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upgrading to 7.7 (from 7.6)

gkman
Level 5

Hello,

I was tasked with upgrading our NetBackup environment to 7.7.2. this is my first time ever upgrading NetBackup so my wish is to consult here on the forum and make sure I understood and know everything I should before I start.

Our environment consists of:
master server version 7.6.0.4 installed on windows server 2008R2 (VM).
media server - NetBackup appliance version 5230 2.6.0.4
Plugin server for vCenter (VM) - which I don't know much about or how relevant it is for the upgrade - either way it is not working properly.
opsCenter Version 7.6.0.2 installed on win Server 2008R2 (VM)

I was reading https://www.veritas.com/support/en_US/article.000040130 and https://www.veritas.com/support/en_US/article.000100611. and this is how I planed my upgrade so far:

  • I should upgrade by order: opscenter, master, media and lastly the clients. 
  • follow this guide before upgrading opscenter: http://www.veritas.com/docs/TECH211070
  • before upgrading the it is recommended to follow this tech note to reduce upgrade time: https://www.veritas.com/support/en_US/article.TECH211811 
  • catalog migration is unnecessary because I am upgrading from 7.6
  • before upgrading master server- stop opscenter data collecting 
  • running the setup on the master server is pretty straight forward just move forward accept the defaults and provide the information needed.
  • upgrading the media appliance- move the installation packages to \\appliance\incoming_patches, close share and install after killing the services.
  • upgrade the clients

Here are the files I downloaded  for the upgrade:

NetBackup_7.7.2_AIX64.tar.gz
NetBackup_7.7.2_CLIENTS1.tar.gz
NetBackup_7.7.2_CLIENTS2.tar.gz
NetBackup_7.7.2_Download_README-Info.txt
NetBackup_7.7.2_HPIA.tar.gz
NetBackup_7.7.2_LinuxR_x86_64.tar.gz
NetBackup_7.7.2_LinuxS_x86_64.tar.gz
NetBackup_7.7.2_LU_1of2.tar.gz
NetBackup_7.7.2_LU_2of2.tar.gz
NetBackup_7.7.2_Plugins.zip
NetBackup_7.7.2_Solaris_Sparc64.tar.gz
NetBackup_7.7.2_Solaris_x86.tar.gz
NetBackup_7.7.2_Win.zip
NetBackup_7.7.2_zLinuxR.tar.gz
NetBackup_7.7.2_zLinuxS.tar.gz
OpsCenter_7.7.2_Unix.tar.gz
OpsCenter_7.7.2_Win.zip

for the OpsCenter I will use: OpsCenter_7.7.2_Win.zip and for the master server: NetBackup_7.7.2_Win.zip

these are the questions I am left with:

  1. what installation packages I should use for the appliance and clients? (windows clients mainly)
  2. is there a way to push client upgrades from netbackup rather than install them one by one?
  3. I should obviously not preform the upgrade of the media server while backups are being done and actually stop the services of the media server before performing the installation. Am I to stop them for the master and\or the opscenter as well before upgrading?
  4. there is a section in the one upgrade guides about MSDP- we use the appliance deduplication. do I need to look at this section?
  5. is there anything else I am missing\didn't notice\forget or should know about? 
  6. what happens if I screw this up somehow? what is the worst case scenario and the likeliness of it to happen?

Thanks in advance for the help.

 

10 REPLIES 10

D_Flood
Level 6

A good starting point for any upgrade is SORT:

https://sort.veritas.com/land

Or, if you want to jump straight to NetBackup land...

https://sort.veritas.com/netbackup

Lets see if I can answer a few of your direct questions...


    1. what installation packages I should use for the appliance and clients? (windows clients mainly)

The client install / upgrade programs for Windows are included when you unzip NetBackup_7.7.2_Win.zip.  It's basically of a ZIP of everything that would be on the main DVD if they still had them.
As for downloading software for the Appliance..here's the docs for that: https://www.veritas.com/support/en_US/article.000097985

    2. is there a way to push client upgrades from netbackup rather than install them one by one?

NetBackup does have a feature called LiveUpdate.  Some people love it but trying to get it set up and working during a major version upgrade probably isn't a good idea.  On the other hand, as long as your clients are at 7.6.anything or higher you probably can take an extra week or two and upgrade them as you go...7.6 clients should work just fine with 7.7 Masters/Appliances.

    3. I should obviously not preform the upgrade of the media server while backups are being done and actually stop the services of the media server before performing the installation. Am I to stop them for the master and\or the opscenter as well before upgrading?

