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NBU 5230 appliance and multiple networks

quebek
Moderator
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Hello
I will be setting up soon brand new appliance NBU5230 in mine environment and need some advice from users who already do play with that appliance.
Currently I am using one master/media server running on Windows 2008 R2 with 3 different networks.
So to each of three NICs are assigned such IPs:
NIC1    10.1.1.122/24    hostname - nbumaster in production network, providing default gateway
NIC2    10.1.2.122/24    hostname - nbumasterbck in backup network, no gateway in it
NIC3    10.1.3.122/24    hostname - nbumasterbck2 in second backup network, no gateway in it

Default GW for this box is 10.1.1.1 so in production network.
Several clients are spread across these three networks.
All clients do have network leg in production network. In addition some of those clients do have yet another network leg in the backup or second backup network. Now depends in which backup network client has a leg, its pointing either to nbumasterbck or nbumasterbck2 - as a master server! So all backup traffic is going over that dedicated network, without travelling via default GW as client and NBU server is in the subnet.

Some clients do not have NIC in any backup network so these do point to nbumaster server.

Now I am willing to add to this env NBU 5230 appliance with 40TB of storage (I am planning to have 4TB in advance disk pool, and 36 TB in the PureDisk disk pool) as media server to above existing NBU domain. From master server I will be withdrawing the media server functionality.
In ours DC there is no 10Gbit yet. As I understand the documentation of NBU5230 there are 3 ethernet 1Gbit ports available (NIC2/NIC3/NIC4 from below picture)

nbu5230_nics.png

Now question:
Shall I configure those three NICs of NBU appliance to mimic the current master/media server network configuration, ie:
NIC2    10.1.1.125/24    hostname - nbumedia in production network, providing default gateway
NIC3    10.1.2.125/24    hostname - nbumediabck in backup network, no gateway in it
NIC4    10.1.3.125/24    hostname - nbumediabck2 in second backup network, no gateway in it

Or it would be better to set these three NICs one logical using some bonding techniques - so only one IP address in the production network??

What are your thoughts in this regards?

9 REPLIES 9

SymTerry
Level 6
Employee Accredited

Hello,

It really depends on what your looking to do here by nic bonding.

If you use option one, then you will have the to setup aliases in NBU for those hostnames to work. But you will be able to dedicate traffic to you backup networks just fine with out relying on more hardware like in option 2.

If you were to do option 2 and bond the nics, then your relying on your router to handle the cross subnet traffic as far as throughput goes. We have seen customers take down their routers doing that, so use caution. Nice part is you would have the benefits of nic bonding and not have to setup aliases.

 

quebek
Moderator
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Thank you SymTerry. I asked this question especially in regards of output from command:

nbdevconfig -getconfig -stype PureDisk -storage_server nbumedia

where I will find later on something like this:

(...)

"required_interface" "nbumedia" string

(...)

and this is kinda worrying me as all backup traffic from any client directed to MSDP will be using that 'required interface' - or I am totally wrong and misunderstood something in here.

Will you please comment on that?

TomerG
Level 6
Partner Employee Accredited Certified

I would think if you have a backup network that you'd want to take advantage of that for the appliance (I didn't understand why you'd want to just one IP on the public network, or maybe I'm reading that wrong)

I'm not sure if reading "REQUIRED_INTERFACE bp.conf entry for UNIX servers and clients" (http://www.symantec.com/docs/HOWTO33232) would help you, if you haven't already.

 

quebek
Moderator
Moderator
   VIP    Certified

Hello Tomer

Of course I would like to take this advantage, but...

Once I will have this appliance I will perform some tests and will share here their outcomes as of now I can only speculate without any proofs.

Something tells me that even if client will be in bck netwrok the traffic to MSDP will be going to live network of appliance, but I am speaking under correction....

Mark_Solutions
Level 6
Partner Accredited Certified

The appliances i have worked on do not use required interface or different names for the connections .. they simply reply on DNS, routing and / or host files to guide traffic to the appropriate interfaces

I have customers that use up to 3 networks for management, backup and replication (AIR) (plus the IPMI interface of course) and all work fine without the need for anything special as long as your environment is setup correctly.

To get your clients backing up over the bck network just ensure DNS and routing take them to the correct network interface on the appliance

Hope this helps

quebek
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Mark thanks for this input.
Are you able to run this command at your customer to check and its output if there is required_interface entry?

nbdevconfig -getconfig -stype PureDisk -storage_server name_of_appliance

Mark_Solutions
Level 6
Partner Accredited Certified

There is no required_interface entry on the appliance ... i cannot run that command for you at the moment i am afraid

quebek
Moderator
Moderator
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Finally the NBU appliance appeared on ours rised floor. And it is having the required interface in this output

V7.5 "storagepath" "/disk" string
V7.5 "spalogpath" "/disk/log" string
V7.5 "dbpath" "/disk" string
V7.5 "required_interface" "primaryapplname.some.domain.com" string
V7.5 "spalogretention" "7" int
V7.5 "verboselevel" "3" int
V7.5 "replication_target(s)" "none" string
V7.5 "Storage Pool Raw Size" "xx.5TB" string
V7.5 "Storage Pool Reserved Space" "1.4TB" string
V7.5 "Storage Pool Size" "xx.0TB" string
V7.5 "Storage Pool Used Space" "xxx.9GB" string
V7.5 "Storage Pool Available Space" "xx.8TB" string
V7.5 "Catalog Logical Size" "1.5GB" string
V7.5 "Catalog files Count" "7" string
V7.5 "Deduplication Ratio" "0.1" string

So now I am backing up a client with name hostnameBCK - so via the backup nic to the pure disk Disk Pool - but looks like the data flow is from hostname (instead of hostnamebck) to PureDisk server on live network....

How to force this backup to use bck network?

I can bet if I would direct this to tape storage unit the backup would be made via bck network.

Mark_Solutions
Level 6
Partner Accredited Certified

The client sends the data - that client needs to resolve your appliance via the backup network otherwise it will reply to the appliance and send its data over the public network