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Master Server cold stand-by on NetBackup Appliance

Itegral
Level 6

I need some advise please on the follow requirement guys;

We bought two 5220 appliances from Symantec last year with an intention to use as active/stand-by Master servers by avoiding single point of failure for the NBU Master server. We call them Appliance A and B.

Following our initial discussion with Symantec, we agreed that Appliance A will be used as production Master and Appliance B can be used as a stand-by Master server by replicating the catalog over this appliance. Since the objective is to have the Appliance B readily available to be promoted as Master in case of complete loss of the production Master (Appliance A).

To address the situation (in case of complete hardware loss of Appliance A), I am thinking to;

1 -  Set up a catalog backup on the Appliance A pointing to Appliance B

2 - Following the hardware loss of Applance A, restore the catalog backup from the Appliance B to the appropriate location on appliance B.

3 - Rename the appliance B hostname and IP address as production Master (Appliance A), and amend the zoning the Appliance B with tape the drive. This would take probably take couple of hours and we will be up and running.

 

All I need is endorsement from Symantec on the process above and perhaps some pointers for actions – rest we should be able to deal internally.

Appreciate your assistance in this regard.

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

Accepted Solutions

RiaanBadenhorst
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Don't configure Appliance B as Appliance B, just leave it as nb-appliance. It takes 10 minutes to configure it. You can't change the Master's name once its configured, so no real use in doing it before hand.

 

Or what you could do is configure it with the same name, and just use a different IP address. At "failover" you can then change the IP.

 

Then restore the catalog ;)

 

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7 REPLIES 7

RiaanBadenhorst
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Don't configure Appliance B as Appliance B, just leave it as nb-appliance. It takes 10 minutes to configure it. You can't change the Master's name once its configured, so no real use in doing it before hand.

 

Or what you could do is configure it with the same name, and just use a different IP address. At "failover" you can then change the IP.

 

Then restore the catalog ;)

 

Marianne
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My 2c:

Config them as independent master servers and replicate all backups via AIR to 2nd appliance.

Add SERVER entries for both to all clients with Appliance A as Master and Appliance B as additional server.
When Appliance A is not available, you can easily make Appliance B the Master on all clients from Host Properties.

RiaanBadenhorst
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Just take care to update all clients that use scripts (SQL) if you're going to use AIR. You'll need to specify the new master server name....

Itegral
Level 6

Let me explain the extended architecture (media servers) - Appliance A being the Master, we have 4 Appliances in Production currently being used as Media servers. The storage in Appliance A and B are 4TB native. This is not sufficient to replicate all backups via AIR to 2nd appliance.

My point is, Riaan is suggesting to configure Appliance B with the same name as current Master (say A), and just use a different IP address. At "failover" change the IP then restore the catalog -

Querstion is: Restore the Catalog from where? from Tape, from backup copy of Catalog on Appliance B, or another disk?

Marianne
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Catalog recovery from tape or Basic Disk is always easiest. Basic Disk can be NFS share.

Itegral
Level 6

To be honest, I dont want to rely on tape or basic disk.

Since I am setting-up a catalog backup on the Appliance A pointing to Appliance B, I intend to restore the Full catalog from the "catalog backup image" on Appliance B to the relevant path on appliance B.

How does it sound?

Marianne
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This means that Appliance B will be a media server of Appliance A.

You will not be able to rename Appliance B to Appliance A and make it a master without wiping the device (including the Catalog backup).

So, this will not work as standby master.

Riaan's way is the only way with Catalog backups on tape or Basic Disk on NFS mount.
As I've said - both these STU types are dead easy to restore from - additional steps are needed to restore from MSDP or Advanced disk.

Whatever you decide, set it up and TEST before you are met with a real disaster.

In the meantime, Symantec has indicated that clustered Appliance master server is on the roadmap.