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Enable Consolidation and Increase Agility, Simplicity and Scalability with Containerization

Rachelzhu
Level 1
Employee

Flex Appliance brings the agility of container technology to NetBackup data protection. Run multiple NetBackup deployments on a single Flex appliance. Create new deployments and upgrade in minutes. Efficiently tier to the cloud with NetBackup CloudCatalyst containers. Flex Appliance’s ease of use lets you quickly respond in a rapidly changing business environment.

The table below lists the advantages of container technology compared to virtualization:

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With containerization, NetBackup application container has the following benefits:

  • Operational reliability when moved between nodes in the cluster
  • Increased modularity
  • Simplicity
  • Application/process isolation
  • Improved security
  • Faster startup and shutdown

 Before you can create a NetBackup container instance, you must first add the applicable image files to the repository.

Container Images

Container images are static and immutable. Adding support for multiple versions of NetBackup is easy with a Flex Appliance. The NetBackup Container Images can be downloaded from the the Veritas Support Site independently of the Flex Appliance softwareCheck how to identify supported applications and usage information for Flex Appliance for all of the Veritas applications and versions that Flex Appliance supports.

 Currently supported images that can be added to the repository are: 

  • NetBackup 8.2
  • NetBackup Master Service
  • NetBackup  Media Service
  • NetBackup 8.1 
  • NetBackup Master Service 
  • NetBackup Media Service 
  • NetBackup 8.1.1 
  • NetBackup Master Service 
  • NetBackup Media Service 
  • NetBackup 8.1.2 
  • NetBackup Master Service 
  • NetBackup Media Service 

 Flex appliance supports different NetBackup software versions.

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There are three types of images: application, add-on, and upgrades and updates.

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Container Instance

A container is an instance built from a static container image, also called a container instance. One container has onerole. The supporting roles include NetBackup master service and media service. You can create a container instance with the Flex Appliance Web GUI.

When you create a media service instance, there are three available storage options:

  • Media Service Deduplication Pool (MSDP): Veritas NetBackup provides the deduplication options that let you deduplicate data everywhere, as close to the source of data as you require.
  • AdvancedDisk: The NetBackup AdvancedDisk storage option lets you use the disk storage that is exposed to NetBackup as a file system for backups. Storage can be direct-attached storage (DAS), network-attached storage (NAS), or storage area network (SAN) storage.
  • Cloud Catalyst: The NetBackup CloudCatalyst solution receives optimized backup data from one or many NetBackup media service and transfers the data to an S3 public or private cloud object storage target. Any certified S3 platform can be certified for use with NetBackup CloudCatalyst.

A container instance has persistent data and non-persistent data to simplify the application instance upgrade process.

  • The persistent data hosts the master service catalog, backup images, and configuration settings.
  • The non-persistent data hosts base NetBackup software components, services, and binaries.

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Below is the order of operations that occur during upgrades

  • Original container instance is shut down (less than a minute)
  • A new instance based on the new container image is started
  • Persisted data is mounted to the upgraded container instance
  • New instance with upgraded NetBackup version available to do backups (about a minute)