SAN Media server on SPARC hosting Solaris 10 global zone

[Itegral]

We have two SPARC T-series hosting Solaris 10 Global zones, each with around 10TB of data.

On NetBakcup 7.6 side, we have several 5220 Appliances connected to LAN and SAN fabric. However, as per the old design the backup data transport for SPARC local zones is happening over the LAN, which is sometimes painfully slow specially for full backups.

My questions are,

1) can these SPARC T-series hosts with Solaris 10 Global zones be turned into SAN Media servers? and what does it require? OR keep it simple and,

2) Configure the SPARC T-series Solaris Global Zone hosts as SAN client ?

Thanks for your help in advance.

[RiaanBadenhorst]

1. Possible but you need to give them storage (tape / disk) to write to directly.

2. Global Zone possible, Local Zone not possible

[Andrew_Madsen]

If you are experiencing issues with LAN backups it is recommended in a Solaris 10 environment to install a media server in the global zone and back up the local zones to that media server. You get better performance through share memory for that type of backup.

You cannot back up Local Zones by using a SAN client on the Global Zone unless you are going to back up the LOFS file system from the Global Zone and in order to that you need to quiesce the local zone, something that is undesirable because it means shutting down the local zone.

That being said you may need additional licensing if you are not on a capacity based licensing model. The additional licenses would cover the media server installation (2 ea.) and the Shared Storage Option so you can write to the existing tape library using the Global Zone Media servers.

Installation of the client is different based on sparse or whole root zones but since you have already been backing up this environment that tells me that hurdle has been overcome. The last thing to do is to install different HBAs because you do NOT want disk and tape traffic to traverse the same path. If you ware pushing to disk instead of tape the same applies do not intermix backup traffic and regular data traffic.

[Itegral]

Thanks Andrew for your valuable input. That raises couple of questions;

1. If you ware pushing to disk instead of tape the same applies do not intermix backup traffic and regular data traffic Q1 - We have several NetBackup 5220 Appliances configured as Media Servers but no disk based backups. Is there a way to add the storage server (PureDisk pool) of one of these Appliances to this new SAN Media server? Q2 - In case of above, how can I ensure that data transport from new SAN Media server to the PureDisk pool happens over the Fiber?

I dont want to mix and match my Backup environment with Appliances and Advanced Disk.

[Andrew_Madsen · Accepted solution]

You cannot attach the MSDP (PureDisk) from one media server to another media server. Media server to Media server activity is IP based. Now if you have a 5020 or 5030 then you could transfer over FC. However, 5220 to 5220 will not work.

You will need to go to tape or create a disk pool for this media server only. If you chose to go to disk then your IP traffic will be lessened because of optimized duplication provided, you make the disk a PureDisk pool (MSDP).