol (NDMP) is an industry-standard protocol used by NetApp ONTAP to enable backup applications to control the backup and restore of data between a storage system and tape devices. This allows for the creation of physical tape media that can be transported and stored at an off-site location, directly fulfilling the customer's regulatory compliance needs for physical, off-site data retention.

A. SnapVault: SnapVault is a disk-to-disk backup technology. It creates logical, point-in-time copies on a secondary ONTAP system, not physical media like tapes.

C. SVM DR: SVM DR is a disaster recovery solution that replicates an entire Storage Virtual Machine (SVM) to another cluster using SnapMirror. It is a disk-based replication method, not a tape backup solution.

D. FlexCache: FlexCache is a remote caching technology designed to accelerate data access for distributed clients. It is not a backup or archival solution.

1. NetApp ONTAP 9 Documentation

"Data protection using NDMP overview": "NDMP is a protocol that is used to transport data between an ONTAP system and a tape server. You can use NDMP to back up and restore data on your storage system." This document explicitly links NDMP to tape-based backup operations.

2. NetApp Technical Report 4015

"SnapVault Best Practices Guide": Page 6

Section 2.1

"SnapVault Overview" describes SnapVault as a "disk-to-disk (D2D) data replication feature for ONTAP." This confirms it is not a tape-based solution.

3. NetApp Technical Report 4529

"SnapMirror Configuration and Best Practices Guide for ONTAP 9.7": Page 10

Section 2.3

"SVM Disaster Recovery" states

"SVM DR replicates all of the data and configuration of a source SVM to a destination SVM on another cluster." This defines it as a disk-based DR technology.

4. NetApp Technical Report 4571

"FlexCache Technology in ONTAP 9": Page 5

Section 1

"Introduction" describes FlexCache as a technology that "creates a sparsely populated

writable

persistent cache of an origin volume." This identifies its purpose as performance acceleration

not data protection.