NetBackup 7.6.0.1 and Appliance 2.6.0.1 Install/Upgrade Field Experience

[Khajan]

We have released NetBackup 7.6.0.1 and Appliance 2.6.0.1 on 18th December 2013(Yesterday), Let us start logging our experience in this thread... I have been testing NetBackup 7.6FA for some time, soon I'll be helping few customers with 2.6.0.1 and NetBackup 7.6.0.1 soon.

For more details please check following few good links.

sort.symantec.com

entsupport.symantec.com  Enterprise NetBackup Server/NetBackup Appliances

Good Luck for your upgrades.

Khajan Gowda

[EnriquePereira]

I am waiting for it :)

I did not receive the upgrade notification, I called and get the upgrade for 7.6.

But they told me that there is no notification for 2.6. How can I get the 2.6 software for the appliance? I have one licensed and with support (the people that gives me the 7.6 upgrade notification confirmed that the appliance support is still valid for two more years).

Thanks,

[EnriquePereira]

Sorry for the question, I have just found it on:

http://www.symantec.com/business/support//index?page=content&id=TECH205913&actp=RSS

I thougth I should download it from fileshare, I did not realize that it is public :)

[EnriquePereira]

And I am waiting for it because I had appliance performance issues until I tuned several paratemers.

I have been 7.6 betatester since the beginning one year ago and I have also participated in the 2.6 beta program during summer.

Sorry for asking for it, I have found as a public download :)

http://www.symantec.com/business/support//index?page=content&id=TECH205913&actp=RSS

[Umair_Hussain]

For Appliance run check upgrade and it will download the software on the appliance directly...

[Khajan]

I tried my first appliance upgrade from 2.5.2 to 2.6.0.1, out of two appliance DR appliance is going good without any issue, other production Appliance is failing with self test.

During the upgrade to 2.5.3 on the master server appliance

Seeing the following pre-check error

[Error] NetBackup diskpool 'dp_disk_nbme1bsc' does not exist


Running nbdevquery -listdp commands -- we cannot find a disk pool with this name

Reviewing the NetBAckup Administration Console --> Devices --> Disk pool -- the disk pool does not exist

Site does use both MSDP and AdvancedDisk Diskpool on this appliance.

I'm planning to open to ticket with suppor after doing few more tests..

I'm looking into following few TECHnotes See TECH202806
NB 5220: Upgrade from 2.5.2 to 2.5.1 fails during Self Test if no Deduplication Pool is present

Note: we actually shrunk the Deduplication disk pool from 64 TB to 34TB to make room on AdvancedDisk after ran into issue of PO count.

Noticed the site has a disk pool called nbme1bsc_msdp_dp
This is associated to the master server appliance and is of type PureDisk


Trying the workaround documented in the above TechArticle:

1. First, made a backup of self_test.pm:
cp /opt/NBUAppliance/scripts/self_test.pm /opt/NBUAppliance/scripts/self_test.pm.backup

2. Ran the following command to update the diskpool name:

sed -i -e 's/ my \$diskpool_name = "dp_disk_".\$host;/ my \$diskpool_name = "nbme1bsc_msdp_dp";/' /opt/NBUAppliance/scripts/self_test.pm

3. Re-run the selftest using CLISH before restarting the upgrade.

Let me know if you guys have seen this before and successfully fixed it. :) I'll be trying the above mentioned steps tomorrow morning, update you by afternoon.

[Khajan]

Now I understood the issue, CLISH/pre-cheker expects default MSDP pool name, which is dp_disk_<applianceName>, in this case it's not following the convention. I'm sure by changing the self_test.pm, I should resolve this issue.

I'm adding one more checking tracker to my Appliance Installation/Upgrade checklist.

-Khajan

[Khajan]

I'm really impressed by the Symantec Engineering work on 2.6.0.1 installation experience. Following are few key steps while doing your 2.6.0.1 upgrade.

1) Performs initial pre-checks which is existing Support-->Test--> Software goes through all checks. Only if passes all test it'll go to next steps.

2) Analyse your MSDP pool and calculate time for the Database coversion.

3) Checks and confirms Console/IPMI installation, if you're trying to do installation through remote session it continues but it's always advisable to use Direct Console/IPMI based command/CLISH installation.

4) Brings NetBackup down and upgrade NetBackup, once it complete it reboots for Suse SLES 11 SP1 version. It's when Autopilot Installation kicks in, from this steps you don't even sit infront of the console, every single steps is automated and cool.

