[Networker] Migrating from Networker to Commvault galaxy

We're looking into a good way of migrating our existing clients into acommvault galaxy based backup system. I know this is semi-offtopic butthere are some things that directly touch how things used to work innetworker, and I'd like to get some experience on how to design a similarsystem, in the best way possible, in commvault galaxy instead.


Today we have the following design in networker:

Clients are associated with groups. All clients in the same group have acommon schedule and a common browse/retention period. When jobs arestarted is decided by the group start time. The pool selection is based onwhat group is running. Clients may have more than one instance, and isthen put in different groups in order to separate saves with a differentbrowse/retention period and/or pool selection. Pools are divided by whatbrowse/retention period savesets have that are written to them, andsometimes also on what media type they are (for instance, disk or tape).Some groups use dedicated pools for that group only.

What we want to do is do something similar with commvault. Since mediaselection, browse/retention and so on works a bit different in commvault,I'd like to know what the best way of doing something similar should be.

I'm thinking that the storage policy of each client should be based oncommon bulding blocks, like getting clients with similar schedulingpolicies to use the same storage policy. Then the schedule policy would besomething similar to the group terminology in networker, which means thatit decides when clients that are associated with it start, whatbrowse/retention policy should be used, and how the actual schedule lookslike. So the schedule policy would be unique for each previous networkergroup.

Also, it would be good to know of any pitfalls/quirks that a formernetworker admin may run into.

There are also some other non-networker related questions that I thoughtI'd mention here anyway:

* Name resolution - it is clear that the client needs to be able toresolve the hostname of the commserve and any media agent servers. Butdoes the commserve or media agent(s) need to be able to resolve theclient, if the client is defined by IP as the hostname? As I understandit, the name used in commvault is not the actual hostname, but is definedseparately under the client configuration.

* Firewall support - the ports that the commserve is listening to areblocked by the windows firewall (if enabled) in windows server 2008. Isthere any way that the commserve can enable the firewall to let legittraffic pass automaticaly?

* Client installation and policy association - per default, wheninstalling clients, they need to be able to reach the commserve when thesoftware is installed. As I understand it, it is possible to do offlineinstallations of clients, but its not supported on all OSes. What I wouldlike is that the software can be installed, but no configuration should beable to be configured from the client directly, which means that it shouldnot be possible to select a storage or a schedule policy from the client.Also, it would be good if the administrator of the commserve needs toactivate the client before it can do much of anything. Is that possible?

All other useful input is ofcourse also appreciated. Reply on or off-list,depending on what you think is appropriate. :)


//Oscar

To sign off this list, send email to listserv AT listserv.temple DOT edu and type 
"signoff networker" in the body of the email. Please write to networker-request 
AT listserv.temple DOT edu if you have any problems with this list. You can access the 
archives at http://listserv.temple.edu/archives/networker.html or
via RSS at http://listserv.temple.edu/cgi-bin/wa?RSS&L=NETWORKER