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CASO catalog replication

davei
Level 4
Hi all

Can somebody explain to me how catalog replication works in a CASO environment in BE2010 R2?

Perhaps I have misunderstood, but I thought all catalogs would be replicated and therefore present on each media server, as well as the CAS?

I have two servers - one in each datacentre.  One is the CAS, the other is the MMS.  MMS does not seem to have catalogs located locally for jobs run on the CAS.  Should they be there?

My end goal is to run a job on the CAS locally in DC1, duplicate it to DC2 and then duplicate it again to tape on the MMS in DC2.  When the 'duplicate backup sets' template runs (immediately after the backup template runs), CAS sometimes runs it on the CAS server itself, other times runs it on the MMS.  All well and good (i'm using openstorage optimised dedupe\replication) but when it runs on the MMS, i get an error:

"0xe0009444 - The requested source duplicate backup sets catalog record could not be found.  Perhaps the media containing the source backup sets was previously deleted.  Final error cataegory: Job Errors."

Could it be that it takes time to replicate the catalogs from the CAS to the MMS?  If so, i see how this could cause my problem - backup runs on CAS and info gets added to catalog locally on the CAS.  Then duplicate runs immediately, but catalog not replicated to MMS yet.

Is there any way of controlling which media server (CAS or MMS) the duplicate job runs on?

Is there any way of manually controlling or replicating the catalog to the MMS?

I've read through the CASO section of the BE2010 admin guide but can't find this information anywhere.

Thanks.

dave
 
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CraigV
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Hi,

First-off, get hold of the BE 2010 Admin Guide, and read from pg 1449. It will give you more information:

http://seer.entsupport.symantec.com/docs/338514.htm


When you set up CASO, you choose 1 of 3 locations for device/media location: Centrally on the CASO, on the MMS, or replicated. If you set up your CASO to hold all the information, you wouldn't have any catalogs/device and media information on that server. However, this can be changed through BEutility.exe to replicated (replicates information from the MMS to the CASO, and possible with a fast link!) if this is what you want. Should your MMS die, your catalogs etc. are stored on the CASO offering some sort of redundancy.

If your CASO has control of your MMS, you are able to delegate control of that MMS to the CASO server. If not, all it becomes is a central reporting/admin server.

Furthermore, pg. 1498 has details on duplicate jobs in a CASO environment. Check through it, see if it answers your query, and if it does, please close this off with the solution.

Laters!

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CraigV
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Hi,

First-off, get hold of the BE 2010 Admin Guide, and read from pg 1449. It will give you more information:

http://seer.entsupport.symantec.com/docs/338514.htm


When you set up CASO, you choose 1 of 3 locations for device/media location: Centrally on the CASO, on the MMS, or replicated. If you set up your CASO to hold all the information, you wouldn't have any catalogs/device and media information on that server. However, this can be changed through BEutility.exe to replicated (replicates information from the MMS to the CASO, and possible with a fast link!) if this is what you want. Should your MMS die, your catalogs etc. are stored on the CASO offering some sort of redundancy.

If your CASO has control of your MMS, you are able to delegate control of that MMS to the CASO server. If not, all it becomes is a central reporting/admin server.

Furthermore, pg. 1498 has details on duplicate jobs in a CASO environment. Check through it, see if it answers your query, and if it does, please close this off with the solution.

Laters!

davei
Level 4
HI CraigV

Thanks for the response!

As I said I've read the CASO section and have it in front of me right now but i don't think it tells me what i want to know.

I have the MMS catalog location setting set to "Both Servers (Replicated)".

What i want is to have duplicate jobs running on the MMS, which to my small brain requires the catalogs from the CAS to be replicated to the MMS - not just the other way round.

If I look on the MMS in the catalog folder, I can see a subfolder for both the CAS and the MMS, but the size difference is great - on the CAS, the subfolder for the CAS itself has 12GB of catalogs, on the MMS the CAS subfolder has less than 1MB.

Is anything to do with catalog replication exposed to us the administrators?

Or is the replication only one way - from MMS to CAS?  Maybe i need to swap the roles of the servers!

Any input is much appreciated.

Thanks.

dave

davei
Level 4
OK so i see on Page 1498:

"A recurring job from a policy that contains a Duplicate Backup Sets template or a Synthetic Backup template must be run on the same managed media server where the job was initially run. The jobs produced from these templates require access to the media that contains the backup sets that were produced from the preceding jobs."

I have two openstorage devices, one in each DC local to each BE2010R2 server.  The LSUs on each OST device are shared in BE between the two media servers so both can see, read and write to them. 

I'm duplicating the backup sets in a policy using OST optimised deduplication\replication.  The backup sets duplicate to the openstorage device in DC2 fine. 

I'm then looking for the MMS in DC2 to read the duplicated backup sets and write them to a local tape device.  I believe this requires the MMS in DC2 to be aware of a) the catalogs generated when the initial backup job ran in DC1, and b) the catalogs to reflect the fact that the relevant OST media files are available on the openstorage device in DC2.

I read in the admin guide somewhere that when a duplicate backup set job completes, the catalogs are updated to reflect the fact that the media in question is also available at the target site.  Do you know if that is the case?

Perhaps i have go this all wrong.....  or perhaps i need to swap roles so that the MMS is the primary backup server in DC1, and the CAS is the server in the DR datacenter DC2.

CraigV
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Give it a bash and see what happens. I'd go with the primary server being whichever server is considered "in production".

CraigV
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Hi Davei,

 

If this helped, will you close off with the solution?

 

Thanks!

davei
Level 4

Hi CraigV

Yes I suppose this did help in some way, my CAS is now in the DR site (as when the proverbial hits the fan i want all my catalogs, deviceDB, etc. available to me in DR) and MMS is in production site.

Regarding controlling which media server a duplicate job\template runs on, I believe from my discussion with Symantec Support (ticket ref 412733852) that there is NOT currently a way to do this.  I say this by virtue of the fact that the engineer said he would go off to do some research and has not come back to me in days.  Copying the jobs\policy\SL to the remote MMS and running directly results in the duplicates working fine, so it is not a problem with the remote MMS.  Just with the CAS option not delegating the duplicate template to the remote MMS, and there being no apparent way to specifiy a media server for a duplicate template like there is on a selection list.

Thanks all for their input and help.  All the best.

davei

CraigV
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Cool...can you close this forum query off with the solution then please?

Glad you came right...

Chrissy_Ginther
Level 3

I too just introduced a CASO server.  I then choose to have the catalogs replicated.  But the CASO being the new server, has only a couple hundred MB in catalog files where as my MMS which was the original server has a couple hundred GB of catalog files.

Do I have to manually copy the catalog files?  Why such a difference in size?