Backing up Win MSCS on SAN 1

[FrogEater]

Hello,

Currently busy deploying SAN & MSCS, I'm getting troubles/question on how to handle ArcServe

I can choose to Install Arcserve as a clustered resource, but, according to the doc, the IP & Network name of the cluster itself have to be moved out from the cluster, and even setup to be dependent from external resources. Not something I like. On top of it, I do not need Arcserve to be clustered. It seemed to work fine, however, the SAN option has had some problem between node & cluster names

I can now choose to have Arcserve installed on both node, then I can access each node, but of course can't see the Cluster itself (and its share disks) from the ArcServe Gui. As it's not possible to know which node will own the ressource at backup time, I will not have a good rate of error free backup
I can eventually use, from the cluster nodes, the backup through the share, but I'm not sure this would be the best.

Any experience of you guys about installing Arcserve + SAN option on a MSCS will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Chris

 

[vschumpy]

If you don't need to install it in cluster mode don't - just install it to a local disk in the long run it is less problematic IMO.

The problem with the nodes not being seen correctly in the san config utility has come up before and should be addressed in latest service packs - depends really on what version you are running.

Try adding the virtual node name as the machine name in the backup GUI instead of the physical node names and use computername resolution tickbox in the GUI - this will however tie the backup if it is over the wire to whatever IP addy you have bound to the name you specify.

 

[FrogEater]

vschumpy,

Once I have installed on each node, I guess I still have to create the cluster Group & resource ?
If it is the case, can I create a new IP & Network resource to not use the Cluster ones ?

Version to be installed will be Brighstor 11.5 SP1 + Device Patch 6 (while I was running lately test on 11.5SP1 only).

Hope my questions are not silly, I've been in the CA docs for a while and I'm getting slightly confused.
Thanks,
Chris

 

[vschumpy]

You don't have to create or assign any cluster resources if you haven't installed it in cluster mode, it runs just like 2 separate host server installs. If you are using it on a SAN make sure that you don't have either of the cluster servers as the SAN Primary. That way it one of the cluster nodes does go down that it doesn't affect the other server's backup.

If you are using both servers in the SAN installation, then there really should be no concept of backing up over the network, you should back up each server as a local node, therefore making backup over the fibre and not over the network. The local host server name should automatically be in the backup manager gui when you go to create a backup job. Anything other than a local backup on a SAN connected server goes over the network.

 

[vschumpy]

Perhaps I should explain a little further, when doing a local backup in this way you will only see the cluster resources on the active node. So, unless you are doing a full server backup of everything (full-green checkbox at machine level), you will have to fail over the cluster to the other node when you want to setup the second server.

If you have a full green checkbox at machine level in your backup jobs it will automatically enumerate the available drives each time the backup job is run.

 

[FrogEater]

You just answered the question I was trying to figure out before coming back to you

So to summarize:
- Install a "stand-alone" arcserve on each node (as SAN distributed servers)
- Make sure than backup include the full node
- The cluster shared disks will be backed up as local disk of the server owning then at backup time.

-> Arcserve will not see at all the Virtual Network name of my cluster ever.

Thanks a lot !
Chris

 

[vschumpy]

That's pretty much it - you can force it to see the virtual node name if you want, but you'll have to add the node name manually in the backup GUI, and as I said before that would mean a backup over the network rather than over the SAN.