The Appliance upgrade will take care of stopping the services as part of the upgrade.  The only thing you need to do is, as you noted, make sure there are no backups, duplications, replications, etc running.  
HOWEVER...double and trouble check all the documentation before starting the upgrade.  If I remember right from my first pass through SORT and the documentation, the Appliance upgrade process to 7.7/2.7 requires a minimum of five hours offline time...

    4. there is a section in the one upgrade guides about MSDP- we use the appliance deduplication. do I need to look at this section?

There is an upgrade/improvement program that runs after the upgrade is complete if it's needed (depends on the old version you were running).  There are a couple of commands that are listed in the documentation that will give you a pretty good guess of how much additional time will be needed...

    5. is there anything else I am missing\didn't notice\forget or should know about?

If you're not already using the Java Console for administration tasks, once you have the Windows ZIP expanded out, you can install the new "Java Remote Admin Console" that includes versions that are compatible with 7.6.  I'd go ahead and install that as soon as possible on one of your machines so you can get used to using the Java Console rather than the more functional (and discontinued) Windows Console.

    6. what happens if I screw this up somehow? what is the worst case scenario and the likeliness of it to happen?

Make sure you aren't rushing through everything.  Don't start this on a day that you absolutely have to leave early.
Read each message / prompt that comes up on the screeen twice before clicking / typing anything.
Don't skimp on the Catalog backups.
Some of the failures will auto-back-out which is a good thing.
You don't have to do all the upgrades in one single pass (I'm running OpsCenter 7.7.2 now but am still planning my NetBackup upgrade).  A 7.7.3 Master will boss around a 7.6.anything Appliance just fine.

And finally, make sure you have the updated phone # to call into Support and know what your contract or ID number is.  

 

 

 

Genericus
Moderator
Moderator
   VIP   

I found some gotcha's with space on my unix systems, not sure about windows - but I would check your temp space and installation spaces to make sure you have enough room.

 

NetBackup 9.1.0.1 on Solaris 11, writing to Data Domain 9800 7.7.4.0
duplicating via SLP to LTO5 & LTO8 in SL8500 via ACSLS

D_Flood
Level 6

Good point!  On any Windows Media Server with a MSDP the conversion process may need a lot of space.

Also, before you upgrade your Appliances, make sure that there is some free / unallocated space located on the base unit (not on any expansion shelves) becase each and every upgrade from 7.6.0/2.6.0 on have to grow at least some partition or another for whatever reason...

 

Anonymous
Not applicable

Note: The installer for Windows does some pre-installation conformity checks too of your environment.

As a safety net you could always do a clone or ad-hoc backup of the Master Server VM (eg use VeeamZIP Free) or put VM into snapshot while doing upgrade and post-assessment of the upgrade, then consolidate.

elanmbx
Level 6

Another thing to do is a catalog consistency check and submit any anomolous findings to support for analysis *prior* to upgrade.

https://www.veritas.com/support/en_US/article.000012877

I would go a step further and say get a case open with Veritas prior to the upgrade.  Open it with a low priority (3 or 4) - you can then simply call in to Support if there is an issue and escalate to Sev 1 and get a live transfer.

gkman
Level 5

Turnes out I need to upgrade my appliance to 2.6.1.x first and only then I can upgrade to 2.7.2

I will finish downloading the installation files for the appliance, then I will open a support case like suggested and start the upgrade.

Thanks for the help everyone.

elanmbx
Level 6

Be advised - the 2.6.1 upgrade requires a MSDP conversion which takes place *after* the 2.6.x software upgrade of the appliance is completed.  And depending on your MSDP pool... could take awhile.  My experience has been that the conversion doesn't take too terribly long (~60m for 45TB used in my MSDP pool), but it definitely adds time to the entire upgrade process for the media server appliance.

cbsi_nbu_team
Level 3

Also keep in mind that with 7.7, you will no longer have the ability to use command line bpadm and vltadm

elanmbx
Level 6

Another pro-tip: ALWAYS reboot your appliance immediately *prior* to starting an upgrade.  I was burned today by a root process keeping the /advdisk volume from being unmounted... which caused the upgrade to fail.  And then to make matters more exciting, the rollback failed.

Fortunately support was able to get it sorted out and I'm currently in the middle of the 2nd upgrade attempt on this media server.

D_Flood
Level 6

A "before you start" reboot will also, if your Appliance has a huge uptime, get the 227 day boot-time fsck out of the way.