NBU 7.6 and legacy (5.1) Clients

[EMcNeill]

We are planning a NBU upgrade from 7.1 to 7.6 however I have a few old Windows NT machines which I need to still back up.

Althought Netbackup client 5.1 is no longer supported will a 7.6 master/media servers still back up such a client ?

Any information on this would be appreciated.

Regards

Euan

[Marianne · Accepted solution]

Probably not.

According to Version Compatibility TN: http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH29677   NBU 7.6 servers can only backup 6.x clients (although no longer supported either).

But you just 'may' be lucky enough for it to work.
Even 7.1 was only documented to support 6.x clients.

Server owners need to understand that OS that is no longer supported by the OS vendor can not be supported by Symantec.

If backup does not work after the upgrade, get server owners to do a Windows backup to a CIFS share on a supported NBU clients. 
You can then backup this Windows backup files on the supported NBU client.

When server owners need a restore, you will then restore the backup file to the NBU client where it was backed up from. The rest will be the responsibility of NT server owners.

[Mark_Solutions]

I havent tried with 7.6 yet but have no problems with late versions of 7.5 backing up NT4 - just use the latest available (5.1 MP4?) - put them in their own policy usually with just the drives specified as they have no System State / Shadow Copy Components (you can try ALL_LOCAL_DRIVES) and maybe add them to the Master Properties - Client Attributes to disable open file backups or make sure VSP is used.

All the unsupported stuff you already know so i wont go into that!!

As an alternative P2V them and then use a  VMware backup with quiesce disabled to back them up

[EMcNeill]

Hello Marianne/Mark

Thanks for the comments, very useful.

Euan