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Dangerous_Dan's avatar
Dangerous_Dan
Level 5
4 years ago

bpstart_notify and updating /etc/hosts file on media server

Hello All,

I have been wokring with my network team to try to figure out how to resolve the following issue.

We have a customer with several Windows clustered file servers.

I am aware of the best practices for protecting clustered file servers (virtual IP) but for this customer we cannot do this because we use PVLAN's and so transferring the virtual IP would cause it to be blocked because it is assigned to the other nodes MAC address.

An idea popped up to use a bpstart_notify script to perhaps update the cluster IP to the other nodes IP in the /etc/hosts file on the media server but I don't know if this is even possible.

The idea at the time of the backup is for bpstart_notify to:

  1. Check current configured IP address for cluster for active node (from command line)
  2. if node 1 is active then update /etc/hosts on media server from 192.168.0.12 to 192.168.0.13
  3. if node 2 is active then update /etc/hosts on media server from 192.168.0.13 to 192.168.0.12

Then run the backup.

 

My questions are:

do you think this is feasible?

will the bpstart_notify work on the media server per policy/client? I don't want this to run for every backup if I run it on the media server.

Linux
  • Dangerous_Dan's avatar
    Dangerous_Dan
    4 years ago

    Hi All,

     

    In the end despite my best efforts, none of the suggested solutions were able to fix my issue.

     

    I ended up writing an SOP to my team if a failover occured, then they just move the cluster alias name to the other node. This is going to just be a workaround until the end of the year when our network refresh occurs

11 Replies

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    • Dangerous_Dan's avatar
      Dangerous_Dan
      Level 5
      4 years ago
      RiaanBadenhorst wrote:

      How do clients access the file shares if they're not using a Virtual IP?

      Hi,

      The customer facing network is their own network where they access their machines but the backup network adapters are connected to a PVLAN. They have a VIP configured on that network.

      we are a managed service so we have multitenancy Netbackup environments and the most secure way to keep customers segregated from each other is with a PVLAN.

      • davidmoline's avatar
        davidmoline
        Level 6
        4 years ago

        Hi Dangerous_Dan 

        If I understand you correctly, on the backup network there is no VIP available and you can only access each node of the cluster. I can think of two ways you could manage this.

        1. Run the backup against both nodes - the inactive node will complete quickly (or may fail due to no drives to backup). Create host aliases so that the backups from each node are registered against the cluster name. 

        2. Run a "dummy" backup policy on the media server (this assumes the media server can identify the correct active node). This backup has a bpstart_notify script that determines the active node, then initiates a backup for that node "bpbackup -i -w -p <Policy> -h <active node> -s <schedule>". The "-i" tells NetBackup to start this backup immediately, the "-w" says to wait until the backup complets. The wait option may not be needed but if you do use it you will almost certainly need to increate the bpstart start notify timeout on the media server. 

        Cheers
        David