Forum Discussion

MalikShahab's avatar
MalikShahab
Level 3
3 years ago

NetBackup deployment 9.1

Hi Everyone,

I am going to create a NetBackup environment I have some questions :

1. Is there any preference for a Physical server vs a VM? (For media, master)

2. What are the minimum specs required for a Master server and media?? (Enterprise environment)

3. Any pros and cons of deployment on Windows server vs Linux?? 

4. Ports requirement for media and master server? (SAN switches are configured)

5. If media server is VM how would we connect Tap Library?? (SAN environment)

6. How to migrate Old data of customer from LT06 to LT09??

Thanks

  • davidmoline's avatar
    davidmoline
    Level 6
    3 years ago

    Hi MalikShahab 

    The following is my thoughts on your questions, and to better answer you would need to provide more guidance on the size (data to be protected, number of clients and type of clients in the domain). You local account team should be able to provide good guidance too - either via a partner or direct.

    1. I prefer using a VM as the primary server - it allows for more options for recovery without complicating things with clustering. Ideally the primary server should run on an ESX server spearate from the production VM workload. For media servers, I prefer to use physical servers (or appliances), unless the environment is small, using a VM as a media server would most likely impact other VM guests (CPU and network). 
    2. The asnwer depends on the size of the environment. There is a current Performance and Tuning guide available that will provide the recommendations based on the expected workload etc. 
      https://www.veritas.com/content/support/en_US/doc/21414900-146141073-0/v19525319-146141073
    3. The OS to deploy really comes down to what you can support best. There are some features that require Linux (instant access for instance), so those thinggs should guide you. If you are a Windows shop with little to no experience in Linux, it doesn't make sense to deploy NEtBackup on Linux - you are just asking for trouble.
    4. Not sure I understand the question - the primary server should be dedicated and as such would not require SAN ports. SAN ports for media servers can be used for tape out and access to VMWare datastores. Dedicate one or more host ports to each function. If you also require SAN to attach storage, do not mix this with tape operations. The number of ports required will depend on what you are trying to do - there is no right answer.
    5. To attach to a SAN based tape library requires a physical media server. Veritas do not support attaching SAN based storage/tape to a virtual media server (I belive it can be made to work, but not recommended). There are exceptions to this for some virtualisation technologies, but not VMware. Refer to this guide
      https://www.veritas.com/bin/support/docRepoServlet?bookId=NB_70_80_VE&requestType=pdf
    6. For migrating data, you cannot read LTO6 in LTO9 drives, so you would need to maintain one or more drives to read those tapes. Then you can decide whether to duplicate over time or just maintain the old drive (how much data is there to manage on LTO6?). Another alternate could be to move the problem to someone else that specialises in this - some tape storage vendors also provide a data recovery service where by they hold the tapes and recover data for you, there is a cost involved, but it may work out cheaper than managing the old hardware yourself and the cost of duplicating to newer media

    Cheers
    David