The following is my understanding, but I don't promise I'm Right about
it. :^>
At Tuesday, April 08, 2008 10:08 AM, Randy Samora
[mailto:Randy.Samora AT stewart DOT com] wrote:
> 1. If I want to start using VSS on my old clients, I know I need
> to enable VSS on the client itself but what happens at the Master?
> Do I check the Open File Backups for that client and select VSS
> instead of VSP?
I don't believe that there is anything specific one needs to do on the
client itself. You need to explicitly select VSS instead of VSP, bearing
in mind that VSP only works with WindowsNET and newer clients (ie,
versions of Windows that provide the Volume Shadow Copy Service). In
particular, Win2k does not while Win2k3 does.
I'm not sure what happens if you tell a client that can't do VSS to do
so... I don't believe that it will fall back to VSP, I believe that it
will either fail with a 156 or (if so configured in the client DB)
disable snapshots (and open file backups) and proceed.
> 2. What is the default behavior? If I deleted all of the clients
> from the Client Attributes tab of the Master Server properties,
> what would occur on those clients in regards to open file backups?
The default for all Windows clients is WOFB enabled, use VSP, fail (with
a 156) if the snapshot fails.
(So, imho, you should have been modifying the client DB all along to
flip the "if snapshot fails" bit.)
> 3. If I bring a new client on line with the default install,
> does it do open file backups by default?
Yes, but it will use VSP, which will fail if the client host hasn't been
rebooted after the client software was installed to enable the VSP
module.
> It appears that for each client I want to use open file backups, I
> have to add the client to the Master Server properties and then
> configure the open file options. That.s easy to do but I.ve always
> had doubts because it doesn.t seem logical.
It doesn't seem logical because the GUI design is boneheaded.
What you are really doing with that pointy-clicky bit is creating (or
modifying, if it already existed) a file whose name matches the client
under /usr/openv/netbackup/db/client (yes, even under 6.5 where
"everything but images" is supposedly in DB form). You do the same thing
on the command line with the bpclient command. (Well, that's what you're
doing on Unix masters. I don't really know (or care, honestly) where
Windows masters servers store the same data.)
It's in the Master section of the GUI's host properties because it
modifies settings on the master, which is obviously backward engineered
thinking, but now that everybody's used to finding it there, it probably
won't change. The Clients section of that same tree strictly modifies
settings that are stored on the client host, but these directives are
something that bpbrm needs to know when it goes and tells the client to
start generating backup streams, so it's not configuration that
logically belongs on the client.
> Today, when I add a new client, I enable VSS on all volumes of the
> client, add the client to the Master Server properties, Enable Open
> File Backups is checked and I configure the options.
I guess I'm not sure what you mean by "enable VSS on all volumes of the
client". I don't think I do anything that resembles that. Are you
talking about the option to perform snapshot backups in the Policy
configuration? Although that can use VSS or VSP, it's not the same thing
as WOFB. If not that, where's the configuration you're describing?
I trust someone will correct me if I'm wrong about any of the above.
(Except the whole Master host properties thing. That really is just
stupid. ;^>)
--
gabriel rosenkoetter
Radian Group Inc, Unix/Linux/VMware Sysadmin / Backup & Recovery
gabriel.rosenkoetter AT radian DOT biz, 215 231 1556
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