Media Servers and Clients with Multiple Network Interfaces

[jhb]

I've spent a great deal of time trying to sort this out, reading threads, NBU manuals, etc. and yet I still cannot seem to find a cut and dry answer to this question. 

My environment has 10 media servers (Sun T2000's and V445's), one master (Sun M3000), an L1400 with 40 drives (LTO2) and about 300 clients. All NBU servers are Solaris10. The master and each media server have two interfaces, a pub and a priv (for backups only) and both interfaces have an A-Record in DNS. Most clients have the same, pub and priv, but some have only a pub (DMZ boxes.) What I am aiming for is to have each physical media server represented in NBU by a single Storage Unit. I want clients to use the appropriate path to the media server (and vice versa)  to communicate, all using DNS (we currently have what I will argue is the most convoluted configuration of hosts files in the history of computing.) 

With this in mind, can I simply add an alias to the EMM for each media server secondary interface (media01-priv) then, on the clients, replace the pub entry from the bp.conf and the Servers list with the alias I added?  That brings about the client side, do i have to go through, for each of these 300 clients, and specify the "Required Interface" in order to point the media server to the "-priv" interface (while maintaining the "client" as the client name in NBU)? That seems to be the /etc/hosts (or some convoluted path for Windows) replacement for the convoluted configuration. 

This article is "close" to what I am trying to achieve but not quite from what I can tell... 
http://seer.entsupport.symantec.com/docs/293038.htm

At this point I am near tempted to create two storage unit groups, one on the pub and one on the priv, and point client policies to their respective storage unit group. 

[ebodykid]

We are a solaris shop as well... you shouldnt need to add it into the EMM, as it will just complicate matters.  We had it originally setup that way, but it is a lot harder to keep track of everything.
 I just have the name of the server on the prod network setup as a media / master server (ie sunbkpsrv1, sunbkpsrv3, sunbkpsrv4 etc) and all the storage devices are configure on that.  We then just do everything with the /etc/host files and client name to send it down the appropriate path.  For clients that we want to send down the backup network, we just use the name of the backup nic ( ie pcmnweb44-nxge3 ) in the policy to force it down that path.  I never had good luck with the required interface, and doing it the way we are also gives me a better idea of what clients are going on the backup network and which are going over prod by looking thru the java console. 
The client name can be configured to be either the prod network name or the backup network name, as it doesnt matter to it.  You do need to ensure the SERVERS = mediaserver-priv accounts for the backup nic interface as well as the prod on the clients, or you will get a error about a media server not having permission to the client.

[Reagan]

One way to do this is to create alias for each media server. 

example media_server-1 has two network interfaces.

media_server-1-pub = 10.0.0.1

media_server-1- priv = 192.168.0.1

On (servers connected to the public network) use the client host properties, and point it to the master and media servers on the public network
and under unversal settings enter the public IP Address, or public hostname for the "use specified network interface"
Under client name, set the name of the client to its DNS name on the public network.

On (servers connected to the private network) use the client host properties, and point it to the master and media servers on the private network
and under unversal settings enter the private IP Address, or private hostname of the client for the "use specified network interface"
Under client name, set the name of the client to its DNS name on the private network.

This forces the clients to use a specified network interface. 

[ebodykid]

that would work as well.  I never had any luck with that, as it still seemed to always go down the public nic, regardless of what i put in the "use required interface" on the client.  By using the client name in the policy of clientname-priv, it forces it down this path, as well as gives me an easier way to see what is using the backup network vs what is on the prod network

[jhb]

Hmmmm. So from what I see, everyone has similar experiences. It really seems that this should be far more simple than it is. We currently use the hosts files method and have an entry for each media server on the client then use the IP we want that box to use (priv or pub.) On the master and media servers we have the client entries with the IP we want to use in the hosts files. Pretty ugly to manage when we add clients and remove clients fairly regularly. 

Reagan's solution is probably the closest to what I am after here, a means to get rid of the hosts files. Going forward it seems this would be simple and not too confusing. Cleaning up my existing environment on the other hand? It's gonna take some work. Luckily, on the *nix clients I can probably script some of this out. On the Windows side, probably not so easily achieved. 

So, in effect, I would:
- create all desired aliases on the master for the media servers
- edit the Client Attributes on the Master for each client
- edit the client properties on each client to "Use Specified Interface" and change the client name (this is one of the parts I realllly dislike)
- update the Servers Allowed Access and the Media Servers on each Client

Basically, from the sounds of it, I would do all of that and in short, end up with no hosts file entries to manage but have 250 clients renamed in the EMM and put in a ton of work. There is just something wrong with this :) 

I think that analyzing my PUB backup throughput vs my PRIV backup throughput, moving N+1 media servers to a strictly PUB Storage Unit Group  and N+1 media servers to  a strictly PRIV Storage Unit Group, remove the hosts entries, make sure all of the servers' bp.conf SERVER= lists are correct and then moving the policies to the new STUGs and calling it good would be the easier option.... Am I crazy?
 

[Reagan]

So if I understand correctly.

1.  Edit each client's bp.conf file to point to the correct media server
2.  Edit each clients bp .conf file with the IP Address of the "required interface"
3.  Create a storage group consisting of media servers in the pub network
4.  Create a storage group consisting of media servers in the priv network
5.  Create a policy that points to the pub storage group and has the pub clients
6.  Create a policty that points to the priv storage group and has the priv clients.

I never tried this, but don't see why it wouldn't work.  The simpler, the better.

NetBackup can drive anyone crazy,  I know the feeling.  : )