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Difference between daemons starting with nb and bp in netbackup

skrp
Level 4
Certified

Hi All,

I'm confused between daemons starting with bp and nb. Please let me know the difference between them and also their use. Also about ASA and PBX Service uses

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sdo
Moderator
Moderator
Partner    VIP    Certified

"bp" comes from the days of BackupPlus before the product was re-named to NetBackup (see NetBackup in Wikipedia):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetBackup

And the newer commands and tools and services from the days of NetBackup onwards are usually named starting with "nb".  The Volume Manager part of NetBackup has "vm" commands, and I believe that Volume Manager was once a seperate third party product that was purchased by Veritas and merged in to NetBackup.    I believe the same is true of NetBackup Vault too, with its "vlt" commands.  And PureDisk with its "pd" commands, and finally a tweaked instance of PureDisk lives within MSDP.

.

ASA (Adaptive Server Anywhere) is the relational database engine at the heart of NetBackup.  This is an embedded DB engine (and not generally accessible for Netbackup admins), the use of which is licensed from Sybase... for Symantec/Veritas to use in their products.  At the heart of NetBackup Master Server is a software construct known as an ORB:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object_request_broker

...which is essentially a CORBA engine implemented across NBRB and NBEMM and NBJM (plus some others) - all of which can make SQL reads and writes to the Sybase ASA relational database - i.e. these are the ORB marshalling services... whereas BPDM, BPTM, SPOOLD, STORAGED, BPBKAR32, TAR are all examples of IO mover services.

.

PBX stands for Private Branch Exchange - which is itself an old telecomms term (which I won't go in to) - but think of PBX as a NetBackup protocol and packet router - i.e. it routes conversations between different callers and different receivers - a bit like an old telephone exchange - hence the name "PBX".  An example... if I was a NetBackup Client and I could talk on port 1556 (the PBX listenner port), I would start my conversation (using our pre-agreed "protocol" - i.e. implemented in program code by software developers/enginers) by using a random port my side to send something to PBX (on port 1556 at the server side) saying something like... "Hi PBX, my name is BPBKAR32, and I'm a NetBackup Client, and I want to talk to BPTM, can you do that for me?"... and PBX would reply (from a random port on it's side) to port 1556 on my side, saying... "Hi NetBackup Clent, I'm a NetBackup Server, yes I can do that for you, what would you like to send me?" - and so a backup begins.

Do you see how:

i)  Client uses random port to send (initiate) to server port 1556.

ii) Server uses random port to send (respond) to client port 1556.

Thus, PBX exists on both clients and servers, and is nothing more than a listenner and thus a software based protocol router for NetBackup related traffic.

Then, on the NetBackup Server side (with lots of services running)... once the conversation is established via PBX then what happens is that PBX (on the server side - will use a random port on 127.0.0.1 to talk to a specific daemon port and hand off traffic to that service/daemon which is listenning on its own specific port - all within the confines of the server OS... i.e. PBX will route traffic to the desired service/daemon.  It could be argued that the purpose of PBX is to scale down (to reduce to just "one") the number of ports that are required to be open through firewalls.

So, a simplistic view of the actual path of backup traffic from a client to a media server would be something like:

bpbkar32 -> ClientIP:random -> LAN switch -> ServerIP:1556 -> PBX -> 127.0.0.1:random -> 127.0.0.1:bptm -> bptm -> tape

View solution in original post

4 REPLIES 4

skrp
Level 4
Certified

Hi Sdo,

Thank you sooooo much. It did help me a lot and now I understand ASA and PBX.

sdo
Moderator
Moderator
Partner    VIP    Certified

Cool - I've finished editing now - pls re-read again.

sdo
Moderator
Moderator
Partner    VIP    Certified

"bp" comes from the days of BackupPlus before the product was re-named to NetBackup (see NetBackup in Wikipedia):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetBackup

And the newer commands and tools and services from the days of NetBackup onwards are usually named starting with "nb".  The Volume Manager part of NetBackup has "vm" commands, and I believe that Volume Manager was once a seperate third party product that was purchased by Veritas and merged in to NetBackup.    I believe the same is true of NetBackup Vault too, with its "vlt" commands.  And PureDisk with its "pd" commands, and finally a tweaked instance of PureDisk lives within MSDP.

.

ASA (Adaptive Server Anywhere) is the relational database engine at the heart of NetBackup.  This is an embedded DB engine (and not generally accessible for Netbackup admins), the use of which is licensed from Sybase... for Symantec/Veritas to use in their products.  At the heart of NetBackup Master Server is a software construct known as an ORB:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object_request_broker

...which is essentially a CORBA engine implemented across NBRB and NBEMM and NBJM (plus some others) - all of which can make SQL reads and writes to the Sybase ASA relational database - i.e. these are the ORB marshalling services... whereas BPDM, BPTM, SPOOLD, STORAGED, BPBKAR32, TAR are all examples of IO mover services.

.

PBX stands for Private Branch Exchange - which is itself an old telecomms term (which I won't go in to) - but think of PBX as a NetBackup protocol and packet router - i.e. it routes conversations between different callers and different receivers - a bit like an old telephone exchange - hence the name "PBX".  An example... if I was a NetBackup Client and I could talk on port 1556 (the PBX listenner port), I would start my conversation (using our pre-agreed "protocol" - i.e. implemented in program code by software developers/enginers) by using a random port my side to send something to PBX (on port 1556 at the server side) saying something like... "Hi PBX, my name is BPBKAR32, and I'm a NetBackup Client, and I want to talk to BPTM, can you do that for me?"... and PBX would reply (from a random port on it's side) to port 1556 on my side, saying... "Hi NetBackup Clent, I'm a NetBackup Server, yes I can do that for you, what would you like to send me?" - and so a backup begins.

Do you see how:

i)  Client uses random port to send (initiate) to server port 1556.

ii) Server uses random port to send (respond) to client port 1556.

Thus, PBX exists on both clients and servers, and is nothing more than a listenner and thus a software based protocol router for NetBackup related traffic.

Then, on the NetBackup Server side (with lots of services running)... once the conversation is established via PBX then what happens is that PBX (on the server side - will use a random port on 127.0.0.1 to talk to a specific daemon port and hand off traffic to that service/daemon which is listenning on its own specific port - all within the confines of the server OS... i.e. PBX will route traffic to the desired service/daemon.  It could be argued that the purpose of PBX is to scale down (to reduce to just "one") the number of ports that are required to be open through firewalls.

So, a simplistic view of the actual path of backup traffic from a client to a media server would be something like:

bpbkar32 -> ClientIP:random -> LAN switch -> ServerIP:1556 -> PBX -> 127.0.0.1:random -> 127.0.0.1:bptm -> bptm -> tape

Marianne
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Moderator
Partner    VIP    Accredited Certified
You may also want to read Appendix A in NBU Troubleshooting Guide. You will find process flow diagrams with explanation of each process.