Greetings --

I am planning to upgrade the hardware and NetBackup software in the
near future and I'm writing for advice.

My current backup enterprise consists of the following:

  A NetBackup Master and a NetBackup Media server both of which are Sun E450's
  running Solaris 8 and each having 2 Qualstar libraries with 6 AIT2 tapedrives
  for a total of 24 AIT2 tapedrives.  Currently we are running
  NB45FP5.

The new  backup enterprise will consist of the following.

  A single NetBackup server on a Sun V240 running Solaris 9 having
  a 3-drive LTO2 tape library and a 3TB storage array for staging backups.
  I plan on upgrading to NetBackup 5.1 or 5.1.1 and hope to use its facility for
  staging backups.

Since I am licensed for 2 NetBackup servers and, since I will need
to keep AIT2 tapedrives for restores, I am considering replacing the
current Media server with the new server hardware running as a
second NetBackup master server.

The new NetBackup master server would perform all backups and the old
master would only be used for restores.  This way, the existing backup
images written on AIT2 media could expire in their own time and I wouldn't
have to migrate the old backup and media catalogs to the new
NetBackup master.

This seems like such a simple idea that I'm afraid I'm missing something
that may cause a disaster.  I'd welcome opinions on my proposed migration or
alternative proposals.  .  I did a master server migration back in the
mid-90's and it wasn't pretty.  My current enterprise has 4 times as many
clients who would be impacted.

Thanks for any advice.

Kathryn Hemness
kfhemness AT ucdavis DOT edu