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Upgrading Netbackup DataCenter from 3.4 to 4.5 2
- Thread starter joerocket
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Yes, it is worth it. Particularly if you are a Windows shop. Unix folks will notice a lot of changes, but none more than the Windows interface on NT/2000.
Has anyone had any major issues with the upgrade?
I am running DataCenter 3.4.1 on a Solaris platform and
have all UNIX clients.
I've noticed that Veritas offers a 2-day upgrade class, so I have been reluctant to do the upgrade until I find out some more info on it.
Thanks... Brantley
I am running DataCenter 3.4.1 on a Solaris platform and
have all UNIX clients.
I've noticed that Veritas offers a 2-day upgrade class, so I have been reluctant to do the upgrade until I find out some more info on it.
Thanks... Brantley
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1
- #5
I am only just using Veritas and have migrated from Letato 5.5.4 to netbackup 4.5. I had a problem yesterday, on looking up the manual (not realising I'd printed off 3.2 admin guide) the fix was to use xbpadm. This has been discontinued in 4.5. So everything is GUI driven.
The calender schedule does not work. So we have to use the frequency based, which is not (IMHO) convenient. Apparently it's a bug, with no fix in the pipeline.
I'll let you know if I find anything else!!
The calender schedule does not work. So we have to use the frequency based, which is not (IMHO) convenient. Apparently it's a bug, with no fix in the pipeline.
I'll let you know if I find anything else!!
- Thread starter
- #7
has anyone done an upgrade from 3.4.1 to 4.5? We have received our upgrade package but have been reluctant to try the upgrade.. as someone above noted. if they are offering two day classes on an upgrade how simple can it be????
any experiences anyone could relate would be appreciated...
any experiences anyone could relate would be appreciated...
As promised, an update on our migration to 4.5.
A patch has now been released by Veritas that resolved the Calendar based schedule problem. It also fixed a problem with the Catalog backup that was giving an error code, even when successfull - I had a few palpitations over that one!!
After administering N.B 4.5 for a few months now, I am still not entirely convinced it's a better product than Legato 6.x but it has proven reliable; and from a buisness point of view - that's the most important factor.
As to the optional extras in 4.5 I've found that the NDMP clients back up well to NDMP dedicated drives.
For our regular (i.e. non-NDMP) backups we are using the drive sharing option, (as we have multiple media managers in our environment), and this is still causing problems. The drives are not being released by hosts after a backup, which causes problems with drive availability and consequently backup failures. This is still under investigation so I am not sure if it's a bug or a configuration issue. I will let you all know the outcome.
So after a lengthy post, IMHO 4.5 is a good thing don't be too afraid of the changes, it works and it's just a matter of getting comfortable with the GUI or the command line equivelent. Thumbs up from me.
A patch has now been released by Veritas that resolved the Calendar based schedule problem. It also fixed a problem with the Catalog backup that was giving an error code, even when successfull - I had a few palpitations over that one!!
After administering N.B 4.5 for a few months now, I am still not entirely convinced it's a better product than Legato 6.x but it has proven reliable; and from a buisness point of view - that's the most important factor.
As to the optional extras in 4.5 I've found that the NDMP clients back up well to NDMP dedicated drives.
For our regular (i.e. non-NDMP) backups we are using the drive sharing option, (as we have multiple media managers in our environment), and this is still causing problems. The drives are not being released by hosts after a backup, which causes problems with drive availability and consequently backup failures. This is still under investigation so I am not sure if it's a bug or a configuration issue. I will let you all know the outcome.
So after a lengthy post, IMHO 4.5 is a good thing don't be too afraid of the changes, it works and it's just a matter of getting comfortable with the GUI or the command line equivelent. Thumbs up from me.
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1
- #10
We are a mixed shop with 2 master servers (Solaris and 2000). Our Solaris master is for our internal network of over 250 servers (all flavors NT/2000, AIX, Solaris, Netware). Our external network is served by our 2000 Master. We migrated to 4.5 in July 2002 on our external side, since this is our smallest network of 25 servers. After playing around with it for a few months, we migrated our internal system to 4.5 (Decemeber 18, 2002). This has been a rewarding experience for us.
We had the 3.4 vault extension, but are now using the integrated Vault. This works a lot faster than the addon product. Additionally we use in-line tape duplication for our external master without problems.
The biggest gain I have seen is faster throughput on both backups and vaulting.
On a side note. The 4.5 catalog is now a binary catalog and consumes much less space. You can either convert your catalog now, or wait until images expire. All new images will be in binary. Since our catalog was 76 GB, we decided to convert the catalog and reduced the size to 56 GB. This may seem trivial, but it does reduce the time to backup your catalog.
There is another way to further reduce your catalog. This option has been around since at least 3.2 --- compressing your catalog. We decided that since most restore requests were for backups performed within a week, we could compress old catalog entries that were older than 7 days. The good is that it will dramaticially reduce the size of your catalog and catalog backup time. The bad is that whenever you search for data that is older than 7 days ago, that client's entry will be uncompressed. (sort of like zip and unzip).
