Re: [Veritas-bu] NBU and Clustered MSCS fileserver, Flashbackup?

[Ed Wilts]

On Thu, Jul 30, 2009 at 3:14 PM, Spellacy, Sean wrote:

> I was hoping to use flashbackup to be able to pull them but I read in the
> documentation that flashbackup is not supported on clusters.
>

>From the 6.5.6 release notes:

(ET2003460) Support for FlashBackup in a Microsoft Cluster (MSCS)
environment

Beginning in NetBackup 6.5 GA, the use of FlashBackup in a Microsoft Cluster
(MSCS) environment is supported, with the following limitation: Raw
partition
restores can only be performed when the disk being restored is placed in
extended maintenance mode or removed from the MSCS resource group.

ftp://exftpp.symantec.com/pub/support/products/NetBackup_Enterprise_Server/341279.pdf

Ed Wilts, RHCE, BCFP, BCSD, SCSP, SCSE
ewi...@ewilts.org
Linkedin 



>
> Is this true? This does not work or this is not supported? Is anyone using
> flashbackup on win clusters?
>
> So far I have broken these jobs down into multiple streams and that has
> bought me some ground, but I suspect the real issue here is the millions of
> files being parsed. I have also balanced to jobs across two media servers.
>
> Does anyone have any insights or opinions as to how I may be able to speed
> up these jobs.
>
> Thanks in advance
>
> SSS
>
>
>
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>
>
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Re: [Veritas-bu] NBU and Clustered MSCS fileserver, Flashbackup?

[Spellacy, Sean]

So if I understand the people and the threads on this correctly

I need to:


1.   Create an additional LUN for each cluster resource group on my 
Fileserver.

2.   add that LUN to the cluster resource group as disk.

3.   On the drive properties for the data drives within a resource group, 
change the VSS settings to point to the newly created LUN, doing this on all 
nodes of the cluster I presume.

4.   Add flashbackup to the policy, point it to the Virtual server name, 
and off we go?

Did I miss anything?

Thanks again.

SSS

From: Ed Wilts [mailto:ewi...@ewilts.org]
Sent: Thursday, July 30, 2009 3:49 PM
To: Spellacy, Sean
Cc: veritas-bu@mailman.eng.auburn.edu
Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] NBU and Clustered MSCS fileserver, Flashbackup?

On Thu, Jul 30, 2009 at 3:14 PM, Spellacy, Sean 
mailto:sean.spell...@viha.ca>> wrote:

I have recently added  to my job list a Fileserver cluster made up of four 
win2k3r2 machines with roughly 5TB of data on them, millions of files.
As expected this takes a relative eternity to backup.

I was hoping to use flashbackup to be able to pull them but I read in the 
documentation that flashbackup is not supported on clusters.

Is this true? This does not work or this is not supported? Is anyone using 
flashbackup on win clusters?

It's absolutely false - it does work and we use it a lot on clusters with far 
more than 5TB of data.

You need to create a snapshot volume and you MUST add this to the cluster group 
with the data volume.  Then use the cluster virtual server name that contains 
these volume to do the backup.

So far I have broken these jobs down into multiple streams and that has bought 
me some ground, but I suspect the real issue here is the millions of files 
being parsed. I have also balanced to jobs across two media servers.

Does anyone have any insights or opinions as to how I may be able to speed up 
these jobs.

We found roughly a 2x performance increase using FlashBackup although I haven't 
benchmarked it in several years.  Not only that, but the CPU hit on the client 
is considerably reduced from walking the file systems.  64-bit clients really, 
really help.

One thing to watch out for is the maximum job on the client.  Because you're 
using virtual server names, you may end up running multiple jobs on the same 
physical server.  Although I've complained to Symantec many times about this, 
they have yet to give us any ability to control the number of jobs you can run. 
 What I do is dedicate a DSSU to the cluster for the large data volumes and set 
the limit to 1.  It ensures that only job runs in the cluster but my admins 
whine like you wouldn't believe if I kick off 2 jobs on the same node.  There's 
currently no way to ensure that only 1 job can run per node in your cluster.  
This is one of the reasons why I have claimed - and continue to claim - that 
NetBackup doesn't really support clusters.  It tolerates them but real cluster 
support isn't there yet.

