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Running seedutil when only PureDisk/De-Dup disks are 5220's

D_Flood
Level 6

I've got a 7.1.0.4 NetBackup Master (Win2k8 x64) that controls two 5220's, one of which is at a remote location with a very thin pipe.  The remote 5220 is the primary backup location (for the remote office) and the the 5220 that is local to the Master is the "offsite".  There are no tapes or any removeable media at the remote site.

I managed to get one of the remote boxes duplicated to the "offsite" 5220 but it took all day and several complaints about the bandwidth used.  I'm hoping that there's a way to use that image to seed other images...

From all the notes it looks like the new Seedutil program is what I need to keep from saturating the link with first backups but there is no way to specify that I need it to update the local 5220 (when run on the Master) and I don't see any way to run Seedutil on the 5220 itself.

So am I totally off base here or is this a capability that doesn't exist yet?

 

10 REPLIES 10

Sachin_Pathare
Level 4
Employee Certified

Hope this helps, if not, please let us know:

 

NetBackup deduplication client WAN backup: how to seed the fingerprint cache to speed up the initial backup:

http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH144437

 

D_Flood
Level 6

I don't have access to any of the mentioned one-off directories on the 5220 (the pre-7.1.0.4 method) and if I run seedutil on the Master, it complains about no PureDisk (which is true, the Master doesn't have any).

So until SeedUtil version 2 (or SeedApp comes out) I guess I'm going to have to run individual backups of each sub-dir and sneak them over the WAN until I get a complete image on the "offsite" 5520.

 

 

D_Flood
Level 6

Do 5220's support external USB drives as simple disk?

 

Sebastian_Baszc
Level 5
Partner Accredited Certified

Hey Mate,

 

You should have an access to the deduplication folder on your appliance. 

 

To get root access to the appliance, log in as admin, type Support > Maintenance > elevate. 

 

Once you've got access to that folder you can follow the procedure for 7.1

 

Alternatively - copy the data from the remote server on the portable disk, bring it to your primary DC, connect to one of the servers, add the server to the policy you are using to back up the remote server, run the backup for the external disk. 

 

Hope it helps.

 

S

D_Flood
Level 6

I'll definitely take a look into and work on the process for our other sites that have fatter pipes.  We're also looking at making a laptop into a portable "media server" to do the first backups to and then bring that back to the main office and copy the images off using "duplicate".

But for now its looking like WAN duplication with slow links just isn't going to work for us at this site.  Given the bandwidth that I'm allowed to use (setting OptDupBandWidth to 2, a 3 maxes out the pipe) it takes five hours to transfer a single daily Diff backup of just over a Gig.  So that's not going to work since I have at least ten machines there that need to go offsite.  And if you get two or more transfers going then they never complete. (Remind me to put in an enhancement request that SLP Transfers have a multiplexing count feature like disks and tapes have.)

We're doing cost analysis now of either more bandwidth or fibre tape drives and resuming offsite tapes.  Except for the fact that the Director who's sponsoring all of this wants to get rid of tapes, I'm willing to bet the tapes will win since they are a one-time large cost item rather than ongoing costs.

 

Sebastian_Baszc
Level 5
Partner Accredited Certified

Hey Mate,

 

There is yet another possibility. You mentioned that optimised duplication process maxes the bandwidth. 

Would it be possible to delay the duplication process till the following night? If so - you could run the local backup, deactivate the SLPs and reactivate them at the convenient time. 

If the remote site works 24x7 - you can still limit the bandwidth for optimised duplication. Just remember that the limit is specified in KB and applies to the stream. 

 

Hope it helps. 

 

S

D_Flood
Level 6

Once we finally upgrade from 7.1 to 7.5 (we still have one 32 bit master) and they release the SLP scheduling patch to 7.5 then I could schedule when the SLP kicks in.  Otherwise it kicks in right after the backup.

 

And it is a 24x6 shop.  I do have a 12 hour window on Saturday when nothing is going on but unless I remote in and increase the bandwidth limit during that time I really can't make use of it right now.

 

D_Flood
Level 6

And promptly got my inbox filled with bandwidth complaints this AM.

 

Aparently when you use the pre 7.1.0.4 method the two Appliances have to send data both ways.  So even though the remote office one was set to limit bandwidth, the main one wasn't...and promptly saturated the pipe.

 

So that method is also a fail.

 

What we're probably going to end up doing is building some sort of "portable" Media Server to back up to at the remote locations, ship that to the main office, and then duplicate those images on to the Appliance there to "seed" things....

 

Chad_Wansing2
Level 5
Employee Accredited Certified

You could also do a backup to a cheap USB-attached chunk of disk, send that to the data center and then duplicate to the dedupe pool.  I've seen that used successfully in the past for multiple remote sites.  Easy solution when a drive is all of $100.

D_Flood
Level 6

like those with appliances or media servers onsite.  With root access a USB disk could be added to an appliance on a temp basis.  Or a regular Media Server set up.

But they also eventually want to back up remote offices over the WAN and these offices have no appliance or media server onsite.  So a portable Media Server will be needed for seeding there.

I was fighting to have the portable Media Server be all-in-one (laptop type) but I'm finding that there are very few laptops that have more than a TB of disk onboard...so we might have to go with a laptop+USB disk or something like that.