Oi, reading the below I find, of course, I missed a glaring error in
proof-reading.
I assert "that VSP only works with WindowsNET and newer clients" which
is, of course, the opposite of true.
VSP works with all Windows versions where NBU installs it. VSS only
works with newer versions. As, I believe I recall having read, do many
others on this mailing list, I much prefer to use the OS vendor's
snapshot utility because it doesn't run (as large) a risk of leaving
random, huge files that can't be deleted lying about wasting space.
I believe that I'm still correct when I say that VSP is the default
library used, however, even on OS versions that NetBackup knows support
VSS. I hope that'll change, since having to manually flip over to VSS
for every new client is an extra step (that other admins in our
organizations may forget, causing later irritation), but that's how
things are now.
--
gabriel rosenkoetter
Radian Group Inc, Unix/Linux/VMware Sysadmin / Backup & Recovery
gabriel.rosenkoetter AT radian DOT biz, 215 231 1556
________________________________
From: Randy Samora [mailto:Randy.Samora AT stewart DOT com]
Sent: Tuesday, April 08, 2008 4:11 PM
To: Rosenkoetter, Gabriel; veritas-bu AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] Clarification About Open File Backups
Thank you, thank you, thank you, that is a lot of very useful insight
and I'm glad I finally asked.
One more question for clarification. In reference to "I guess I'm not
sure what you mean by "enable VSS on all volumes of the client". If that
statement isn't obvious, then I'm already beginning to panic thinking
I've done something wrong. I've been buried up to my eyeballs in
NetBackup for so long that my basic Windows skills are just about
obsolete. But what I was referring to is for each client on which I
want to use VSS, I go into Windows Explorer, right click on a volume (Y:
drive for example) and I Enable VSS and then configure the schedule for
the shadow copy. In my case, I delete the two default schedules and I
create a "Once" schedule for five years down the road. By that time the
hardware will have been replaced so I don't have to worry about VSS
copies eating up disk space unnecessarily. The only copies being made
are during the backups; or so I assume. Is this not correct? I thought
that by default, VSS was not enabled on a Win2k3 server and had to be
manually enabled and then configured for size, schedule and location of
the file. I tried to ask a Symantec Engineer once during an open ticket
for something else but he told me to ask Microsoft.
Is there a better way?
Thanks
randy
-----Original Message-----
From: Rosenkoetter, Gabriel [mailto:Gabriel.Rosenkoetter AT radian DOT biz]
Sent: Tuesday, April 08, 2008 2:48 PM
To: Randy Samora; veritas-bu AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
Subject: RE: [Veritas-bu] Clarification About Open File Backups
The following is my understanding, but I don't promise I'm Right about
it. :^>
At Tuesday, April 08, 2008 10:08 AM, Randy Samora
[mailto:Randy.Samora AT stewart DOT com] wrote:
> 1. If I want to start using VSS on my old clients, I know I need
> to enable VSS on the client itself but what happens at the Master?
> Do I check the Open File Backups for that client and select VSS
> instead of VSP?
I don't believe that there is anything specific one needs to do on the
client itself. You need to explicitly select VSS instead of VSP, bearing
in mind that VSP only works with WindowsNET and newer clients (ie,
versions of Windows that provide the Volume Shadow Copy Service). In
particular, Win2k does not while Win2k3 does.
I'm not sure what happens if you tell a client that can't do VSS to do
so... I don't believe that it will fall back to VSP, I believe that it
will either fail with a 156 or (if so configured in the client DB)
disable snapshots (and open file backups) and proceed.
> 2. What is the default behavior? If I deleted all of the clients
> from the Client Attributes tab of the Master Server properties,
> what would occur on those clients in regards to open file backups?
The default for all Windows clients is WOFB enabled, use VSP, fail (with
a 156) if the snapshot fails.
(So, imho, you should have been modifying the client DB all along to
flip the "if snapshot fails" bit.)
> 3. If I bring a new client on line with the default install,
> does it do open file backups by default?
Yes, but it will use VSP, which will fail if the client host hasn't been
rebooted after the client software was installed to enable the VSP
module.
> It appears that for each client I want to use open file backups, I
> have to add the client to the Master Server properties and then
> configure the open file options. That.s easy to do but I.ve always
> had doubts because it doesn.t seem logical.
It doesn't seem logical because the GUI design is boneheaded.
What you are really doing with that pointy-clicky bit is creating (or
modifying, if it already existed) a file whose name matches the client
under /usr/openv/netbackup/db/client (yes, even under 6.5 where
"everything but images" is supposedly in DB form). You do the same thing
on the command line with the bpclient command. (Well, that's what you're
doing on Unix masters. I don't really know (or care, honestly) where
Windows masters servers store the same data.)
It's in the Master section of the GUI's host properties because it
modifies settings on the master, which is obviously backward engineered
thinking, but now that everybody's used to finding it there, it probably
won't change. The Clients section of that same tree strictly modifies
settings that are stored on the client host, but these directives are
something that bpbrm needs to know when it goes and tells the client to
start generating backup streams, so it's not configuration that
logically belongs on the client.
> Today, when I add a new client, I enable VSS on all volumes of the
> client, add the client to the Master Server properties, Enable Open
> File Backups is checked and I configure the options.
I guess I'm not sure what you mean by "enable VSS on all volumes of the
client". I don't think I do anything that resembles that. Are you
talking about the option to perform snapshot backups in the Policy
configuration? Although that can use VSS or VSP, it's not the same thing
as WOFB. If not that, where's the configuration you're describing?
I trust someone will correct me if I'm wrong about any of the above.
(Except the whole Master host properties thing. That really is just
stupid. ;^>)
--
gabriel rosenkoetter
Radian Group Inc, Unix/Linux/VMware Sysadmin / Backup & Recovery
gabriel.rosenkoetter AT radian DOT biz, 215 231 1556
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