Scheduled reboots of Master & Media server

[Jack_Barnacle]

I have a client that I am contracting for that regularly (every few weeks) shuts down all Netbackup services on all Master & Media servers at their location and then reboots each of the servers. The environment is 7.1.0.3 Master and Media servers, three servers backup to a Data Domain and the other three backup to MSDP pools located on each of the three servers. This is what they consider "maintenence". The reboot of the media servers with the MSDP pools take a tremendous amount of time as the pools are very close to their 20TB capacity. This process takes at least 6 hours - bpdown, reboot and bpup. Spoold and spad are set to be started manually. This whole process takes up a tremendous amount of valuable time as we are VERY close to the technical limit of starting one job every second so every second a server is down leaves us trying to catchup with the workload that floods into the systesm every day.

My question is - Are we gaining any benefit whatsoever from doing this process every other week?

[Marianne]

I have no idea why your customer feel that they should reboot this often. This is not a NBU requirement or suggested anywhere as 'best practise'.

They may want to consider upgrading to 7.6 where the dedupe engine underwent major improvements.

Also important to check resources on the media servers - ensure sufficient memory and cpu.
Experience has shown that about 1.5GB memory is needed for each TB of dedupe storage (although documentation says 1GB/TB)

Preparation documentation: 
Updated NetBackup Backup Planning and Performance Tuning Guide for Release 7.5 and Release 7.6 

NetBackup 7.6 Upgrade Guide  

[RiaanBadenhorst · Accepted solution]

You're clearly not gaining anything, only loosing valuable backup window.
 

[mph999]

... as we are VERY close to the technical limit of starting one job every second

Really ... well if so that is madness on a live system, no room to move/ rerun etc ...

[Bmitche · Accepted solution]

All of my masters and medias are windows servers. I have an msdp pool with 60TB in use. We reboot every server once a month after applying patches. Before I went to 7.6.0.2 my msdp pool would take FOREVER to become available. With 7.6.0.2 it is available within minutes of starting.

[Jack_Barnacle]

Thank you all for your responses. We're are just at the beginning stages of a badly needed upgrade to 7.6  along with a general server hardware upgrade. I'm trying to show my clients the advantages of not carrying forward any "bad habits" they may have picked up along the way and to use this opportunity to upgrade policies and procedures as well. Thanks again. 

[Will_Restore]

Windows 2003 means frequent reboots