[Veritas-bu] Synthetic Backups

Jim, I've been testing it myself. I think you do need to keep that full backup around. The "synthetic" part of a synthetic backup is the consolidation of the full backup and the incrementals into a single image. This is done via duplication. The test scenario I'm working with is the follow

[Veritas-bu] SLP behavior question

I'm starting to mess around myself. I've not made any changes to the default parameters for the LIFECYCLE_PARAMETERS. Here's the defaults as defined in the manual: MIN_KB_SIZE_PER_DUPLICATION_JOB 8192 MAX_KB_SIZE_PER_DUPLICATION_JOB=25600 MAX_MINUTES_TIL_FORCE_SMALL_DUPLICATION_JOB 30 The cl

[Veritas-bu] Netbackup 6.5 upgrade qs

One thing to keep in mind that it is critical to go through the steps of running catalog consistency tests. I had tons of problems with this (100+ GB catalog space). And never got the catalog into a state that we could actually upgrade our 5.1 MP7 in place. It would have taken us an estimate

[Veritas-bu] Question when importing tapes [expiration dates]

It will reset the expiration to the future. Think of if like the images on that tape were all backed up at the time of the import. The expiration date is then recalculated based upon that import date. It's a pain but if you are aware of if you can work around it. I've frozen the media (susp

[Veritas-bu] Using multiple drives with NDMP.

Jeff, I've had some experience with the Celera NAS devices. There is a parameter you need to set that must match the SIZE_DATA_BUFFERS_NDMP. I changed the SIZE_DATA_BUFFERS_NDMP without configuring the Celera and all my NDMP backups started failing. I'm sorry, but I don't remember the param

[Veritas-bu] Netbackup 6.5 upgrade qs

Simon, Yes, I did choose a completely new name for the master server. Tom +-- |This was sent by t...@tjsimerson.org via Backup Central. |Forward SPAM to ab...@backupcentral.com. +

[Veritas-bu] NDMP

I've been doing NDMP backups to our EMC NS700 without this configuration file. The defaults are assumed if this file does not exist. On that same subject, anyone have any suggestions for tuning an older EMC Celerra environment? I would like to get my tape buffers up to 256K but can't make he

[Veritas-bu] NDMP

Thanks to everyone's responses. The readWriteBlockSizeInKB was the parameter I was going to focus on. Just wanted to make sure that I got the right one the first time. My SAN admin guys get a little snotty when we don't get it right the first time javascript:emoticon(':)') +

[Veritas-bu] bpduplicate help

I've been doing the same thing for years using various incarnations of Perl scripts building a bid file as Jonathan suggested. But I recently discovered the Storage Lifecycle Policies. These are fantastic! Once I worked out the details, the SLP's will create the primary copy to VTL and then

[Veritas-bu] Converting stand-alone Master to clustered Master

Mark, Don't know anything about clustering master servers, I'll put in my two cents worth on the master server migration. Since you're going to a *nix to a *nix environment, you should be able to simply do a disaster recovery type restore of NetBackup. The process is pretty much like this:

[Veritas-bu] LTO 3 tapes snapping in LTO3 drives

Take a look at the following link that did some actual testing against the big 4 LTO media vendors. http://searchstorage.techtarget.com/magPrintFriendly/0,293813,sid5_gci1258158,00.html I've almost always used Fuji or Maxell and had very few problems with the media. This was true even at the

[Veritas-bu] Netbackup 6.5 installation fails with error "Not a perl

I remember running into this and beating my head soft :( I suspect that you downloaded a copy of the installation files from the Symantec web site. For whatever reason, the installatin "image" from there does not have all the permissions set correctly for *nix systems. It looked like all t

[Veritas-bu] Restore issue between Linux gui and Windows gui.

I've seen this also. As much as people want to make Windows and UNIX play nicely together, there are just somethings that don't translate between the systems. The file system and file structure is one huge difference. I would see similar issues when logging into our AIX master server using th

[Veritas-bu] Staging off Virtual Tape Library

I had setup the exact same type of backup policy (backup to VTL then use SLP to move the data to physical tape) and it worked great. I was backing up 2 servers from remote environments (about 80). The VTL would suck all the data in (I had about 20 tape drives) through the course of the night.

[Veritas-bu] Can't get nbu to use drives, and cant 'up' the drives.

I think we're going to need some more information about your environment to help: 1. What operating system and version is your master/media server? 2. How are the tape drives attached (SCSI, fibre channel, etc.)? The 800 code is a fairly generic message stating the NBU cannot talk to the dri

[Veritas-bu] Can't get nbu to use drives, and cant 'up' the drives.

