NetBackup Administration Console on a Smartphone anyone?

[rmcateer]

I work for a small firm (www.roveit.com) that makes a product that allows you manage various types of servers from a smartphone (BlackBerry, iPhone, Windows Mobile etc) and I am looking at including support for the NetBackup Administration Console.

Currently, I am only thinking about providing a stripped down Activity Monitor (via the command line bpdbjobs) and Problem Reports (via the command line bperrors), but I am not well versed on NetBackup and how it is commonly used day-to-day. Are there better ways (other APIs) at getting at NetBackup operations?

What parts of the Administration Console would YOU like to see made available on a smartphone? Thoughts/suggestions/ideas are warmly welcomed.

RMcAteer.

[Harpreet_Singh_]

Hi,

You are too smart...

Eventually VERITAS Netbackup is going to take out Java Console. Next will be OPS Center from where you can do anything. manage the Netbackup setup/reporting etc.
 
I will be more interested in the backup Performance.
 
Regards.
 
Harpreet Singh

[Mouse]

A long time ago when I worked as sysadmin I had used Treo 650 and SSH client/shell commands.
 
Text-based commands are informative enough however if you're going to develop something with more sexy interface, here are my thoughts about it:
1. NBU now is using NBSL (it's a daemon/service and protocol) to allow control from remote consoles (for example, NBU Admin Console, JAVA GUI and NOM/OpsCenter - they are using NBSL for gathering information).
2. Apart of Activity Monitor, frequently used options are: up/down/monitor drives, enable/disable/run/kill polcy/job/shedule

[pdsimpson]

I'd love to see this product. 

Other features I'd like to see:

Ability to kickoff / pause / kill / restart jobs
Activity Monitor
Ability to monitor / reset / up / down drives
PANIC button to perform bpup -f /bpdown -f as a last resort

[Android]

This is a very cool idea, however, as of NBU7.0 OpsCenter is replacing the other GUI's for NBU.  You access OpsCenter from a browser, so, any smartphone with a browser and a connection should be able to get the full blown functionality of the GUI (depending on whether or not your phone gives you a stripped down browser that is).

So I admire your initiative, but, the necessity of the result will most likely be short lived from what I can see.

[Android]

I might have been mistaken on when this will happen.  I know that NOM and VBR are being replaced by Ops Center in NBU 7.0.  I know the plan is to replace the admin console with it as well but that might not be coming until NBU 7.5.

[rmcateer]

Thanks for the feedback/ideas, I really appreciate it. The ideas on what featuers to offer line up well with mine.

About accessing OpsCenter from a smartphone browser, that is certainly a viable way to go and a challenge that we have faced before managing other products. But what we have found is that on the smartphone platform, a purpose built app can be much easier to use and much faster. A web based product built for display on the desk top does not easily move to the smarphone paradigm (at least not yet!).

RMcAteer

[rjrumfelt]

But I know there are apps to access computers remotely - wouldnt be possible to use a java gui through one of these apps?