Developing documentation, policies and procedures for your NBU environmentndnts

[ssumi]

Hello all. 

We are moving from backup exec (which we didn't do terribly much with) to netbackup. We are a mixed shop of windows and Linux, with a dozen or so system owners. I'm implementing the NBU product line for our enivornment and already have the systems in place. The harder part for me has been developing the procedures and documentation to operate the environment. Our shop typically has the approach of everyone has access to each others systems for technical support reasons. However, I'm going to suggest for our environment that myself and another individual are the only admins that can administer NBU. I do want the system admins handling their restores through BAR and we will work with them to setup policy. But to avoid making a mess out of the environment, I think it's bes to minimize the number of admins configuring NBU. 

That said, I'm trying to develop the policies and procedures for the environment so the other individual can manage the backups and assist while I'm away. I've come up with naming conventions for policies so far, and haven't decided if I want to prescribe the conventions for storage units, pools, drives, etc -- at least, not formally. However I fear if I don't put this down in documentation it will get out of control when/if someone else adds components. 

So I guess my question starts with how do you document and declare policies for your environment?

Do you let a larger number of system admins into the console or limit it? (we are using NBAC, for what it's worth, on 7.5)

Do you document each policy or let the name of the policy speak for itself, and just dig into the policy when questions arise?

We are a heavy vm shop. We are debating loading the NBU client into all the vms. Obviously servers with agent requirements (ad, SQL, etc) will be loaded. But have you deployed the agent to all of your vms for the admins to be able to BAR or just loaded as needed?

And kind of off topic, do you let your DBA do their own maintenance scripts/RMAN and just pickup the output or do you "strongly suggest" the use of NBU agents?

Thanks in advance!

[Nicolai]

Q1: how do you document and declare policies for your environment?

We have a operation document that describe naming convention for policy and storage units. In general we put a lot of information in the operation document. New employee tend to like such a document.

Q2: Do you let a larger number of system admins into the console 

No. Only backup admins are allowed access to the master server console. Do not let anyone have access if it's you're group responsibility that the backup works.

Q3: But have you deployed the agent to all of your vms for the admins to be able to BAR or just loaded as needed.

Single file restore require the agent to be installed (at least for 7.1)

Q4:do you let your DBA do their own maintenance scripts/RMAN and just pickup the output or do you "strongly suggest" the use of NBU agents

Use the Netbackup RMAN agent at all times, but let the DBA decide how the rman script should look like. 

[RonCaplinger]

Q2: Do you let a larger number of system admins into the console 

Yes, but they don't make use of it.  Their ID's have access to the master server console because they used to manage or install Backup Exec/NetBackup systems. When I've requested to remove their access, I was told they wanted to keep access.  However, we set up all policies, storage units, add clients, etc. In return, we also manage most aspects of our own Solaris/Linux/Windows servers (that's our "reciprocal" trade-off...  ).

Q3: But have you deployed the agent to all of your vms for the admins to be able to BAR or just loaded as needed.

The Unix/Linux team only wanted the client installed in the Global Zone (Solaris), so no clients are installed in the individual local zones.  In the rare occasions they need a restore, the Unix admins restore their own data from the command line.  But for Windows, we are still installing the client in each VM.  And we perform 99% of restores on the Windows side.

Q4:do you let your DBA do their own maintenance scripts/RMAN and just pickup the output or do you "strongly suggest" the use of NBU agents

Because we have a farily robust non-production enviornment, the Oracle DBA's back up using RMAN to disk and keep them for a significan't period of time.  A script was developed to initiate a user-backup of the Oracle RMAN backup files for each individual database, so we never have to back up their entire disk storage devices in full.

[Anonymous]

Lookup running nbsu utility on your master.

This is a great reference point in time for a lot of information about your netbackup environment.

I run this at irregular intervals but say for example before I perform maintenance updates, major upgrades etc.

has helped me out. Not only captures NBU environment but the OS.

See my signature. For links.

DOCUMENTATION AND DOWNLOAD: NetBackup Support Utility (NBSU) 1.6 - Usage and Examples for 7.x and previous versions
http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH160944