Veritas-bu

[Veritas-bu] Top 10 Things I Hate About NetBackup

2002-01-24 08:44:23
Subject: [Veritas-bu] Top 10 Things I Hate About NetBackup
From: BobMet AT netinfosystems DOT net (Metcalf, Bob)
Date: Thu, 24 Jan 2002 08:44:23 -0500
Here's my gripe....

How about a pathc-level Matrix on the bloody
web site?  How hard is this:

Solaris7 server,  NBpatchXXX, NBpatchYYY
NT4SP6 server,  NBpatchHHH, NBpatchTTT

Is there anybody out there that can claim
to actually make sense of the current page?

-----Original Message-----
From: Miriam Ben-Haim [mailto:miriam AT techunix.technion.ac DOT il]
Sent: Thursday, January 24, 2002 2:55 AM
To: Fabbro, Andrew P
Cc: veritas-bu AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] Top 10 Things I Hate About NetBackup




I would add:

 full backup should not expire as long as other backups depending on
 it are not expired, even if its original expiration date arrived.

and

 update and install clients' software with ssh rather than rsh.



        Miriam


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 Miriam Ben-Haim                 E-mail: miriam AT technion.ac DOT il
 Unix Systems                    Phone : +972-4-8292177
 Taub Computer Center            Fax   : +972-4-8236212
 Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa 32000, ISRAEL

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


On Wed, 23 Jan 2002, Fabbro, Andrew P wrote:

>Entertaining myself here at lunch, I present, in no particular order...
>
>10. Can't set exclude lists at the master, only at the client.  Very silly.
>I would like to exclude, say, /tmp or WIN386.SWP on all clients in a class
>but I can't...instead, I have to make sure the exclude file is correct on
>each client.  What a nightmare for large environments.  Some admin adds a
>client (that I may not have access to check his setup) and doesn't set his
>exclude list properly.  Now I'm chewing tapes for nothing, or worse, not
>backing up something he needs.  What was the thinking here?  Particularly
>since the raw Class database shows an Exclude field ;)
>
>9. "Use any available media server" doesn't round-robin.  Strange but true
-
>it works the list of media servers *alphabetically*.  If you have multiple
>media servers, then NetBackup will attempt to use all of the drives on #1,
>then go on to #2, etc.  If one of the drives in #1 becomes free, then it'll
>use it before going back to #2.  So if you have multiple media servers and
>want to distribute the load, it's difficult to do so because your full
tapes
>will naturally accumulate in the first (alphabetically speaking) storage
>unit.
>
>8. Can't restart just one stream.  If a single stream fails, you have to
>rerun the whole backup job.  Blech.  Why can't I restart just that one
>stream?
>
>7. The X-windows backup/restore GUI doesn't have a "preview media required"
>feature for a restore.  The Java backup/restore GUI doesn't show you a list
>of the backup images.  I wish there was one that did both ;)
>
>6. bpinject sucks.  I think bpinject is only packaged with bpvault.  The
>design is really amazingly bad.  The idea is that you can type "bpinject 2"
>and it'll dump the cap from robot 2 into the robot.  However, if that robot
>is on another machine, then you need to have root-level .rhosts access to
>it.  Oh sure, let me rewrite our site security policy so I can insert tapes
>- har!  This is a particularly bad design because you can use Netbackup's
>vmchange to insert the tapes through NetBackup.  The only reason you need
>.rhost access is to query the robot - I'm opening my whole system up just
so
>you can query the robot!?!?
>
>A better solution is simple:
>
>       - write a service on the media server that runs out of inetd that
>reports the status of the robot.  Takes
>       about 100 lines of perl.
>       - when the bpinject script needs to know what the status of the
>robot is, it can connect to this service
>       and query the status of the robot, then use vmchange (vmadd, etc.)
>to insert tapes.
>
>5. jnbSA sends the root password in the clear.  Come on people, this is
2002
>- how hard would it be to encrypt this?
>
>4. Frequency for hours, days, and weeks...but not months!  How can I do
once
>a month?  I can do every 4 weeks, but that doesn't really work because
>there's an extra week every quarter.
>
>3. Stupid bug - put in a path like "/somewhere/someplace/blah   ".  Note
the
>blanks.  Now run a coverage report.  Note that this is reported as
>"UNCOVERED".  Sheesh.  Also, if you put "C:" in a file list, you'll get
only
>the "Veritas" folder on C:.  If you put "C:\", though, you get everything.
>
>2.  Archive doesn't make two copies, only one.  Considering that you're
>blowing the data away from disk, I'd feel better if it was written to two
>tapes, but NetBackup only does one.  I wish this was configurable.
>
>1. It's still better than any other product on the market.
>
>
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>


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