//We were faced with something similar here when upgrading from 4.5/5.1
and SDLT to 6.0 and LTO and more or less went with your Option #2.  What
we decided was to build an entirely new environment on new hardware to
migrate backups to leaving the old environments intact.  90% of our data
is kept for one year retention or less, leaving approximately 500 media
or so with data on them that we cared about after the first year on the
new backup system.  So we kept the old environment up (not running any
backups) until that year had expired.  At that point I ran a catalog
dump via perl script of all images on all media which I reference for
"older" restores.  The new library was Fiber, but we also purchased a
U320/SCSI card so we could attach a smaller SDLT Library we had in
storage, and we regularly run imports of older SDLT media into the new
environment and have run quite a few restores.

Is there any way to downgrade an existing Master to a Media server. Then
transfer the catalogues from that media server to the new master server
i am building?

//Not that I am aware of.  Maybe with Symantec support but if a new
server is a budget issue this isn't a likely scenario.

Once done could i then duplicate some older L1000 tapes over the network
to the SL24 connected to the new master or would i have to directly
attach the L1000 to the new server and create it as a new storage unit
calling it the same name as before?

//We did this in a few limited cases.  Basically, we imported the older
SDLT media into the 6.x catalog then bpduplicated them to LTO3 media.
Depending on your LTO drive availability this works fairly well and once
scripted becomes fairly autonomous.  Note there was no network involved,
the master had both Fiber LTO and SCSI SDLT drives attached to it.

Any other thoughts how i could get the catalogue info from an older
server onto a newer one to give me ability to duplicate?

//Run a catalog backup of the older environment.  Install 5.x on the new
environment (with the same name) and recover the catalog.  Then upgrade
to 6.x.  We specifically decided against this because of the 5.1 --> 6.x
upgrade issues.

One pro of this system is we could restore older images using the older
server while the new server took the job of doing backups from now on.

//Surprisingly I did many less restores the "one year" while we kept the
old system up than I've done since.  Stoopid lawyers.  The good news is
that since the SDLT library was idle I could script imports 24x7 and get
whatever data they needed.

-Jonathan
 

-----Original Message-----
From: veritas-bu-bounces AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
[mailto:veritas-bu-bounces AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu] On Behalf Of Dave
Markham
Sent: Tuesday, December 23, 2008 10:20 AM
To: veritas-bu AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
Subject: [Veritas-bu] New Library upgrade procedure Scenario 2

Guys we have a strange upgrade predicament i could do with running by
the scene. I am splitting this into 2 threads to find pros/cons of 2
solutions im thinking about. Also to try and keep the mail shorter.

Current Situation :-

Sun E220R (running Solaris 8) Netbackup Server with attached L1000 tape
unit + 4 x DLT drives. Netbackup 5.0MP7.
Hardware is beyond old but customer is reluctant to upgrade. We have
told them we cannot support the L1000 unit and their backups are at
risk. It has gone EOSL and parts are increasingly hard to source.

The initial proposal is to replace with an SL24 tape unit and LTO3
drives.

Problem :-

We are requesting a SCSI Ultra320 HBA to install and attach the new SL24
unit onto. Problem is the card is not compatible with the Solaris 8
(release 06/00) which is installed.  We therefore need to upgrade
solaris. Disk space is very limited (2 x internal 18gig disks raid 1)
and doing an OS upgrade wouldn't leave us with much of a regression
path.

Proposal 2.

(proposal 1 discussed in previous thread). The second option i was
considering of putting to the customer was to buy a new server all
together and get new netbackup licenses. This is going to cost more but
will leave them in a better position for the future, plus should
minimise man time in doing some steps mentioned in proposal 1.

I would install new OS and SL24 onto a new server and install Netbackup
6.x (to be decided). The question i have is how do i still restore older
backups? We could install this server in line with the existing server
(L1000 connected) but then i would have 2 netbackup master servers.

Questions:

Is there any way to downgrade an existing Master to a Media server. Then
transfer the catalogues from that media server to the new master server
i am building?
Once done could i then duplicate some older L1000 tapes over the network
to the SL24 connected to the new master or would i have to directly
attach the L1000 to the new server and create it as a new storage unit
calling it the same name as before?
Any other thoughts how i could get the catalogue info from an older
server onto a newer one to give me ability to duplicate?

One pro of this system is we could restore older images using the older
server while the new server took the job of doing backups from now on.

Thoughts?

Cheers
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_______________________________________________
Veritas-bu maillist  -  Veritas-bu AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
http://mailman.eng.auburn.edu/mailman/listinfo/veritas-bu