BMR Servers + VCS Clustered Masters

[Shaun_Taylor]

Hi everyone,

I'm looking to implement BMR in our NetBackup environment and I was hoping to get a feel for how it seems to be commonly set up.

We have 2 NBU master servers clustered using Veritas Cluster Server, with Veritas Volume Replicator replicating the catalog volume between the servers. The NBU masters seem like a sensible place to have my BMR master server role. Presumably the BMR database will also be replicated by VVR automatically?

However, I'm not sure where it would be best to run the boot server part of BMR. As I understand it, it is included in the NBU server and client installation and simply needs registering with the BMR master, but could I use my clustered NBU master servers as boot servers or would I be better off using my media servers? Or would a seperate server be preferable?

Thanks in advance for the advice.

[Mr_Khan]

The Boot Server services are considered client services. As such a BMR Boot Server does not have to reside on a Master Server.

You can install boot server on any of media server depending on your client which you will be restoring.

The Boot Server can only support clients at the same OS release/maintenance level or lower than it is.

Depending on your requirements you can have seperate boot server for your each environment.

Please see the following article to understand the requirements for boot server.

http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH87607

[Mark_Solutions]

VCS does not seem to be mentioned at all in the BMR guide, only MSCS so probably best kept elsewhere

As pointed out you need a BMR boot server per O/S at least so ideally you would want to protect / replicate the SRT's you create on those servers

Hope this helps

[Shaun_Taylor]

Thanks for the help guys.

Mark - I also noticed that VCS isn't mentioned. Do you think it would be safe to set up BMR master on my NBU master servers but have seperate boot servers for each OS (in my case 1 Windows and 1 Solaris)?

I'm trying to understand the impact on trying to do restores if I had a problem with a boot server. I'm guessing I would be able to do a normal restore if a bare metal restore wasn't an option for any reason?

[Mark_Solutions · Accepted solution]

Thinking about it you do need a BMR Master anyway - so i assume you run bmrsetupmaster on the active node, failover and then run it on the other node

This makes the database which is needed and other configurations which should all be captured as part of the catalog that is being backed up / replicated with VVR

People do tend to use Media Servers as boot servers so that part would be fine

[Marianne · Accepted solution]

 BMR master can only be on your clustered NBU master.

BMR database is created in the same folder as EMM database. So, entire volume that contains all databases and catalogs will be replicated.

[Shaun_Taylor]

That's brilliant, thanks - I'll look into configuring BMR master on both nodes in the NBU master cluster and I'll use our media servers as BMR boot servers.

[Marianne]

BMR master is ONLY done on the ACTIVE cluster node - not both.
It will create the BMR database on the shared volume that will fail over to 2nd node along with rest of NBU config.

[Shaun_Taylor]

Thanks Marianne - that makes sense!

[Jaime_Vazquez]

BMR Boot Servers can support recoveries of clients of the same OS as it is and at an OS & Maintenance release as high but not higher than the Boot Server itself.  This article should be of assistance:

Requirements for Bare Metal Restore (BMR) Boot Servers
http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH87607
 

BMR Supports recovery of clients using network and media (CD/DVD/ISO) boot images. When performing a media SRT based BMR recovery, the Boot Server is not made part of the process and is not required.  The media itself replaces all Boot Server needs. Except for AIX, all supported network protocols cannot cross subnets (not routable) which forces the need for a Boot Server in the same subnet for a network based boot. BMR Media Boot recovery does not have this restriction.