Hi -

I'm planning our upgrade to 4.5 and am hoping to set things up better as
part of the process.  (I had no say in the initial setup and I see some
serious potential problems with the cluster/backup interaction.)  2 of the
servers we back up are in a VCS cluster.  Unfortunately, the 2 servers are
not identical, because we run our test/training software on one (and only
one) server and shut it down if the production software fails over, then
fail production back when the other server comes back up.  (No, that's not
negotiable.)  These servers are also media servers.  Currently, the NBU
installation ignores the fact that the 2 servers are clustered, other than
having the mount points for the production data on both hosts file lists.
As I understand from VCS class, the VCS netbackup agent is for the master
server, not media servers and has no knowledge of clients (which is my real
concern, since I can set up the backups to use either media server.)  (I'm
fairly certain we wouldn't be able to buy the agent anytime soon anyway.)
I'm not real knowlegeable with either NBU or VCS architecting and so I'm
hoping you can help me find potential problems before they bite me but I
think what I want to do is something like the following:

- the "prod" media server should be part of the cluster and fail over just
like the prod disks do (both the disks and the robot are SAN attached.)
- the VCS virtual hostname/ip address for the production instance should be
used in NetBackup, instead of the server that ideally runs the production
instance.
- the "train" media server could probably just be setup on that host and VCS
doesn't even have to know about it.

Is this going to work so far?
Any gotchas?
What am I missing?

Thanks,

Julie

Julie L Baumler, SCNA
Sr Systems Administrator
Multnomah County IT
503-988-3749 x26909