NB5200 media server version

[dedupe]

All our environment is 7.1 however the new NB5200 appliance version is listed as 7.0.1.5. In the support page (http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=landing&key=58991) latest patch level is 1.1.0.2 for NB5200. Version on the appliance is also 1.1.0.2. Is it possible to upgrade NB5200 to Netbackup 7.1?

Regards,

Burak

[AbdulRasheed]

Hi Burak,

    The software update to make NB5200 to 7.1 level will be available soon.

    As NetBackup 7.0.1 media servers are compatible with NetBackup 7.1, you can use NB5200 with 7.1 master right now. However 7.1 specific features (e.g. A.I.R) cannot be used until the software update is released.

[teiva-boy]

For now, the appliances do not share the same patch cycle as NBU (Or PureDisk for that matter) with extra work being done specifically for the appliances (e.g. 5000, 5200, etc)

Why this is done, I have no clue..  These are plain jane x86 systems!  

Hopefully the dev teams will better align themselves in the future.

[AbdulRasheed]

Hi Teiva-boy (sorry, I don't know your name, hence addressing you by user id),

   NetBackup 5200 is not simply NetBackup installed on x64 hardware. There are appliance specific components which makes it a turn key solution media server with embedded deduplication. There are also updates to bundled infrastructure components. We are working towards releasing appliance updates close to NetBackup updates though.

[dedupe]

Hi Abdul,

Thanks for your quick response. Media server deduplication is working for all my test clients however when I force client only dedupe in Client Properties on the master server, they all fail. I have a variety of test clients mainly Linux Redhat X64 and Windows 2008 R2. I am wondering whether it is because of a version mismatch as all the clients are at 7.1?

PS: Error messages include "Client Direct plugin not available" then "media open error 83".

Kind regards,

Burak

[AbdulRasheed]

Hi Burak,

  I hate to be the one telling the bad news! In a NetBackup environment, a client at a higher version than the media server is not supported. Such configurations are never tested.

  The best thing to do is to downgrade clients to 7.0.1. If you still have problems, we can look into it or Technical Support can help you out.

  Best wishes!

[dedupe]

Abdul,

You said NB5200 v7.1 will be available soon. How soon will that be? Any ETA? Is there an FA program for this?

Thanks

Burak

[Justin_Cruttend]

We had already upgraded to NetBackup 7.1 and then purchased the NB5200!

Why aren't updates between NetBackup and the applicance syncronised?

Is there a date for version 7.1 of the applicance software?

[bartman10]

Oh that's too funny!

Just wait till you experience the joy of "dedupe everywhere" and manually patch everywhere. If you'll notice Symantec has no coordination of what it's doing with it's software. I'm running Pure Disk 6.6.1.2 eeb rollup 04, Net Backup 7.0.1 with at least 6 EEB's, every EEB I get that's PureDisk related they say to install on ALL CLIENTS RUNNING CLIENT SIDE DEDUPE!!!

If you look at the version of PD NBU 7.0.1 is running in the logs says it's 6.6.0. When you download the PD 6.6.1.2 patch they have an way to upgrade the PD engine for all NBU 6.5 media servers AND for HP-UX or AIX 7.0.1 media servers... if you're running NBU 7 on Windows or Linux they say "check back later".

So what does this mean, if you have a NBU 7 client running client dedup, a NBU 7 AIX media server, a NBU 7 Linux media server, and PureDisk 6.6.1.2, EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM WILL HAVE A DIFFERENT VERSION OF PUREDISK!

When you ask the support people about this you can hear them bang there heads agents the desk. They know it's a total mess. Ask Symantec about some of this... they have no idea. PD 6.6.1 introduced a new type of compression, what does this mean for NBU 7 clients and media servers that are still running the 6.6.0 engine? What if I have an AIX NBU 7 media server with the upgraded PD agent, it'll be using the new compression right? What happens if a Linux or Windows NBU 7 media server tries to do a restore that an AIX media server with the upgraded PD compression engine created... will it work?? They have no idea!

There is no way to know what clients you've installed EEB's on, no way to push EEB's over "live update". I'm on version 7 SEVEN, of the NBU PureDisk "Rock Solid" EEB update.. VERSION 7!!! 7!!!!!!! No joke.. there are 7 updates to the original "ROCK SOLID" patch!

It's a total zoo!

They are using EEB's like service packs or point releases but users are left holding the bag. Oh I forgot.. if you install the 6.6.1.2 EEB rollup it says in the install NOT to upgrade to NBU 7.1 until 7.1.0.1 comes out because the included patches are not available in 7.1!

