AIR between Production (Physical) and DR (Virtual) infrastrcutres

[mohanl]

Hi folks,

Background :-

1. I am lookingn at an existing Poduction enviroment with mutiple Exchange physical servers currently are performing D2D2T using Symantec 7.1.0.1, all the Exchange servers are SAN clients accessing directly Disk/Tape drive. I do not yet know if deduplication is implemented and working at this site.

2. A DR enivorment is being bulid, but this time with 7 nos. Virtual ESX hosts, using Symantec 7.5. there will be a Proxy host in the environment

3. Between Production (Physical servers) and DR (Virtual hosts) replication of the backup images using Symantec AIR is desired.

It clear that Production will be upgraded to 7.5, so both sides are same version of NBU.

QUERIES :-

1. Currently there is no dedicated Backup Media server at the Production site (All Exchange servers are SAN Clients themselves), does that mean De-duplication is imlemented cannot be workable at this production site curretnly.

2. Does a dedicated Media server has to be introduced at the Production site for AIR to work between the two sites?

3. Is one site being Physical server and other virtual hosts any issue for the workability of this solution?

4. Are there any caveat / gotchas / show-stoppers etc. that need to be watched out for?

5. Please feel free to suggest any-relevant information, including any licenseing requirements.

thanks in advance

Regards

[Jaykullar]

1. Currently there is no dedicated Backup Media server at the Production site (All Exchange servers are SAN Clients themselves), does that mean De-duplication is imlemented cannot be workable at this production site curretnly.

Yes, you cannot AIR without a storage server with MSDP.

2. Does a dedicated Media server has to be introduced at the Production site for AIR to work between the two sites?

Yes, you need a storage server in your production and DR site both with MSDP to AIR

3. Is one site being Physical server and other virtual hosts any issue for the workability of this solution?

I have never tried it, but I do not envisage this being a problem.

4. Are there any caveat / gotchas / show-stoppers etc. that need to be watched out for?

I believe your versions of NBU would need to be the same in both enviornments, but am not 100% sure.

5. Please feel free to suggest any-relevant information, including any licenseing requirements.

http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=HOWTO68377

[Mark_Solutions]

I believe you can AIR between 7.1 and 7.5 but as with everything i would reccomend always haveing sites at the same version and patch level.

As you need virtual hosts at the DR site then a virtual servers with MSDP would be required.

If you could have anything physical then the N5220 / N5230 Appiances would suit you well for what you want and would give you a full backup in a box solution - all clients could do client side de-dupe (with accelerator where possible) rather than act as SAN Clients or, if hardware permitted, could do Fibre Transport to the Appliance

This would give perfectly matched setups at both sites where AIR would be fine and should give good backup and restore functionality

Hope this gives another idea for your plans

[mohanl]

Thanks Mark, Jaykullar,

Makes sense as replication should be on reduced data, otherwise it may become unfeasible.

One follow-up thought,

At production since there is no dedicated Media server, does that mean ther there no MSDP currently implemented, as there are only physical SAN clients ?

Regards

[Mark_Solutions]

I doubt if you have any de-dupe

If you look in the Admin Console under Device Monitor, select the Disk Pools tab at the bottom and see if you have any disk pools.

If you do then they need to show up as PureDisk type (or a supported AIR type) to be usable

If they are just Advanced Disk then they are not de-dupe

[Marianne · Accepted solution]

Currently there is no dedicated Backup Media server at the Production site 

This is not a show-stopper. 
MSDP can be implemented on a master server although this is not recommended by Symantec.

In small environments MSDP on master (or using a NBU 52x0 appliance as master)  works well.
Just check NBU documentation for resource requirements.
 

2. Does a dedicated Media server has to be introduced

No - as stated above, the Master server can also be MSDP media server.

3. Is one site being Physical server and other virtual hosts any issue for the workability of this solution? 

Because MSDP is supported in vitual environment (see  http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH127089 ), AIR will be supported. 

See this FAQ for more info: http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH154323

and this Blog: https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/blogs/netbackup-71-features-auto-image-replication