5) After the OS installation, Database conversion takes time based on the current used size of your MSDP pool.

6) Last step before the completion is checkpoint creation and building repository tar ball and snapshot.

After this step it present you with 2.6.0.1 login screen.

[evo]

Hi Khajan

If it is possible, can you please copy/paste the screen of the successful upgrade process to 2.6.0.1?

Regards.

[Stanleyj]

Does the metadata upgrade steps still apply during the master server upgrade if you have an appliance as the media server?

[Stanleyj]

During the upgrade to 2.6.0.1 I was prompted about not having enough space for the upgrade. Does anyone know if its okay to select the deduplication pool? Im having serious trouble getting into the support site to open a ticket. ERROR: At least 85598 MB of unallocated storage space is required for upgrade. Please select a partition with enough free space to be resized or enter 'quit' to exit the installer. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Partition | Total | Available | Used | %Used ---------------------------------------------------------------- AdvancedDisk | 1 GB | 542.82 MB | 481.17 MB | 47 Deduplication | 32.723 TB | 10.487 TB | 22.236 TB | 68 Unallocated | 0 GB | - | - | -

[Khajan]

Plesae check space in / partition, cd /tmp  delete err* infile* any big tar/gz files. 

[Khajan]

Stanleyj,

If you have your Appliance as only Master, DB/PDDE conversion should be very quick. DB Conversion is takes more time if you have lot of images, data as part of your Deduplication Storage /disk.

Let me know if you have any trouble after you make space in your / partition.

Khajan

[Stanleyj]

The problem is I just don't know what can be deleted and what cant. Also I cant seem to get into /partition. nbuappl01:/tmp # df Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on /dev/sda2 574365056 235658524 309530484 44% / udev 16475796 216 16475580 1% /dev /dev/sda3 1148729904 76923072 1013454736 8% /log tmpfs 4 0 4 0% /dev/vx /dev/vx/dsk/nbuapp/pdvol 35136523000 23787585440 11260331912 68% /disk /dev/vx/dsk/nbuapp/advol 1048576 488480 555848 47% /cat

[Khajan]

I think you can go ahead and reduce your allocated space by shrinking it. So that you can go ahead with your upgrade. Right now you really have 0 unallocated disk space.

Based on error you need around 85GB unallocated disk. Try to get that much or 90GB.

Use, web interface to shrink your space. Let me know if you have trouble, I will certainly help you.

Khajan.

[CreateBackupDed]

Did anyone here install the 7.6 FA (first availability) preview?  I'd like to upgrade to 7.6.0.1 GA (general availablility) which came out 12/18/2013, but can't find good documentation for this particular path.  

[Khajan]

I have tested 7.6FA and upgraded few of the production appliances from 2.5.3 to 2.6.0.1. There is very good upgrade documentation.

http://www.symantec.com/docs/DOC6488

If you're looking for 7.6FA to 7.6GA, you'll not find any details. But from 7.1 or 7.5 to 7.6 good place to start is https://sort.symantec.com/checklist/install

Let us know if you have any specific questions.

[CreateBackupDed]

Thanks, my only real question was about preping MSDP.  When I upgraded to 7.6 FA, I had to run all those prep utilities on the pool.  Now when I run the 7.6.0.1 installer, I am asked if I want to automatically run the pdde tools after the install or manually.  

I assume that this is a bit of a mistake and running these tools again is unnecessary for users who already installed 7.6 FA.  

[StefanosM]

we had the same problem today and we decide to let the installation rerun the upgrade utilities. As we expected nothing happen and net backup is working fine.

The only "problem" we had was with ops center. When we tried to upgrade from 7.6FA to 7.6.0.1 GA the installation asked for repaire or remove. So the opscenter binaries are the same and no upgrade to 7.6.0.1 is needed.

[StefanosM]

I have one question about appliances.

I know that netbackup appliance 5230 can grow to 86TB of usable space (using 3TB internal disks). Also I know that when you are use appliance netbackup 7.6 can handle more deduplication space than 64TB.

But I'm confused about the limit of deduplication 7.6. Can I use all the appliance space (86TB) for deduplication or 72 TB as the following document says.

http://www.symantec.com/content/en/us/enterprise/fact_sheets/b-netbackup_appliance_5230_DS_21273484-1.en-us.pdf