Netbackup - Enterprise Vault Agent Implementation

Thanks for that.  One point to clarify - are you saying that there should be a seperate policy for each vault store ?  I have 3 vault stores and currently have them all in the same policy.

AJ. 

Yes.

All these directives

EV_OPEN_PARTITION
EV_CLOSED_PARTITIONS
EV_READY_PARTITIONS

Do not support more than one client on the policy client list. From the guide:

This directive does not support multiple policy clients in the client list.

 

This makes logical sense too. From a performance and operational perspective, having all Vault Stores in Backup Mode all at the same time is a bad idea.
This restriction encourages you to set different backup schedules for the Vault Stores, so that they are not backed up at the same time; even though NetBackup and EV should not have problems letting you do so.

Take a good look at the NetBackup_AdminGuide_EntVault.pdf in your installation source.

There is a good section from about Page 100 onwards that describes all best practices to do this

Part of that says:

To ensure consistency when backing up a fingerprint database, you should add
all open partitions of the vault store group and the fingerprint database in the
same policy.

Other useful bits (but do take a read as there is a lot of good advice in the guide)

You should back up the closed partitions and the ready partitions of a Vault
Store in separate policies.

If the amount of data is small enough, you can combine the closed and the
ready partitions of multiple Vault Store’s in a single policy

You should protect index locations in an Enterprise Vault site with a separate
policy to maintain consistency.

Hope this helps

Many thanks for the input:

To ensure consistency when backing up a fingerprint database, you should add
all open partitions of the vault store group and the fingerprint database in the
same policy.

I am currently doing this

 

Other useful bits (but do take a read as there is a lot of good advice in the guide)

You should back up the closed partitions and the ready partitions of a Vault
Store in separate policies.

Not backing up ready partitions (don't have any) but the closed partitions are in a seperate policy

 

If the amount of data is small enough, you can combine the closed and the
ready partitions of multiple Vault Store’s in a single policy

Not applicable

 

You should protect index locations in an Enterprise Vault site with a separate
policy to maintain consistency.

I have the index locations in the 'main' policy along with the databases and open partitions.

As I have 3 vault stores, then what I am reading from the above (and I will check into the manual as you pointed out) is that I should have a set of my three policies for each of the vaul stores ?  Seems overkill to me.  Also, I should split out the index location backups into a seperate policy.

As there is only one Fingerprint DB, one Audit DB, one Monitoring DB then these will only appear once.  The above is saying that the Fingerprint DB should be in the same policy as the Open Partitions (which I have three entries for - one for each vault store).  This is now confusing......

To summarise, I have the following policies:

1. DIR_DB

2. Monitoring DB, Audit DB, Fingerprint DB, Vault Store DB 1, Vault Store DB 2, Vault Store DB 3, Index Locations, Open Partitions Vault Store 1, Open Partitions Vault Store 2, Open Partitions Vault Store 3

3. Closed Partitions Vault Store 1, Closed Partitions Vault Store 2, Closed Partitions Vault Store 3

1 & 2 run daily differential, 1 & 2 & 3 run weekly Full.  1 starts at 1900, 2 starts at 2000, 3 starts at 2200.

Should I split the Vault Store elements out into additional policies, if so how do I keep the consistency with the Fingerprint DB ?? 

Confused......

AJ

 

Been digging as all this rang bells and knew there was a doc somewhere - take a look at these:

http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH126604

http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH150237

First is EV8, second is EV9

Hope these help

Excellent - many thanks.  The only thing to consider now is whether the 3 vault stores need to be handled seperately.  I don't see how I can do this and remain within the guidelines of the technote.....

AJ.

I guess it is all down the things being looked at being within a group - never easy!

How much data do you have within EV?

If it is very large then you may well end up looking at using FlashBackup anyway as the EV Agent does not tend to be very fast! (just to complicate things!)

http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH176623

Here is one for EV10...

None of the 3 Technotes seem to encourage the backup of individual Vault Store DBs (EV_VAULT_STORE_DB).

This is strange, as both the EV's own documents and the Nbu EV guide seem to agree that restoring them is one of the most important steps in EV recovery; and it should be done when you restore partitions.

Secondly, the fact that the Technotes put the EV_FINGERPRINT_DB together with a EV_OPEN_PARTITION suggests that this backup configuration is for a Vault Store Group that is associated with Vault Stores from a single server.
A Fingerprint DB can be associated with Vault Stores located on multiple servers through a Vault Store Group, and as we know, each Vault Store has its own Open Partition.
This would logically imply that the EV_FINGERPRINT_DB should not be bounded to a single EV_OPEN_PARTITION in a policy when a Vault Store Group has Vault Stores from different servers.

Thanks for that.  One point to clarify - are you saying that there should be a seperate policy for each vault store ?  I have 3 vault stores and currently have them all in the same policy.

After rereading what I said, I kept associating a single client (server) to a single vault store, sorry for the confusion.
If all your Vault Stores belong to the same client, then yes you can put them in the same policy.
The one client per policy restriction still applies.