Netbackup Appliances - Data Flow and Storage Sharing

[SYMAJ]

I have a question regarding the data flow when using te 5220 Appliances, and the 'sharing' of the 5220 storage.

I have a specific requirement whereby I am considering using a 5220 appliance as a Media Server with the majority of the disk configured as ADVANCED disk (not de-dup disk).  I will land the original backup on the Advanced disk and then duplicate to external tape and to the de-dup storage within the 5220.

I have 3 other traditional Media Servers in the environment, and a dedicate Master Server - all at 7.1.0.4.

In addition to the 5220 Media Server itself, can the other Media servers write to the Advanced disk pool and the de-dup disk pool contained within the 5220 appliance - or will this data all be processed by the 5220 Media Server ?

The 5220 would have the 10Gb ethernet adapters installed.

Would I have storage units setup for each media server which contain the advanced disk pool, then spread my backups accross the media servers to spread the load of the backup ?  What I need to avoid here is all the data getting processed by the one media server within the 5220.  As all of my media servers have dual 10Gb ethernet cards, and the 5220 is also dual 10Gb ethernet - data must travel via this medium and be processed by the various media servers.

Consider that the original backup to the Advanced disk is NOT deduplicated therefore no Client-Side de-dup can occur to reduce network load (as NO de-dup is allowed anywhere on the first backup to Advanced disk - de-dup will take place when we duplicate to the De-dup pool).

Thanks,

AJ

[Chad_Wansing2]

Yes, the other media servers can absolutely participate in the process of storing data on the disk housed on the 5220.  What you have to do is to go into your storage server properties of the owner of the disk and put check marks next to the other media servers you want to participate in the process.  I know this is how it works for the dedupe side, but truthfully I can't remember specifically trying this with Advanced Disk.  Pretty well positive it's the same though.

[SYMAJ]

I am aware that this is how it works for De-Dup pools on a 5220, but I believe (and am also assured by Symantec in the UK) that when using the 5220 with Advanced Disk (as opposed to De-Dup) then all data will go through the Media Server contained within the 5220 - even if directed to another Media Server. I understand that the multiple media servers are used to assist in the 'hashing' process when using de-dup pools on the 5220, and the resulting data still goes into the disk via the media server contained within the 5220.

I really need clarification on this as we appear to be getting different stories. I will talk again with Symantec locally to try and bottom this one out.

Thanks,

AJ.

[Jeff_Foglietta]

AdvancedDisk sharing  allows storage that can be mounted against the same mount point on multiple Media Servers such as storage presented over NFS or CIFS or clustered file systems such as Veritas Cluster File System, to be placed into disk pools and shared between those Media Servers. Storage presented is this way is accessible to all the Media Servers at the same time and remains mounted at all times while server is up.

[SYMAJ]

Thanks for that, but I am not sure that this (if I understand it correctly) will address the requirement. 

All of the storage here is 'inside' a 5220 appliance, which is defined as a Media Server to the NBU domain.  We have a Master and 3 other media servers (physical).  I don't believe that I can mount (either NFS or CIFS) the Advanced disk pool within the 5220 to the other media servers - am I correct ?  When configuring the 5220 the de-dup pool and the advanced-pool are created and attached to the Media Server within the appliance.  I am proposing to expand the Advanced pool to the maximum available size and wish to write to this from all 4 of the media servers.

If I had a regular disk array and created an NFS mount then I see how what you are statiing above would work, but is this the case when the disk is within a 5220 Appliance ?

Thanks,

AJ

[Jeff_Foglietta]

Right.. You need to share the resource from the 5220.. I haven't seen any documentation on this either however the 5220 is running VxVM and Linux under the covers. That being said I'm not sure if the NFS server service is even on the box and I don't have one here to check but if it is then sharing the disk pool from strictly a UNIX standpoint can be done. Why not? The NFS client daemons are running on the 5220's, they would have to be if you can mount NAS shares and this is documented so you should be able to mount the NFS resource on the other media servers.. Just thinking outside the box here. Might be worth testing.

[Chad_Wansing2]

you can't share out the storage on the 5220 to other servers directly.  Also, the 5220 does not currently support the mounting of external storage (other than the serialized expansion shelves).

[Jeff_Foglietta]

Hey Chad...

The sharing of the internal resource I was unsure of but felt it was worth a look to see if it could be done in an unconventional way to the appliance, however I would have to respectfully disagree with you regarding not being able to mount external resources on the appliance via NFS. With 2.0.2 you can. I understand not all customers will be running 2.0.2 but they will certainly get there soon enough.

[Chad_Wansing2]

Jeff, my apologies, you're correct.  I forgot about the ability to mount NFS shares for backup in 2.0.2 as an NFS client.  I was thinking FC connectivity for my statement above.  And even at that, I'll just say there's a fine line between what is possible and what is supported.  

[SYMAJ · Accepted solution]

Thanks Guys, after review I will steer clear of this option - taking support into account.

AJ