Merge Master and Media Servers After Moving to New Hardware

[ruppster]

Netbackup 6.0MP7

OS: Centos 5

Our current setup is 1 matser server with disk staging disk array and 1 media server that has our tape library.  We are moving our Netbackup  app to new hardware and will have our disk staging and tape library on just one server.  Both old and new servers are same Netbackup version and same OS version and we are keeping the same hostname.  I've done an offline catalog backup on the old server and attempted to restore it onto our new server with:

     /usr/openv/netbackup/bin/admincmd/bprecover -r ALL -dpath /usr/openv/netbackup/catalog_restore/

This succesfully restores our policies but not any media...which makes sense since the above command fails when it can't find our media server:

[root@masterserver]#  /usr/openv/netbackup/bin/admincmd/bprecover -r ALL -dpath /usr/openv/netbackup/catalog_restore/
Recovering masterserver:/usr/openv/netbackup/db
Recovering masterserver:/usr/openv/volmgr/database
Recovering masterserver:/usr/openv/var/vxss
Recovering masterserver:/usr/openv/var/global
Recovering masterserver:/usr/openv/var/license.txt
Recovering masterserver:/usr/openv/var/auth
Recovering mediaserver:/usr/openv/netbackup/db
Can't connect to mediaserver
can't connect to client
[root@masterserver]#

Is there a way to merge the old master and media servers into just the one new master server during this catalog restore?

[Marianne]

Decommision old media server BEFORE you migrate to new hardware: http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH52021

All media entries are contained in the EMM database on the master server - default location is /usr/openv/db/data.

As you can see - the path is not included in your cold database backup configuration.

Double-check your cold catalog backup config - the 'Files' tab should contain the following (details in Admin Guide I on your Docs cd):

masterserver:/usr/openv/netbackup/db
masterserver:/usr/openv/volmgr/database
masterserver:/usr/openv/var
masterserver:NETBACKUP_RELATIONAL_DATABASE_FILES

Your file-list looks like a left-over from 5.x installation? These paths are normally updated during upgrade. Unless you still have 5.x media server(s), you don't need to backup any catalogs on the media server - the nbpushdata that was done as part of the upgrade migrated ALL media server databases to the EMM (relational) database on the master.

So, you need to do the following:

1. Decommision media server on old master
2. Update Catalog backup configuration on old master and do another catalog backup.

Please also read up in Admin Guide I about hot catalog backups. Cold catalog backups are no longer supported as from NBU 7.

[ruppster]

Marianne

Thanks for your reply.  OK, knowing I have to decommision the media server first makes sense.  I verified that my master server has /usr/openv/db/data and that my media server does not.   Also I verifed that for my cold backups I have the following in the files tab:

masterserver:/usr/openv/netbackup/db
masterserver:/usr/openv/volmgr/database
masterserver:/usr/openv/var
masterserver:NETBACKUP_RELATIONAL_DATABASE_FILES

mediaserver:/usr/openv/netbackup/db
mediaserver:/usr/openv/volmgr/database
mediaserver:/usr/openv/var

Should I add the following to the list:

masterserver:/usr/openv/db/data
 

if that's where all the media are contained? Or should that get included in the cold backup from the following line?:

masterserver:NETBACKUP_RELATIONAL_DATABASE_FILES

My installation is a version 6 install and not one upgraded from version 5 and both the master and media server are version 6.  There are no other servers in the mix. 

Thanks for the info on using hot catalog backups going forward!

[Marianne · Accepted solution]

Extract from Admin Guide I:

The NETBACKUP_RELATIONAL_DATABASE_FILES directive automatically includes the database files in the /usr/openv/db/data/ directory, as well as vxdbms.conf, server.conf, and databases.conf.

You can remove entries for media server - there are no databases that need to be backed up.

Please create admin log directory on master server (/usr/openv/netbackup/logs/admin). Check log after next backup to see what exactly was backed up.

Also list the catalog backup with bprecover -l -dpath <path>

One more thing - catalog backup to disk should ideally be done to a different physical disk than the NBU installation. In case of a disk failure you need the catalog backup in a different location (tape or disk).

[ruppster]

Thanks to Marianne for your  help. I'm able to do a restore of the cold catalog backup after removing the media server from the cold backup config as suggested.  What was going on was the bprecover command ended prematurly when it didn't find the media server... so didn't get to the next part of restoring the EMM database.  I'm now able to see the media, policies, storage units, etc as expected.  Right now I'm  just working in test environement without a media server so can't actually do the step of decommisioning media server before creating the catalog backup as was advised but will do so when this is done in production.  And also will use hot backups going foward:)

Thanks again!