Hi Jonathan
>From a "DR" point, I exchange my catalog tapes every 2 days, take a snapshot
>of the RAID5+Hot Spare catalog onto a SAN disk, and as an extra contingency,
>store a tape off into a fireproof safe.
Its not the recovery that is my real problem - its just that "extra" hardware
layer between NetBackup and the catalog that I guess concerns me a little (not
alot, but its in the back of my mind).
Not saying SAN is bad, because we use them for the TB's of Data we do weekly,
and they do a good job.
But from a Master Backup situation, I just like to keep things "all together"
as close as possible. Without anything being a possible "risk".
Again, must stress I am not saying SAN is bad (as it has been in use for years
and not seen a major disaster with it), but trying to look at keeping the
"Catalog" backup away from the "SAN" Production environemnt, where all data for
production and critical servers reside.
Simon
________________________________
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Martin, Jonathan
Sent: Tuesday, May 13, 2008 1:42 PM
To: veritas-bu@mailman.eng.auburn.edu
Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] Best Practice: Location of the NetBackup Catalog
My original environment had my catalog on a 10K SAS Raid-1. This worked for
our 30TB a week, but when running scripts that queried the catalog it took
forever. I upgraded the catalog to a dedicated Raid-5 and in one case a script
I would run went from an hour + to less than 10 minutes. From my perspective
the I/O increase of putting the catalog on some sort of multi-disk raid is
definitely worth it. As far as redundancy is concerned I robocopy my catalog
to DR every few hours. It won't be "up to the minute" but my RPO is pretty
flexible in this regard. If you are REALLY worried about your catalog going
bad, why not consider some sort of snapshotting technology? Alternately, how
about a Raid-10 across multiple shelves? Or if you are really desperate, a
software mirror? I've (thankfully) never had a san shelf go bad. (BAD Storage
Admin!) So I'm not as leery personally and consider our SAN about as high
quality as storage gets around here.
-Jonathan
________________________________
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of WEAVER, Simon
(external)
Sent: Tuesday, May 13, 2008 6:11 AM
To: Jeff Lightner; veritas-bu@mailman.eng.auburn.edu
Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] Best Practice: Location of the NetBackup Catalog
Jeff
I am struggling to find anything that talks about the location or best DR
practice of NBU. In the Sys Admin guide, the only reference I see about the
catalog is that the binary catalog is more sensitive to the location of the
catalog (see page 203 in 5.1 guide). It mentions that storing the catalog on a
remote file system may have critical performance issues for catalog abckups.
and that NetBackup does not support saving catalogs to a remote file system
such as NFS or CIFS.
>From a DR point of view, I would like to see the NetBackup system and catalog
>"outside" the control of any production SAN environment. all eggs in one
>basket comes to mind, and if something is going to go bang, you do not want
>your NetBackup environment inside this SAN. (If poss).
I have always stored the Data on a RAID set with a hot spare each and
everytime. If I want to recover production systems attached to a SAN due to a
shelf failure, I would rather be in a position and say "Hey no problem, we can
do that", rather than say "sorry, got to recover my catalogs from a disk that
is not presented from the SAN anymore". Obviously that is worse case scenario,
and I apprecaite that.
Murphy's Law = If anything can go wrong, it will :-)
Anyone else able to share their views on their current Catalog environment?
Simon
________________________________
From: Jeff Lightner [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Monday, May 12, 2008 6:03 PM
To: WEAVER, Simon (external); veritas-bu@mailman.eng.auburn.edu
Subject: RE: [Veritas-bu] Best Practice: Location of the NetBackup Catalog
We've stored our NBU on SAN attached storage since inception.
So long as you're doing catalog/database backups any failure whether on
internal drives or on SAN drives can be recovered from.
Since we also have our tape drives accesses via SAN from the master and
multiple media servers it seems there would be a risk to backups if the SAN
failed completely.
Having a complete SAN failure is something I've not seen in over 3 ½ years here
or at various other jobs where we had SAN. I suspect your issue at the
previous job was more due to poor design of the infrastructure than to any
inherent risk of using SAN vs. Internal storage.
Even if it IS on internal storage you do risk the server itself melting down
and with RAID 5 loss of two drives at the same time (rare but HAS been seen by
me in that same 3 ½ year period) would lose your catalogs/database just like
losing the SAN would. Additionally with a SAN you can (and should) have
multiple paths to the data meaning loss of a single controller doesn't blow you
out of the water whereas internal RAID 5 is almost always on a single
controller.
Finally in most environments where SANs are in place the raison d'etre for the
SAN was not the backup solution but rather large disk storage needs for running
environments. In the unlikely event of a full SAN failure I suspect the main
issue would be your loss of those environments rather than the backup solution
though of course losing the backup solution means you're delayed in trying to
bring up the rest of the environments. However, here again valid
catalog/database backups occurring on a regular basis is the way around this -
not eliminating the SAN.
You might want to have a look at NBU Disaster Recovery planning guidelines for
more details as it sounds as if your prior employer was ill prepared for such a
loss.
________________________________
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of WEAVER, Simon
(external)
Sent: Monday, May 12, 2008 11:13 AM
To: veritas-bu@mailman.eng.auburn.edu
Subject: [Veritas-bu] Best Practice: Location of the NetBackup Catalog
All,
Just a general query on the best practice for the location of the NetBackup
catalog (Its DB, images, ect).
When you install NBU on a Server, the location can be accepted as the "default"
or you can customise the installation and choose an alternative location (ie:
Spare drive on local server, SAN attached drive, ect).
Presently, I have NetBackup and the catalog installed locally, on RAID5 set,
hot swappable.
My question is this: Is there a best practice for the location of the Catalog?
For example, SAN attached disk? I sort of feel uncomfortable with this for
several reasons:
1) If you lose SAN connectivity (due to a major disaster or failure) the
catalog has gone
2) NetBackup and the OS relies on that disk being available constantly
Being stored locally, means the Server and its application (including the
catalog) goes with it, and does not rely on an extra layer of hardware for the
catalog to be available.
I think my concerns come from a previous environment where the catalog was
stored on a SAN, and was totally destroyed and unrecoverable, which meant a
complete import of hundreds of tapes.
If anyone has any feedback on this, would like to hear the pro's and con's to
storage off the physical server itself. I have always had the catalog locally
stored.
Thanks, Simon
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