I don't think this problem is a NBU issue. It looks like Solaris has lost the drives. You need to rescan the devices to make sure that Solaris can see the drives. I believe you can run "devfsadm -c tape" to have the system rescan for devices or issue a "touch /reconfigure" then reboot the sy

[Veritas-bu] Restore Questions

NetBackup does not differentiate between images on disk versus images on tape. They are all just images to it. If the data you request resides on tape, NBU will generate a tape mount request automatically. As for the date thing, NBU will, by default, go back to the most recent full backup dis

[Veritas-bu] Media spanning job failures causing frozen media

What version of NBU are you running and what is the operating system of the media server? +-- |This was sent by t...@tjsimerson.org via Backup Central. |Forward SPAM to ab...@backupcentral.com. +--

[Veritas-bu] Convert from Solaris Master/Media to Windows NBU 7.0 need to

I've not actually done one but that is supposed to be a hairy process full of pit falls. This is usually done as a professional services type job. It sounds like you have a master/media server combination. How about simply creating a new Window media server to add to the NBU domain? That way

[Veritas-bu] Duplicating using bpduplicate gives a smaller size

This is actually not unusual. Because of fragmentation and multiplexing, an image might "shrink" just a little bit after duplication. You should be okay but Darren is right for testing. Do some restores from that copy to just make sure it is okay. You can use the bpchangeprimary command to c

[Veritas-bu] Upgrading windows media servers to 6.5 from 5.1

Since your media server will be moving from one master server to another, you want to do a clean install. Migrate your mediadb like you were planning, remove the old 5.1 software and then install the 6.5 software. I went through this exact same process when upgrading my environment from 5.1 to

[Veritas-bu] Is Netbackup SQL Server Agent required to use Netbackup to b

Kind of depends on your DBA's [Wink] At a previous position, all of the DBA's (Oracle, SQL and Informix) hated the idea of anything communicating with their database that they had no control over (that and they were cheap). We worked with the SQL DBA to make use of user directed backups. He ba

[Veritas-bu] Where are the license files located on Unix and Linux master

As smpt noted, the files are encrypted. To veiw the actual details, use the get_license_key command (stored under /usr/openv/netbackup/bin/admincmd) to view the actual keys and what features the keys activate. +-- |This was sen

[Veritas-bu] New backup

pwhelan0610 is correct: you will get the equivalent of a full backup (because there is no baseline) but the retention will be based upon the incremental schedule. And you will continue to get a full data backup with each incremental until you the full backup schedule successfully runs. I ran

[Veritas-bu] Client not seeing Master

Spot on, Justin, with the logging. Best diagnostic tool. I would guess that the firewall rules on the master server are blocking the connection (just because it is Windows 2008 R2). There is no longer any kind of driver that Symantec supplies. They chose (IMHO the right choice) to leverage t

[Veritas-bu] Existing Veritas Lic. Keys - Migration to 7.1.x

You can go to the Symantec licensing portal (licensing.symantec.com) to register your licenses and process an upgrade on them to convert them from a 6.X license to a 7.X license. This will activate all the features in NBU 7.X. +---

[Veritas-bu] VM backups

- Should I look at Symantec’s solution? Is there something better out there (VEEM?) The VMware backup mechanism in NetBackup is very good. The niche products like Veeam and vRanger are also good products but you have one major disadvantage: they support only VMware backups. And, most impleme

[Veritas-bu] Netbackup Uprade to 7.1.0.4

NBU 7.1.0.4 is probably the most stable of the 7.1 patches. I have had several customers that were/are on earlier releases which required several EEB fixes to be applied. If you are doing any kind of deduplication (MSDP or OST appliances) or using SLPs, then you will want to be on 7.1.0.4. +-

[Veritas-bu] Archive Bit Clear issue in NDMP Backup

You might be stuck. Clearing the archive bit requires accessing the data at the file system level. NDMP is a lower level protocol that is accessing at a block level. Out of curiosity, why do you need to clear the archive bit? My experience is the archive bit is not very reliable for determini

[Veritas-bu] Setting up Windows Media Server

The key thing is to get the Windows system to see the drives first. Symantec stopped shipping device drivers for Windows several versions ago and is relying upon the underlying operating system to properly configure the drives. Quantum should have on their web site some Windows drivers for the

[Veritas-bu] Netbackup 7.1 Migration

The reason for the professional services is the nature of the NetBackup catalog space. The master server hostname is embedded throughout the EMM and images databases. Symantec or authorized VARs have the proper tools to make these changes to the NetBackup catalog. As Dan indicated, it may loo

[Veritas-bu] NetBackup 7.5.0.3: bprd vnet_cached_getnameinfo() for x.x.x.

