Guys we have a strange upgrade predicament i could do with running by 
the scene. I am splitting this into 2 threads to find pros/cons of 2 
solutions im thinking about. Also to try and keep the mail shorter.

Current Situation :-

Sun E220R (running Solaris 8) Netbackup Server with attached L1000 tape 
unit + 4 x DLT drives. Netbackup 5.0MP7.
Hardware is beyond old but customer is reluctant to upgrade. We have 
told them we cannot support the L1000 unit and their backups are at 
risk. It has gone EOSL and parts are increasingly hard to source.

The initial proposal is to replace with an SL24 tape unit and LTO3 drives.

Problem :-

We are requesting a SCSI Ultra320 HBA to install and attach the new SL24 
unit onto. Problem is the card is not compatible with the Solaris 8 
(release 06/00) which is installed.  We therefore need to upgrade 
solaris. Disk space is very limited (2 x internal 18gig disks raid 1) 
and doing an OS upgrade wouldn't leave us with much of a regression path.

Proposal 2.

(proposal 1 discussed in previous thread). The second option i was 
considering of putting to the customer was to buy a new server all 
together and get new netbackup licenses. This is going to cost more but 
will leave them in a better position for the future, plus should 
minimise man time in doing some steps mentioned in proposal 1.

I would install new OS and SL24 onto a new server and install Netbackup 
6.x (to be decided). The question i have is how do i still restore older 
backups? We could install this server in line with the existing server 
(L1000 connected) but then i would have 2 netbackup master servers.

Questions:

Is there any way to downgrade an existing Master to a Media server. Then 
transfer the catalogues from that media server to the new master server 
i am building?
Once done could i then duplicate some older L1000 tapes over the network 
to the SL24 connected to the new master or would i have to directly 
attach the L1000 to the new server and create it as a new storage unit 
calling it the same name as before?
Any other thoughts how i could get the catalogue info from an older 
server onto a newer one to give me ability to duplicate?

One pro of this system is we could restore older images using the older 
server while the new server took the job of doing backups from now on.

Thoughts?

Cheers
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