I'm doing
some project planning on a potential move from AIX for my master media server
to Windows. The current version I'm running is 5.1 MP7 on the AIX
box. I migrated from Windows about 5 years ago on a 3.x or 4.x sever. I
called Symantec and asked if this could be done and they said no - the catalogs
are not compatible.
This is only partially true - the catalogs are not compatible. However, it can be done. It's just not a part of the product.
This isn't quite accurate. What Symantec won't support is the actual migration itself. If you break it, you get to keep both pieces. However, if you successfully migrate to another platform, they will fully support you after that. We migrated from Windows to Solaris (back on 3.4) and I can tell you without a doubt that we are currently fully supported by Symantec.
How fair is
that? Over 10 years of us using Netbackup to backup 200 clients, oodles
of database licenses … so we've invested at least half a million
dollars in licensing fees over the years and now we need to pay Symantec to
migrate the catalog for us and if we do it ourselves it will no longer be
supported?
It's not just the catalog. It's the media database too. If you feel you're a large enough customer, feel free to contact your sales rep and see if he can arrange for free or reduced-cost consulting your way.
If you know what you're doing, or can figure out how to do the migration, go right ahead. You should, obviously, have a backout plan, if your migration is not successful. There have been multiple hints posted here from people who have done it. Note, however, that the instructions change from release to release. I expect that it will be easier to do under 5.1 than it will be under 6.0 - not just because more people have done it, but also because you don't have the new EMM database to worry about.
It will certainly be easier if you can keep the source and target host names identical - it will be less work. Watch for line breaks carefully - they'll make or break your migration - and some of the standard Unix tools (dos2unix, unix2dos) won't work on files >2GB. Some files need conversion and some don't.
