Clients running sco Unixware 7.1

[nbustarter380]

Hi All,

 We have been requested to backup a couple of servers running sco unixware 7.1.4. and from what I have read netbackup dropped support for sco sometime back and is not supported in version 7.5 correct? Does anyone have an idea how we would get these systems backed up? our master servers are 7.5.

Thanks for any help in advance

[Marianne · Accepted solution]

To find NBU SCL that contains support info for this OS is the least of your worries - finding NBU software that old and getting it to work with NBU 7.5 is going to be a real challenge.

Suggestion:

Explain lack of support to OS admins.

Get these admins to use OS tools (such as tar or cpio) to run backups to a network share that resides on supported Unix/Linux OS.

Backup this Unix/Linux client with normal Standard policy.

[nbustarter380]

Hi Marianne,

Thanks for your quick response,

Yes, we told them what we found  the lack of support but their response is basically we the (Netbackup Admin team) are the backup solution so there are looking for us to handle how to make the backups work.

Thanks again

[Marianne]

Please show them my suggestion above.

I cannot see that anything else will work. 
NBU 5.x (or earlier) agent will probably fail and no idea where you are going to find such an old agent.

[Andy_Welburn · Accepted solution]

but their response is basically we the (Netbackup Admin team) are the backup solution so there are looking for us to handle how to make the backups work.

& if you were the Security Admin Team would they expect you to get some AV/Firewall app to work too, or maybe some other database or application?

I find that totally unreasonable, but it does beggar the question:

                                  "What *has* been backing up these servers?"

Failing all attempts at 'reasonableness' your only recourse would be to follow Mariannes suggestion & use OS utilities to backup to some other location (presuming even *that* is possible) & then use your current NB infrastructure to backup that location.

Scary thing was, searching for "SCO Unix" on symantec.com didn't have too many hits but one referenced NB3.4 (& most were for Backup Exec).

[nbustarter380]

Marianne,

We'll show them your suggestion and try to figure out something, thanks again for your responses.

[nbustarter380]

Hi Andy,

Thanks for your response also, yes I will pass on Marianne's advice.I also searched and found very few hits on Netbackup and SCO Unix and what I did find was old information as you mentioned.

[Marianne]

I remember vaguely backing up this client OS at a customer... many years ago... Andy is probably right - it must've been NBU 3.4 that was installed on the client with the rest of the environment on NBU 5.1.

I remember horrifically slow backups, endless status 24's (because of archaic TCP/IP protocol on these servers)  that had to be resumed over and over and over till it EVENTUALLY completed successfully, hogging valuable backup resources (network and tape drives) for way too long....

When customer upgraded to 6.0, all backups attempts failed due to version incompatibility. Server owners were given my backup method above.

'And they all lived happily ever after...'

[nbustarter380]

Marianne,

Thanks, some of there (remote location) servers we  backup were getting endless status 24's  socket write failures and still do at times. The reason is because of the slow network and they run long also.

There is one that is consistantly getting 23's socket read failures, although I guess i should start a new thread for this issue.

Best regards

[Marianne]

Note my reference to archaic TCP/IP protocol on these servers... 

Not much that can be done from NBU point of view... in fact - nothing!

[nbustarter380]

Thanks Marianne,

Yes, the network connection issue has been explained to the customer.

[nbustarter380]

Marianne, Andy thanks again for your responses and help.

Your suggestions regarding the use of backup OS utilities were passed along to the customer.

[CRZ]

I'm a little late on this one, but just to confirm what's already been said above with documentation...

The last version to support SCO UnixWare 7.1 was BusinesServer/Data Center 3.4/3.4.1...

VERITAS NetBackup BusinesServer (tm) 3.4/3.4.1 Operating System (OS) Compatibility List (updated 10/17/03)
 http://symantec.com/docs/TECH22608

VERITAS NetBackup DataCenter (tm) 3.4/3.4.1 Operating System (OS) Compatibility List (updated 10/17/03)
 http://symantec.com/docs/TECH22590

...which went EOSL December 31, 2005, almost eight years ago.  :)

NetBackup Product Group End of Support Life matrix
 http://symantec.com/docs/TECH74757