Hi

 

Been working with Netbackup for a couple of years and you sort of get set in the way that you do things.

 

There are curtain parameters that you always set the same, like “Maximum jobs per client” = 99.

“Allow media overwrite” = I tick all of them …

 

So I wondered what and why you set some of the following settings:

 

1.       Storage Units:

You have 2 x LTO4 drives. Would you create one stu with two drives in it or would you create a stu for each drives?

# I’ve found that in some cases it better to create two stu’s. When a policy starts, it “grabs” the allocated stu and although it only uses the one drive, it holds on to the other and the next backup queue’s. With two separate stu’s, the one drive is always available when one is in use. To make use of the other drive if the policy should need it, the stu is not made “On demand only” and Storage Unit in the policy is set to “Any Available”. Also if one drive goes down, the storage unit can still allocate the working drive.

@ Your thoughts?

 

2.       Multiplexing:

Maximum streams per drive:

# The rule of thumb is – The drive should never wait for the host to send or receive data. That said, what would you suggest the “Maximum streams per drive” should be and why for:

LTO2

LTO3

LTO4

# In my case I usually go for LTO2 = 3 to 5 streams, LTO3 = 5 to 6 streams and LTO4 = 5 to 8. This depends on the server / OS / network and a few other factors such as NUMBER_DATA_BUFFERS and SIZE_DATA_BUFFERS, so it becomes an art to get it just right.

@ Your thoughts?

 

3.       VSP:

Netbackup creates a VSP directory and creates a *.vsp file in this directory. In some cases it does not remove this *.vsp file after the backup completes and eventually it fills up all the space on the server’s drive. When you try and delete the file, you cannot as it gives “in use” error. Only way is to reboot the server and delete vsp file just after the server comes up again. (There is a tech note on how to delete without reboot, but few clients opt for this option).

# We disable VSP for all clients. This might not be the best option, but it causes the backup to start off without delay and prevents the vsp file to be created. We then only allow VSP to be active on servers that needs to backup open files.

@ How do you guys handle this one?

 

Some others you guys can think off?