Remove the tape drives from exisiting netbakup & add to new setup

[knbu]

Hello Team, 

We have a setup where netbackup version is 7.6.0.4 on solaris 11 OS. The tape library is IBM TS3500. We are configuring new media server with Linux RHEL6.4. Now we are planning to remove the 2 drives from exisiting media server setup & add them into new media server setup.

Looking for a documents or steps to be performed.

[Marianne]

Can we assume that the robot control will be moved to new media server along with the tape drives?

All devices to be moved to another media server?

Or just some of the drives with old media server remaining in place with robot control and some tape drives?

Will old media server be kept in the environment or do you want to decommission it?

Can we assume that you have a dedicated master server and that media servers are used for data movement?

We can only give helpful advice if we understand the 'big picture'. 

[D_Flood]

Marianne raises some very good questions but since I've got an 6 drive LTO2 3580 myself that's shared (at least until after the July 4th Holiday) here's what I had to do and/or did...

Old Master: Win2k3 7.5.0.7 (was 5.something when this all started)

New Master: Win2k8 7.6.1.2 (was 6.something when this all started)..robot controller is a Windows Media Server and the drives are dual-pathed to a 5220 Appliance...
 

I'm lucky in that I have some old fibre switches deadicated to NetBackup and nothing else.  I just fibred the Old Master, the Media Server, and the Appliance to them along with the robot, zoned it all together, and yippe! they showed up in all the right places.

I just make sure the drives stay in a DOWN state on the Old Master unless I need them for legacy restores and then (by drive serial number) down it on the New side and the up it on the old side for as long as I need it.  If you ever reboot the old master you'll have to log on and down the drives again...

In addition, I've created a pool on the old master called "new_netbackup" that all old SCRATCH tapes get moved to as they scratch so that old master doesn't get confused during inventories but doesn't try (not that it has any policies left) to write anything either...

I've manged to import (phase 1/phase 2) a lot of the old legacy tapes into the new master catalog so as of the Weekend of the 4th, the last active tapes will expire off of the old master...then I'll be able to reformat it and use that chasis for testing NetBackup stuff (since it sees the robot, something my current test box doesn't)...

So..while it ain't pretty and I'm not actively using the old master for anything but restores, drive control doesn't seem to be an issue...

[knbu]

Thanks Marianne, actually we are keeping existing media server as it is, we only remove some drives from that server & add it into the new media server. Robot & library also remain the same.

The query is the exsisting setup is on solaris OS & new media server OS is Linux. If i get any technote about how to remove from exisiting setup & add the drives into new setup that will helpful. Will take care of media pool as for this new setup we are configuring BCV set of images.

[Marianne · Accepted solution]

The only documentation that I am aware of is NetBackup Administrator's Guide, Volume I  (chapter 7 - Deleting a drive) and NetBackup Device Configuration Guide (Linux chapter). 

Simply delete the drives from Devices section of the GUI or else using tpconfig on the Solaris media server and restart NBU on media server.  
Next step is to remove at OS and hardware level from Solaris server (cabling/zoning) and present to Linux server.

When tape drives can be seen at OS level on media server and all other steps have been taken to add media server to NBU master (see Adding Media Server ), use Device Config Wizard to select the robot control host and media server to add the devices to NBU.