Q1) We have an appliance 5230 master and media and we're looking for better HA. What we're thinking is that we should have another appliance locally so that we can replicate from the first one to the second.
A1.1) I'd look to see if you could host the alternate copy at another site. To keep another copy at the same site is like saying that you don't trust the hardware or software. And if you don't trust it, then which bits don't you trust? If you don't trust it on one instance, why would you trust it to any greater extent on two instance of the same hatrdware and software... but then maybe you have very high availability SLA requirements - in which an alternate local copy does make sense.
Q2) From my understanding there are limitations with having one master and 2 media appliances when it comes to recoveries, so here's what we're planning:
A2.1) Yes, both media servers are utterly reliant upon the one master.
Q3) Get the master server out of the appliance onto a server.
A3.1) Not possible by us mere mortal admins. You would need specialist consulting services for a normal home grown server, and I doubt that this is possible with an appliance - i.e. I don't think even Symantec would attempt to down-rev functionality of an appliance from master/media to media.
Q4) Having two Netbackup domains and Clustering the 2 master servers with Microsoft cluster.
A4.1) So, two resource groups? One resource group per master server instance? Never seen that done, but then never had to consider it either. Forum reach out: Has anyone on here done this?
Q5) Getting a 5330 or a 5230 (what would work better in this scenario?) to be the second media server.
A5.1) They have different specific use cases, and the costs are very different. If you have a 5230 already, which is intended to be replicated, then I'd stick with a 5230 to replicate to - unless you already know that your current 5230 will be outgrown... and so maybe you'll end up with two x 5230 replicating to one x 5330?
Q6) What I understand is that if master 1 fails we can run with master 2. Also, if media appliance 1 fails we can recover from media appliance 2. So master 1 and media appliance 1 can fail together and we would still have the ability to run and restore backups from master2 and media appliance 2.
A6.1) Clients would need to be manually flipped from master1 to master2 by changing their primary "server" name that they allow themselves to talk to. Re your failover scenario in this question - I don't understand iit, and somethign about it looks odd. Please expand your statement/thoughts.
Q7) Please guide me to the best way possible to achieve this, we don't want to our eggs in one basket, and we need our backup to be available even if our appliance fails for any reason.
A7.1) You've already started thinking along the right lines. Q6) needs scenario clarification.
HTH