[Stanleyj]

Burak, I had a very similar situation with the client side dedup not working. To correct it i had to put an entry in the host file for the media server, the master server, and an entry for the server it self. Dont ask my why i had to include itself but it flat would not work without it. Also it was very much case sensitive. The way we discovered this was support sent me a tool labled NBDNA which did a dns test for the local machine and it generated a report that showed i had some local name resolution issues. I would try to attach the file but it is 65mb and i dont think it will load. May want to ask support for this tool. Hope this helps.

[dedupe]

Hi Stanley,

Thanks for the update we also found editing hosts file as a workaround for some of the machines. Take home points so far;

• Open the FW ports 10082, 10102 and 1556
• Forward & Reverse DNS resolution if unsuccessful edit the host file
• Make sure clients are on 7.0.1 or below as we have the issue with the clients running 7.1 that is not supported

No response from Symantec regarding the release of NB5200 7.1! Public NB7.1 release was back in March 14!!

How do you guys setup Lifecycle Policy to duplicate images from Puredisk to Tape? Capacity managed retention is greyed out when you choose the Puredisk storage unit. Do we have to use Fixed Retention?

Thanks

Burak

[teiva-boy]

LOL, now Symantec can sell you Altiris for patch management. ;)  

[dedupe]

I am glad we only have Redhat 5\Windows 2008 Master\Media servers. Good luck keeping your backup infrastructure up to date!

[bartman10]

When you get the SLP duplication to tape working let us know what your throughput is. Currently I'm only getting 15mb/s to my LTO3 drives. Symantec says that's about "normal"!!! WTH! I don't seem to remember that being mentioned when we signed up for this.

BTW, our SPA blew up this weekend for no reason. Could not mount /Storage, had to fsck the disk to make it clean. Now we have to run DSCAN to re-check the CRC of all it's stored data, currently 18TB. By my entimate it's going to take 40 hours to finish the check!! That's just the check to find the bad .bhd container files.

dscan is single threaded and cpu bound. If there was a way to specify a start and end container multable threads could be run cutting the time down.. but as you can guess you can't do that... so i have a 16 core with 15 cores at 0%, 1 core at 100%... for 40 hours checking the CRC of 96,000 container files.

I have a feeling management is getting fed up with dedupe....

[dedupe]

SLP is working with the fixed retention on the dedupe disk not capacity managed way. My average throughput to a LTO4 drive is 65MB\s.

You can see in the job details as below;

 Info arm (pid=15146) StorageServer=PureDisk:arm; Report=PDDO Stats for (arm): read: 742360991 KB, stream rate: 89.39 MB/sec, CR received: 735908876 KB, dedup: 0.0%

724961MB\11100seconds =  65.3MB\s

Which appliance are you using?

Burak

[Sebastian_Baszc]

Code with 7.1 should be available in June/July. This version will bring some really good updates. At the moment you can use FC built into the appliance only to send the data out to the tape devices. You can't use the tape storage unit configured on 5200 as the target for the daily backups. From what I heard next release will enable this functionality.

[Sebastian_Baszc]

Hey Mate,

Have you tried playing with buffers on the appliance?

Try this:

/usr/openv/netbackup/db/config/NUMBER_DATA_BUFFERS_MULTCOPY

/usr/openv/netbackup/db/config/SIZE_DATA_BUFFERS_MULTCOPY

I know it should be used for Inline copy, but it might help.

[dedupe]

On the appliance these config files do not exist.

arm:/usr/openv/netbackup/db/config # ls
behavior  dc  shm

On the master server:

NUMBER_DATA_BUFFERS_MULTCOPY = 32

SIZE_DATA_BUFFERS = 262144

There is no SIZE_DATA_BUFFERS_MULTCOPY

Do you recommend creating these files on the appliance? If so what should I set these to from 5200 to LTO4?

Thanks

Burak

[Justin_Cruttend]

Burak,

You may find some information in the Performance and Tuning guide: http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH62317. I doubt it will include NB5200 specific information though. 

Though it's for 6.5, it is officially relevant to 7.0 (and I asume 7.1?)

Justin

[Stanleyj]

Does anyone one know if this update will support multiple robots?  Currently the 7.0.1 will only support one robot (atleast thats what I was told).

I am in a real delima because when the tech was here assisting with the setup he recommended us using an old LTO3 robot that had two drives in it.  Well today one of the drives went out and there is no warranty on this device.  I have two lto 4 robots but only one drive per.  I would like to start utilizing these drives if possible.