Legato upgrade from 6.1.2 to 7.1.2

[gjrono]

Hi!

I'm planing a upgrade from Legato 6.1.2 to 7.1.2

I'm a newbie to Legato and want to know how to do this? A brief explanation of the steps would be fine.

Also any who know if there is some special problems/considerations with such a upgrade.

Regards
Gjermund

 

[605]

Start with a good backup of the NW server (index and bootstrap). This will allow you to go back when you really have to.

The procedure itself is simple - just delete the old software (NW will leave all databases behind) and install the new version.

There is a license issue - you need to purchase an "Update enabler" which you must install. Let me suggest you start with that on 6.1.2 as this will shoe that the license code is valid and you made no error entering it. Without an update license, the server will be disabled immediately and you can only recover.

 

[gjrono]

Hello!

And thanks for the information.

A couple more questions to clarify,

1 I register the Update enabler code first in 6.1.2?
2 Do i have to update all clients to 7.1.2 at the same time?
3 When you say delete, this means Uninstall?

Thanks in advance.

Regards
Gjermund

 

[605]

1. It actually does not matter. However, this is prefered as you will know prior to the installation whether the code is valid. And your server will not disable.

2. No.

3. Yes

 

[Chacalinc]

just in case, you can save the /nsr/mm and /nsr/res folders...

/nsr/index can be rebuild with "nsrck -L7

 

[gjrono]

Hello!

And thanks for all the good information.

I have performed the upgrade for almost all my servers.

But now i have a little concerne about my mailserver.

I have a windows 2000 mail server, running exchange 5.5. On this i have networker 6.1.2 installed and Networker User for Exchange Server Version 2.0 Patch 5. (It is something special about mailservers???????)

How do i upgrade this server. Can i install networker 7.1.2 and leave the exhange moduel as it is? Or would installing 7.1.2 require upgrade of Exchange module as vel.

Thanks in advance
Regards
Gjermund

 

[605]

Although it would be a good idea to also install the latest database module, both should work independently.

 

[gjrono]

Hello again!

Now i have some questions regarding behaviour of the backup after upgrading to 7.1.2

1. The backup requires more tape space after upgrade from 6.1.2. Previous i used app 6 full SDLT tapes for my full wekeend backup. With 7.1.2 it uses 7 full SDLT tapes. Why?

2. It seems the backup is more critical to tapemedium. I have experienced tapes get full only when written 90 Mb 500Mb and 77 Gb, Not all tapes but some. Normaly it is somewhere betvenn 150 GB and 200 GB of written data.

3. It seems that my cloning of tapes have become slower, Writes at 500-4000 KB/s. Normaly it should have bee 15 Mb/s. Any who know whats causing this?

I now know i should have investigatet a little more before upgrading a system working.

Regards

Gjermund

 

[605]

There are two possibilities:

NW 7 introduced a new way to control the devices, called CDI (Common Device Interface) which is used by default. You may still use the old method. To do that, change the device parameter "CDI" from "SCSI commands" to "not used".

Especially if you used new tapes, this may de obvious. Whenever NW can not recover from consecutive write errors, he will expect bad media and marks it as full. This prevents further usage.

 

[Royster42]

We upgraded several 6.1.2 servers to 7.1.1 first. We then moved one to 7.1.2 and had no end of problems with it. I would suggest you may try 7.1.1 and see if that solves your problem.

Also we did some by uninstalling the previous version and then installing the new version and others we did by just running the exe and upgrading. In each case we deleted the sutochangers and devices beforehand and then reinstalled them later. The only time we didn't we had a similar problem to yours. You may want to try deleting your device and jbconfiging it back in.

 

[gjrono]

Hello!

The problems continue.

I have turned off the CDI

I have delete my autochanger and reconfigured it back with jbconfig.

The full backup tonight is the same nightmare as last weekend. Writing only few MB's of data some of the tapes.

Legato also tries to automatic relable expired tapes not in my librare even if empty tapes in library are available for this backup pool.

Mounting tapes manually to the device hangs.

The strange thing is that some of my other groups during the weekend, are runing fine. This weekend full backups, are cloning groups. Could this bee the problem. And how.

Do i have to start tinkning of going back to 6.1.2 We realy need this full wekend backups and clones to put in the safe.

Any ideas?

Regards
Gjermund

 

[milanvo]

Hi Gjermund,

problem with marking tapes full so early is sometimes related to device problem.

There is possibility that new Networker version is more sensitive to errors or drivers compatibility.

You backup server is on Windows ?

Please check Windows System Eventlog for errors (like SCSI timeouts, tape bad blocks etc.), service pack version, try latest drivers and firmware for SCSI adapter and tape devices.

 

[gjrono]

Hi again

New problem with my tapes.

We found out that the problem with marking tapes before pyshicaly full. Was zoning in our san, we have SDLT library in SAN solution.

But now when i want tom reuse the tapes marked full to early. It seems that legato only writes the same ammount of MB/Gb of data as marked (Wrong)

Any have any ide what causes this?

Is the tape pysicaly marked to only be ablo to contain this amount of data?

Are there any way to se such information? remove it?

Please help me. Thougt i would be able to use thes tapes fully again, after marked wrong.

Regards

Gjermund

 

[605]

No tape is is ever marked to accept only a certain amount of data. It will always be filled to the end ... if possible. This is indepent from any software.

However, NetWorker writes until it can not recover from a hard error. If this is true, it will of course fail again at the same location. You should see the same problem with any other software.