When we did the compression, our catalog went from 56 GB down to 22 GB!:-D This is a tremendous reduction. Our catalog backup time is greatly reduced and our D/R catalog recovery time is also greatly reduced.
IMHO, NBU 4.5 is wel worth the effort to convert. Remember that you will loose your activity log.....
![[thumbsup]](/data/assets/smilies/thumbsup.gif "[thumbsup] [thumbsup]")
We had the 3.4 vault extension, but are now using the integrated Vault. This works a lot faster than the addon product. Additionally we use in-line tape duplication for our external master without problems.
The biggest gain I have seen is faster throughput on both backups and vaulting.
On a side note. The 4.5 catalog is now a binary catalog and consumes much less space. You can either convert your catalog now, or wait until images expire. All new images will be in binary. Since our catalog was 76 GB, we decided to convert the catalog and reduced the size to 56 GB. This may seem trivial, but it does reduce the time to backup your catalog.
There is another way to further reduce your catalog. This option has been around since at least 3.2 --- compressing your catalog. We decided that since most restore requests were for backups performed within a week, we could compress old catalog entries that were older than 7 days. The good is that it will dramaticially reduce the size of your catalog and catalog backup time. The bad is that whenever you search for data that is older than 7 days ago, that client's entry will be uncompressed. (sort of like zip and unzip).
When we did the compression, our catalog went from 56 GB down to 22 GB!:-D This is a tremendous reduction. Our catalog backup time is greatly reduced and our D/R catalog recovery time is also greatly reduced.
IMHO, NBU 4.5 is wel worth the effort to convert. Remember that you will loose your activity log.....
I have similar questions that are asked in this thread. I am about to upgrade our Netbackup Datacenter 3.4.1 to 4.5 and I'm having problems finding information/instructions on how to do this... Does anyone have best practices? I also need to put a project plan in place for my boss with some details...so if anyone can point me to some Veritas instructions or if anyone has any information from their own experiences I'd be very appreciative! Our environment is Win2K, only one master/media server...backs up a NAS (ndmp) also backs up our network NT/2000 servers... 2 drives dedicated to ndmp and 2 to the NT network servers...
Thank you in advance...
Thank you in advance...
whatiswrong
Vendor
Hi,
i'm quite new to the veritas environment. Is there any step by step guide on how to upgrade veritas from 3.4 to 4.5. ours is a mixed env of solaris 7,8; aix 4.3 and 2000. the master is however is on solaris 8. thanks
i'm quite new to the veritas environment. Is there any step by step guide on how to upgrade veritas from 3.4 to 4.5. ours is a mixed env of solaris 7,8; aix 4.3 and 2000. the master is however is on solaris 8. thanks
d3man:
The integrated vault in 4.5 just joins the two products together. Vaulting was previously an add-on from Veritas Professional Services. There were some shortcomings with this implementation, such things as a libray freezing. However, with the integration, everything works seamlessly.
Previoulsy, you had to cron the vault process or start it manually. With 4.5, you can add it as a policy (new type of policy in 4.5) and schedule the vaulting. Thus if you have more than one type of vault (say weekly, monthly, annually, and mid-week), you can create schedules for all of them as different policies.
In addition, the previous version required you to edit a config file and everything needed to be precise. Now, you can configure the vault through the GUI.
A really nice new feature of 4.5 Vault is that you can perform in-line media duplication (upto 10 copies). I have used it on a small backupsystem we have for our DMZ servers and it works very well. I am in the process of implementing a selective in-line tape duplication on our internal backup system (7 TB full backups).
In 4.5 Vault you can choose which reports you would like it to mail to whoever needs them and add a Subject Line. We are using 4 of the 10 reports and we mail them to our operations staff, our D/R staff and backup admin.
If you have any other questions pleae feel free to contact me.
The integrated vault in 4.5 just joins the two products together. Vaulting was previously an add-on from Veritas Professional Services. There were some shortcomings with this implementation, such things as a libray freezing. However, with the integration, everything works seamlessly.
Previoulsy, you had to cron the vault process or start it manually. With 4.5, you can add it as a policy (new type of policy in 4.5) and schedule the vaulting. Thus if you have more than one type of vault (say weekly, monthly, annually, and mid-week), you can create schedules for all of them as different policies.
In addition, the previous version required you to edit a config file and everything needed to be precise. Now, you can configure the vault through the GUI.
A really nice new feature of 4.5 Vault is that you can perform in-line media duplication (upto 10 copies). I have used it on a small backupsystem we have for our DMZ servers and it works very well. I am in the process of implementing a selective in-line tape duplication on our internal backup system (7 TB full backups).
In 4.5 Vault you can choose which reports you would like it to mail to whoever needs them and add a Subject Line. We are using 4 of the 10 reports and we mail them to our operations staff, our D/R staff and backup admin.
If you have any other questions pleae feel free to contact me.
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