Domink,

 

The problem with exclude lists is that if you start having a different exclude list for each server, it quickly becomes a nightmare keeping those lists current and up to date.  Also, because ALL_LOCAL_DRIVES doesn’t recognize the ZFS filesystems, the only way to have them included was to start listing the mountpoints in the backup selections tab of the policy.  We tried looking at include lists also but those only work for individual files, not whole directories.

 

This brought us to our workaround where we had to specify every possible zfs mountpoint in the backup policy and then make sure that each of those directories existed on every server (to avoid the 71’s).  That has worked like a charm over the weekend so will have to do until there is a release of NBU which includes ZFS under the ALL_LOCAL_DRIVES backup selection

 

Thanks

 

Mark Glazerman

Desk: 314-889-8282

Cell: 618-520-3401

P please don't print this e-mail unless you really need to

 

 

You couldn't use exclude lists ???

"Mark Glazerman" <Mark.Glazerman AT spartech DOT com> Sent by: veritas-bu-bounces AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu 01/08/2008 11:34 PM

To <Veritas-bu AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu> cc Subject [Veritas-bu] ZFS Filesystem Backups - Tips and tricks

Incase anyone is considering implementing any ZFS in their environment which they want to back up using NetBackup we found out yesterday that ALL_LOCAL_DRIVES as the backup selection does NOT cover ZFS filesystems.  
 
We have a number of Sun boxes which have various test and development oracle instances which are housed inside ZFS file systems.  We blew away one of these test instances the other day (after doing a full OS backup and the required RMAN backups) but when we went to restore the data from the ZFS filesystems, NBU didn’t have anything under the uppermost directory.  A quick check of other systems with ZFS showed the same issue.We spent the better part of 2 days playing around with the include_list’s and exclude_list’s but nothing worked.
 
In order to backup ZFS file systems you must explicitly add the ZFS directories into the backup selections of the backup policy.  This “fix” was also confirmed by Symantec support who were also happy to tell me that ZFS isn’t officially supported by NBU yet.
 
This on its own should work great if you have a single policy backing up a single server with all it’s ZFS under the same parent directory.  However, if like us, you have a backup policy which backs up multiple servers, each with their own uniquely named ZFS file systems, you need to get a bit creative.  
 
The policy in question backs up 15 Sun boxes  with a total of 6 differently named ZFS file systems spread amongst them.  If you just list the file systems in the backup selections, NBU looks for each of those different filesystems on each server and spits out an error code 71 (None of the files in the file list exist) for every directory it can’t find.  The only way we could work out to avoid these errors (and there were a lot of them) was to create every missing directory on every server and then touch a tiny file inside each of these directories.  Now when the policy runs, it sees each directory (as listed in the backup selection) on each server and doesn’t moan about anything.  Perhaps not the neatest of fixes but it works.
 
Apologies for the wordy post, just thought I’d put this info out there in case anyone else is moving towards ZFS.
 
Mark Glazerman
Enterprise Storage Administrator
Spartech Corporation
Desk: 314-889-8282
Fax: 314-854-8282
Cell: 618-520-3401
mark.glazerman AT spartech DOT com
http://www.spartech.com
P please don't print this e-mail unless you really need to
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