I'm curious as to why your DNS admin thought removing the reverse lookup zone was a good idea. The only reasons I've ever gotten at customer sites or within my own infrastructure has been "I thought nothing used them" or "It is a security risk" (which no one has provided valid reasons for this

[Veritas-bu] Netbackup , Vmware and Netapp

There are several factors here that will help determine what technologies you should look at: 1. Do you need to do file level restores of this VM that has these huge number of files? 2. About how many and what kind of files (.avi, .mkv, .jpg, etc.) comprise the "huge number of files"? 3. Wha

[Veritas-bu] Many AIX clients failing with System time out/ Network error

The three error codes you list all indicate something on the client side causing the issue. I will suggest that you download and look through the Symantec NetBackup Status Code Reference Guide (http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=DOC5181). There are some very good n

[Veritas-bu] Upgrade to 7.5 - Free Disk Space Required

You don't need the full size of your images database for free disk space. Only the metadata of the images database is imported into the EMM database. This usually accounts for about 1% - 3% of the total images database size. In your case, the 20 GB of free space should be fine. This is only

[Veritas-bu] Fiber channel robot device numbers auto-incrementing

Take all look on your master and media servers to see if you have the entry "AUTO_PATH_CORRECTION=YES" in the /usr/openv/volmgr/vm.conf file. This will tell NetBackup to rescan the system devices and update the NetBackup device configuration with the new/changed node information. The rescan is

[Veritas-bu] Problem Adding 7.5 Appliance to 7.5 Traditional Master Domai

Make sure that you are adding the license keys to the master server also. That is where the issues are actually occurring. The media server attempts to run the configuration tools but the tools are actually making changes on the master server. You don't have to add every license key on the ma

[Veritas-bu] Trying to find what tapes an image is on.

You can also use a "bpimagelist -L" (that's a capital L) which will be an more human readable format. If this is a big backup image with multiple copies, it can have lots of fragments that can be hard to work through. +-- |This

[Veritas-bu] bpbackup -w

According to the documentation, that should have waited for 12 hours. To wait an infinite time, use the option "-w 0". You never know how long a job will sit in a queued state due to storage contention. +-- |This was sent by t

[Veritas-bu] Best Practice - Policies vs Volume Pools - Tape Usage

NetBackup does not allocate new media based upon policies themselves but upon volume pools and retention levels. If you had different volume pools being used by each policy, then NBU behaved properly. If you have different retention levels in play in each schedule in each policy, then that wil

[Veritas-bu] Can I upgrade from 6.5 directly to 7.5 or 7.1?

Prasanna is correct that you have to patch to 6.5.6 first. But, you can upgrade directly to 7.5 from 6.5.6. I just checked the latest installation release notes on this. Be prepared for lots of changes to the NetBackup environment. The GUIs are pretty much the same but there are all sorts of

[Veritas-bu] NBU 7.6.0.1 and Appliance 2.6.0.1

Actually, there are two significant database changes. The EMM database is being upgraded from Sybase 11 to Sybase 12. This is one of the causes for lengthy upgrades. This process (I believe) is to actually dump the database, upgrade Sybase and then reload the database. This is where if you h

[Veritas-bu] NBU 7.6.0.1 and Appliance 2.6.0.1

Finally able to get to Symantec web sites. The issue with the TIR pruning not working correctly is isolated to 7.5.0.6. There is a specific EEB that you can get to patch either NBU 7.5.0.6 or appliance version 2.5.3. The other solution is to patch up to NBU 7.5.0.7 or appliance version 2.5.4.

[Veritas-bu] Netbackup Administration Console via putty tunnel

With NBU 7.1, the Java console and native Windows console are pretty much the same. Prior to that, there was a huge difference in functionality. The only real difference between the two is that when you are accessing client properties through the native Windows console, you can actually browse

[Veritas-bu] HP Data Protector vs Veritas Net Backup

One thing to keep in mind with the major difference between a NetBackup appliance and a dedupe storage appliance (Data Domain, DXi, Exagrid, etc.): a NetBackup appliance is a media server that can do dedupe storage but the other appliances require a media server in front of it. When all is sai