Moving Advance Disk(Backup Destination) to Deduplication Disk (5230 Appliance)

[Andy_Yin]

Dear All,

Currently our environment as below:-

1. NetBackup Master Server

- Windows 2008 Std R2

- NBU version 7.6.1.1

- Local disk, configured as advance disk as backup destination

2. NetBackup 5230 Appliance

- act as media server for the above master server.

- firmware 2.6.1.1

- deduplication pool/stu

We plan to migrate the advance disk data to the deduplication pool. Any tools or suggestion or method which you guys can share?

Or maybe some of you guys out there has already have experience in doing this activity?

Thanks! :)

[sdo]

Seeing as both storage pools (Advanced Disk, and MSDP) will be present within the same NetBackup domain is should be fairly strightforward to use the 'seedutil' to pre-populate the de-dupe database.

.

But, if the environment is not too large, then why not simply, and slowly (but not too slowly), each day, over a period of several days - change the backup policies and/or policy schedules to use a new SLP pointing to the new MSDP storage-unit.

This way you won't have to bother with seedutil, as the load on teh MSDP pool will only be slowly slightly increasing each day, and so MSDP shouldn't become too stressed with having to ingest huge amounts of 'new never seen before' data to de-duplicate.

This way, you get to keep your advanced disk as emergency recovery and fall back space - and you won't be making any changes to the Advanced Disk pool, so that stays 'safe'.  And, this slowly increases load on the MSDP pool - which will prevent you from hitting a sudden wall if you tried to migrate en-masse in one go.

And, you can let the backup images on Advanced Disk slowly expire themselves... until you are left with maybe just a handful of very old backup images still residing on Adv.Disk, and so then all you have to do is manually duplicate (easily via GUI) these few remaining backups from Adv.Disk to MSDP, and then expire the old copies on Adv.Disk - leaving you with an empty AdvDisk pool that you can then decommission.

[Nicolai]

I like sdo advice

I wote for the "point to new device and let the old backup expire" method.

If you wan to "move over" data ASAP, its the bpimmedia command to list backup in the advanced disk pool and then  bpduplicate to copy each image, and the bpexpdate to expire the first copy (secondary copy should then be on MSDP pool). Require scripting !

Best Regards

Nicolai

[sdo · Accepted solution]

I think the important point with the second (non seedutil based) approach, is to migrate backup policies in a phased/staged manner, for at least two reasons:

1) So that MSDP does not choke and splutter when huge amounts of new data has to be de-duped for the very first time.

2) It lets you deal with any issues arrising on a piece meal, incident by incident, basis - so that you are not faced with large numbers of (unforseen) backup failures to deal with.

.

Small steps.  Slowly does it.  (but not too slowly :)

[Andy_Yin]

Hi sdo,

The migration is the existing backup data in the advance disk located in the master server local disk. The plan is to migrate the images in the advance disk to the nbu 5230 appliance deduplication disk.

Is not on the backup policy, changing the storage unit from adv disk to dedupe disk.

Thanks.

[Andy_Yin]

Hi Nicolai,

I think your advise using the bpimmedia and also bpduplicate helps in migrating the data. But will take note on the just to leave the existing image to expire as secondary copy.

Thanks.