Converting existing media servers to cluster media servers

[harry_85]

Environment:

One master server running 7.6.0.2 hosted on windows 2008 R2 servers.

6 media servers running 7.6.0.2 hosted on windows 2008 R2 servers.

All tape drives are over SAN fabric and are shared in SSO in NetBackup.

5 media servers do their own backups as they host SQL dumps on the SAN provisioned drives.

Clients Requirement:

5 media servers are planned to be moved to active passive cluster server configurations as per business requirements and high avaialbility for the SQL dump SAN drives.

Question:

Does this kind of re-configurations are allowed in NetBackup. If so what would be procudre to do this considering the SSO configurations ?

[Marianne]

Media servers cannot be clustered. Only master server during new installation.

High Availability for media servers can be done with Storage Unit Groups.

If media servers are already part of a cluster (e.g. SQL or Fileserver), you can add them to 'application cluster' in netbackup so that the hostname for the Storage Unit will always match the virtual hostname of the clustered application.

See NetBackup in Highly Available Environments Administrator's Guide  for detailed info.

[harry_85]

Hi Marianne, thanks for the inputs. 

The take is that media servers can be part of active/active or active/passive cluster configuration.

So in my environment, the correct way to do this is to remove the existing 5 standalone media servers by media server decomminsioning process and add them back into netbackup by installing NetBackup media server agent with active/passive configurations ?

Or is there a way to update the EMM without decommisioning the media servers when these media servers are becoming a part of active/passive cluster configuration ? And also will be there need of any additional licenses from NetBackup ?

Also we share the tape drives using SSO. My thought was that when the media server  has to fail over, the tape drive paths will go missing and tape drives might go to a mixed mode. so we should consider doing Persistent binding on the HBA level as well ?

[harry_85]

Ok. After going through multiple links, here is what I could figure out. Needed some inputs..

1. NetBackup stopped supporting Media server clustering since NBU 7.x

2. Now the concept is known as Application Cluster from NBU 7.x releases.

In my environment with NBU 7.6.0.2, I assume that the following should be done..

1. The existing standalone media server should be converted to Cluster configurations. (active/passive)

2. While the application may be clustered, I do not need to cluster the media server itself. Instead, install the media server software on the new node of the cluster and create application cluster definitions in the NetBackup EMM database for each virtual name the cluster uses with the following command executed on the master server...

nbemmcmd -addhost -machinename <cluster_name> -machinetype app_cluster
where <virtual_name> is the virtual name of the application.

nbemmcmd -updatehost -add_server_to_app_cluster -machinename <node_name> -machinetype media -clustername <virtual_name>
-netbackupversion 7.6 -masterserver <master_name>

where the <node_name> is a node where the application can run.
<virtual_name> is the virtual name of the application.

3. Then create a storage unit using the virtual name of the cluster as the media server.

Or should I deommision the existing standalone media server and then start the media server install procedure on both the nodes of the cluster servers to introduce the Application Clustering ?

[Marianne · Accepted solution]

No. Existing standalone media servers cannot be installed in active/passive clustered configuration.
NO media server can be  active/passive clustered media server. 
Only master servers can be clustered this way.

Leave standalone media server installation.

As per my previous post, your choices are Storage Unit Groups or where onther applications are already clustered, configure Application Cluster.

PLEASE go through  NetBackup in Highly Available Environments Administrator's Guide  for detailed info.

Start on p.17:

About protecting against dedicated media server failures
Storage unit groups can be used to protect NetBackup against the failure of a single
media server. Storage unit groups can also be used for load balancing across
multiple media servers to ensure optimal backup and restore performance.
Table 2-4 discusses the different modes in which you can configure the storage
unit groups.

(more in the manual)

Then go to p. 24:

About installing NetBackup media software in a cluster
Install the NetBackup media server software on each node in the cluster. See the
NetBackup Installation Guide for details.

Note: When you configure NetBackup as described in this topic, do not configure
the NetBackup media server as a failover application. The media server must be
treated as a stand-alone application on each node in the cluster.

(more in the manual)