Reformat MDSP Storage Pool

[Rob_Toronto]

I am using Netbackup 7.1.0.3 + Storage Foundations 6 on Windows 2008 R2 SP1

I recently created an MDSP Storage Pool but have not yet added any data to it. Using storage foundations I created a large 10TB volume but left out the step where I reformat it the to use 64k blocks. The volume is currently formatted using the Windows default blocksize.

I was wondering if the following steps will fix my problem

1. Deactivate media server

2. Stop all Netbackup services on media server

3. Format volume using 64k blocksize

4. Restart server (and NB services)

5. Re-activate media server

Will this re-create the empty database and file structure I see when I first create an MSDP pool on a volume?

Or do I need to remove the entire storage pool before I reformat the volume.

Thanks in advance.

[Marianne · Accepted solution]

Rather remove/delete completely and start again. Extremely messy to try and fix afterwards...

See these steps to remove MSDP pool and other objects : http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH150431

[Omar_Villa]

Also 64K is still very small considering that NBU block standard is 256K, but because is windows I assume there is some limitation but I think it can be tweak at registry level so you can handle bigger blocks.

[Rob_Toronto]

I had wondered about the blocksize as well but this was a suggestion by Symantec. I wonder why

The link to Symantec MSDP suggestions:

http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=HOWTO61249

(Special considerations when deploying NetBackup Media Server Deduplication on Windows systems)

- When formatting the NTFS volume in Windows, specify a 64K blocksize (default is 4096 bytes which can lead to poor performance).

[Rob_Toronto]

Thanks for the advice and link. That will save a lot of time.

I had a feeling I would have to get rid of the storage pool but with no data on it the job is a lot easier.

Rob