   .../Ed
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Re: [Veritas-bu] NBU and Clustered MSCS fileserver, Flashbackup?

[Ed Wilts]

On Thu, Jul 30, 2009 at 3:14 PM, Spellacy, Sean wrote:

>
> I have recently added  to my job list a Fileserver cluster made up of four
> win2k3r2 machines with roughly 5TB of data on them, millions of files.
> As expected this takes a relative eternity to backup.
>
> I was hoping to use flashbackup to be able to pull them but I read in the
> documentation that flashbackup is not supported on clusters.
>
> Is this true? This does not work or this is not supported? Is anyone using
> flashbackup on win clusters?
>

It's absolutely false - it does work and we use it a lot on clusters with
far more than 5TB of data.

You need to create a snapshot volume and you MUST add this to the cluster
group with the data volume.  Then use the cluster virtual server name that
contains these volume to do the backup.

>
> So far I have broken these jobs down into multiple streams and that has
> bought me some ground, but I suspect the real issue here is the millions of
> files being parsed. I have also balanced to jobs across two media servers.
>
> Does anyone have any insights or opinions as to how I may be able to speed
> up these jobs.
>

We found roughly a 2x performance increase using FlashBackup although I
haven't benchmarked it in several years.  Not only that, but the CPU hit on
the client is considerably reduced from walking the file systems.  64-bit
clients really, really help.

One thing to watch out for is the maximum job on the client.  Because you're
using virtual server names, you may end up running multiple jobs on the same
physical server.  Although I've complained to Symantec many times about
this, they have yet to give us any ability to control the number of jobs you
can run.  What I do is dedicate a DSSU to the cluster for the large data
volumes and set the limit to 1.  It ensures that only job runs in the
cluster but my admins whine like you wouldn't believe if I kick off 2 jobs
on the same node.  There's currently no way to ensure that only 1 job can
run per node in your cluster.  This is one of the reasons why I have claimed
- and continue to claim - that NetBackup doesn't really support clusters.
It tolerates them but real cluster support isn't there yet.

   .../Ed
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Re: [Veritas-bu] NBU and Clustered MSCS fileserver, Flashbackup?

[Martin, Jonathan]

I asked this question a while back and someone responded that it does
work.  You need to create a small lun and use NTFS mapping to map
folders under that shard for the actual huge luns you want to back up.
Unfortunately I haven't had time to test this.  Might want to look in
the archives.
 
-Jonathan



From: veritas-bu-boun...@mailman.eng.auburn.edu
[mailto:veritas-bu-boun...@mailman.eng.auburn.edu] On Behalf Of
Spellacy, Sean
Sent: Thursday, July 30, 2009 4:14 PM
To: veritas-bu@mailman.eng.auburn.edu
Subject: [Veritas-bu] NBU and Clustered MSCS fileserver, Flashbackup?


Good day all 
I hope you might be able to provide some suggestions to my problem.
 
I have recently added  to my job list a Fileserver cluster made up of
four win2k3r2 machines with roughly 5TB of data on them, millions of
files.
As expected this takes a relative eternity to backup.
 
I was hoping to use flashbackup to be able to pull them but I read in
the documentation that flashbackup is not supported on clusters.
 
Is this true? This does not work or this is not supported? Is anyone
using flashbackup on win clusters?
 
So far I have broken these jobs down into multiple streams and that has
bought me some ground, but I suspect the real issue here is the millions
of files being parsed. I have also balanced to jobs across two media
servers.
 
Does anyone have any insights or opinions as to how I may be able to
speed up these jobs.
 
Thanks in advance
 
SSS
 
 
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