Thank you, thank you, thank you, that is a lot of very useful insight and I'm glad I finally asked.

 

One more question for clarification. In reference to "I guess I'm not sure what you mean by "enable VSS on all volumes of the client". If that statement isn't obvious, then I'm already beginning to panic thinking I've done something wrong. I've been buried up to my eyeballs in NetBackup for so long that my basic Windows skills are just about obsolete.  But what I was referring to is for each client on which I want to use VSS, I go into Windows Explorer, right click on a volume (Y: drive for example) and I Enable VSS and then configure the schedule for the shadow copy. In my case, I delete the two default schedules and I create a "Once" schedule for five years down the road.  By that time the hardware will have been replaced so I don't have to worry about VSS copies eating up disk space unnecessarily.  The only copies being made are during the backups; or so I assume. Is this not correct?  I thought that by default, VSS was not enabled on a Win2k3 server and had to be manually enabled and then configured for size, schedule and location of the file.  I tried to ask a Symantec Engineer once during an open ticket for something else but he told me to ask Microsoft.

 

Is there a better way?

 

Thanks

randy

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Rosenkoetter, Gabriel [mailto:Gabriel.Rosenkoetter AT radian DOT biz]
Sent: Tuesday, April 08, 2008 2:48 PM
To: Randy Samora; veritas-bu AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
Subject: RE: [Veritas-bu] Clarification About Open File Backups

 

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