Hello,
We have (6) NetBackup 5220 appliances, all running 7.5.0.7 (2.5.4 code). 3 of the appliances have 72TB of stoarge with 60% utilized, and the other 3 have 36TB each. I am looking to upgrade them to 7.6.0.2 soon.
I was wondering if anyone experienced a lengthy process of getting the appliances upgraded to 7.6.0.2. The reason I am asking is that I have read where there is a conversion process on the storage pool that may take an extended amount of time, and I will need to take this into consideration when planning my downtime window for the upgrade.
I came across a utility that you can run that will estimate how long the conversion process may take. You can find it in the following tech note:
http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH213728
I ran the utility on each of my 72TB appliances and it came back with an estimate of 9 hours just to do the conversion process on the storage pool! Is this normal and I should just expect this and plan accordingly? If so, is there anything I can do to cut that time down, because with that process and everything else that goes with the upgrade, I could be looking at a downtime window of 10-11 hours easy.
Doesn't that sound a little crazy? How am I supposed to keep the appliances down and essentially not run any backups or restores during this time, which will more than likely end up being during the day, hoping that I can get them done and available before my nightly backups run. Should I look at spreading them out across multiple days, and if I do, will my master server be able to communicate with each of the appliances if they are on different version levels?
Thank you!
Larry
