Netbackup 6.0 in mixed environment

[Uncle_Bob]

We have an Redhat Linux Enterprise 3.0 as a master server and 4 media servers running on win2k3 Enterprise in a SAN attached environment.. Has anyone experienced stability issues with the setup or problems with services failing to start. On occasions netbackup seems to work fine for weeks without any problems and then soon as you have to stop and start service/daemons or reboot servers as part of patching maintenance things go very wrong. Policies run but do not progress beyond showing as connected even though allocated a storage unit. Sometimes device manager has to be repeatedly started since master/media servers only show as being 'active for disk' instead of 'active for tape and disk'.

For an enterprise class application it seems very temperamental at times and unpredictable. All the issues seems to be linked to the netbackup application software.

Any recommendations whether we should use be an all Linux environment or Windows.....

Any pro's & cons associated with above or experience of similar problems encountered.

[zippy]

Bharat,

WHen you have an enviroment setup in the way you do you have to make sure your Network is working well between these 4 server, they do a lot of talking to each other before and during backups.

Make sure your network cards, switches, routers are all at the same speed and you have auto negotiation off (if you can) some switches wont allow this setting when a card is set to 1000, anyhow, you can turn on logging by setting VERBOSE = 9 and making a few directories in:
/usr/openv/volmgr/debug

http://seer.support.veritas.com/docs/266619.htm

check it out.

Dont forget to turn off the logging after your done.

JD

[Dennis_Strom]

Is this a SSO environment.

[Uncle_Bob]

Yes, two of the media servers are SAN media servers and 2 are standard media servers with access to two ML6020 libaries and two Dell PV136T's.

[Dennis_Strom]

I know care must be taken when setting up SSO. When I took over this operation we had it and were experiencing the same issues. I got rid of SSO but now I think it can be done if it is implimented correctly.

In the classes and exams it states over and over to only setup SSO drives through the admin console( click on Master Server then click on Configure Storage Devices. I know it can be done command line but it is much easier to hurt oneself. Also I have had support tell me on more than one occasion to NOT use the SSO drive configuation GUI.

When experience problems sometimes it is good to delete the drives on all media servers and master server then to readd them from the master server.

I know other people can give good adive on this and use it regularly without problems. I think it is good in the right situation.

one other thing is to check you logs and see if you have some bad drives. Sometimes cleaning becomes useless and you just have to replace them. that is why we pay for support. Drives go bad.Message was edited by:
Dennis Strom

[Dennis_Strom]

technotes
http://support.veritas.com/docs/282271
http://support.veritas.com/docs/267620
http://support.veritas.com/docs/253391
http://support.veritas.com/docs/282271
How to configure a drive as shared or unshared in NetBackup 6.0
http://support.veritas.com/docs/275349

http://support.veritas.com/docs/271280
How to replace devices in a shared storage option configuration on NetBackup media servers

http://support.veritas.com/docs/243792
DOCUMENTATION: How to rebuild the globDB (global device database file) on the master server

[h_m]

Quote - Sometimes device manager has to be repeatedly started since master/media servers only show as being 'active for disk' instead of 'active for tape and disk'....



Sounds like vmd and ltid are not running, so this will make the media server show 'active for disk' . Are these media servers clustered in any way? Do you have any monitoring s/w to automatically restart services/processes?

"bpup" on windows seems to have a problem starting vmd (volume manager) and ltid (device manager), so you can always start these services through the services application. Then once started, run a bpup.