Jeff
Thanks for reply. Like you, not a fan of "eggs in one
basket", and in a SAN world, you are not always going to get away with this. We
do replicate data between sans, and from a H/W view, they behave and work
fine.
All I wanted to do was enquire if people are using locally
stored "storage" for the Master Server catalog or using "SAN" based fibre
storage.
Windows does not care whether the drive is local or SAN.
Its a drive, end of story. NetBackup does not care. Again, its a drive, it knows
about it, and providing it knows the drive letter and path structure, it can be
used to store the catalog and recover back to it.
Like I mentioned to Jonathan, its just another "extra"
piece of kit between the Master Server binary files and the catalog. From a DR
point, if there was a total loss of a computer room, total loss of SAN, or a
destruction, then I would find that placing the catalog on a SAN could be a
risk, against the storage of the catalog onto locally stored disks on the
Server. Again, this is a "worse case poorly planned" scenario.But it could
happen. I could die tomorrow.... who knows !
And as a precaution, I replicate the data to a SAN disk,
and swap catalog tapes. So the recovery is not a problem. But I was just looking
for peoples views on whether the location of SAN was acceptable, and from your
view, your happy.
I do manage a large SAN environment, and very happy about
it. But I have been happy using the catalog on locally stored drives, RAID5+ hot
spare.
So I think for now, I will keep the setup "as is" for the
time being.
Many thanks for your opinion.
Simon
I think it is rather
telling that by ?remote? they only mention NFS/CIFS and not SAN which does not
have the performance issues they allude to for the former two.
My comment about DR
planning was not to justify SAN vs. internal RAID but rather to point out that
if you?ve properly done the DR planning it doesn?t matter which way you go as
you will be able to recover from catastrophic failure. That comment
was specifically aimed at your implication that it was somehow the use of SAN
that caused meltdown at a prior job ? I was saying that the main issue at that
prior job was poor DR preparedness rather than infrastructure though I suspect
the SAN infrastructure itself was poorly planned as well if you experienced a
total meltdown.
Oddly enough I?m not a
big fan of putting all one?s eggs into one basket however to manage a large data
center unfortunately requires doing quite a bit of that. There are
economies of scale that make SAN storage not only viable but necessary for large
systems. There isn?t an internal RAID yet that will hold the ~500 TB
of storage we have for our large UNIX systems. As I noted before once you
DO have a SAN it makes a lot of sense to use that same infrastructure to allow
media servers to mount the tape drives (or disk backup) to each of the media
servers. Moreover becoming comfortable with how SANs operates
(including planned redundancy) one sees the value in separating storage from
servers especially where cluster environments are concerned where it is
required.
From your past comments
I?m pretty sure you do Windows rather than UNIX so don?t really have an idea of
the need for scalability are and why SANs are so important in large data
environments.
However, you?re
entitled to your opinions.
From: WEAVER,
Simon (external) [mailto:simon.weaver AT astrium.eads DOT net] Sent: Tuesday, May 13, 2008 6:11
AM To: Jeff Lightner;
veritas-bu AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu Subject: RE: [Veritas-bu] Best Practice:
Location of the NetBackup Catalog
Jeff
I am struggling to find
anything that talks about the location or best DR practice of NBU. In the Sys
Admin guide, the only reference I see about the catalog is that the binary
catalog is more sensitive to the location of the catalog (see page 203 in 5.1
guide). It mentions that storing the catalog on a remote file system may have
critical performance issues for catalog abckups. and that NetBackup does not
support saving catalogs to a remote file system such as NFS or
CIFS.
From a DR point of
view, I would like to see the NetBackup system and catalog "outside" the control
of any production SAN environment. all eggs in one basket comes to mind,
and if something is going to go bang, you do not want your NetBackup
environment inside this SAN. (If poss).
I have always stored
the Data on a RAID set with a hot spare each and everytime. If I want to recover
production systems attached to a SAN due to a shelf failure, I would rather be
in a position and say "Hey no problem, we can
do that", rather than say
"sorry, got to recover
my catalogs from a disk that is not presented from the SAN
anymore". Obviously that is
worse case scenario, and I apprecaite that.
Murphy's Law = If
anything can go wrong, it will :-)
Anyone else able to
share their views on their current Catalog environment?
Simon
From: Jeff
Lightner [mailto:jlightner AT water DOT com] Sent: Monday, May 12, 2008 6:03
PM To: WEAVER, Simon
(external); veritas-bu AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu Subject: RE: [Veritas-bu] Best Practice:
Location of the NetBackup Catalog
We?ve stored our NBU on
SAN attached storage since inception.
So long as you?re doing
catalog/database backups any failure whether on internal drives or on SAN drives
can be recovered from.
Since we also have our
tape drives accesses via SAN from the master and multiple media servers it seems
there would be a risk to backups if the SAN failed completely.
Having a complete SAN
failure is something I?ve not seen in over 3 ½ years here or at various other
jobs where we had SAN. I suspect your issue at the previous job was more
due to poor design of the infrastructure than to any inherent risk of using SAN
vs. Internal storage.
Even if it IS on
internal storage you do risk the server itself melting down and with RAID 5 loss
of two drives at the same time (rare but HAS been seen by me in that same 3 ½
year period) would lose your catalogs/database just like losing the SAN
would. Additionally with a SAN you can (and should) have multiple
paths to the data meaning loss of a single controller doesn?t blow you out of
the water whereas internal RAID 5 is almost always on a single
controller.
Finally in most
environments where SANs are in place the raison d?etre for the SAN was not the
backup solution but rather large disk storage needs for running
environments. In the unlikely event of a full SAN failure I suspect
the main issue would be your loss of those environments rather than the backup
solution though of course losing the backup solution means you?re delayed in
trying to bring up the rest of the environments. However, here again
valid catalog/database backups occurring on a regular basis is the way around
this ? not eliminating the SAN.
You might want to have
a look at NBU Disaster Recovery planning guidelines for more details as it
sounds as if your prior employer was ill prepared for such a
loss.
From:
veritas-bu-bounces AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
[mailto:veritas-bu-bounces AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu] On Behalf Of WEAVER, Simon
(external) Sent: Monday, May
12, 2008 11:13 AM To:
veritas-bu AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu Subject: [Veritas-bu] Best Practice:
Location of the NetBackup Catalog
All,
Just a general query on
the best practice for the location of the NetBackup catalog (Its DB, images,
ect).
When you install NBU on
a Server, the location can be accepted as the "default" or you can customise the
installation and choose an alternative location (ie: Spare drive on local
server, SAN attached drive, ect).
Presently, I have
NetBackup and the catalog installed locally, on RAID5 set, hot
swappable.
My question is this: Is
there a best practice for the location of the Catalog? For example, SAN attached
disk? I sort of feel uncomfortable with this for several
reasons:
1) If you lose SAN
connectivity (due to a major disaster or failure) the catalog has
gone 2) NetBackup and the OS
relies on that disk being available constantly
Being stored locally,
means the Server and its application (including the catalog) goes with it, and
does not rely on an extra layer of hardware for the catalog to be
available.
I think my concerns
come from a previous environment where the catalog was stored on a SAN,
and was totally destroyed and unrecoverable, which meant a complete import of
hundreds of tapes.
If anyone has any
feedback on this, would like to hear the pro's and con's to storage off the
physical server itself. I have always had the catalog locally
stored.
Thanks,
Simon
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