Veritas NetBackup™ Appliance Upgrade Guide

Last Published:
Product(s): Appliances (5.3)
Platform: NetBackup Appliance OS

Requirements and best practices for upgrading NetBackup appliances

This topic describes the requirements and best practices that you should follow anytime you plan to upgrade appliance software.

  • Make sure that your appliance environment currently uses software versions 4.1, 5.0, or 5.1.1 and their associated maintenance releases. Only these versions support a direct upgrade to version 5.3.

  • You can perform upgrades from the Appliance Management Console. After you review all upgrade guidelines and perform the required pre-upgrade tasks, refer to the Veritas Appliance Management Guide for the upgrade procedure.

    Note:

    The Appliance Management Console does not currently support upgrading appliances (nodes) in an HA setup. You must use the NetBackup Appliance Shell Menu to upgrade these appliances.

  • Always perform upgrades with the admin user account. Do not use a non-admin user account to upgrade appliances.

  • Always perform a full disaster recovery (DR) backup before an upgrade.

    • Primary servers

      Make sure that you have a recent and complete NetBackup Catalog backup.

    • MSDP configurations

      Make sure to configure your deduplication pool catalog backup policy and perform a successful backup. For details, refer to the following article:

      https://www.veritas.com/support/en_US/article.100046592

  • Export and re-import the device certificates.

    If IPSec functionality is configured on any appliance that you plan to upgrade, it will be unconfigured after the upgrade and the device certificates may not be retained. To avoid this issue, you must export the device certificates before upgrading the appliance. Contact Veritas Technical Support to configure IPsec functionality on your appliance.

    Use the Network > Security > Export command to perform this task. The Export command copies two .pfx files (serialnumber.pfx and .serialnumber.pfx) to a location that you specify when you run the command.

    Export the device certificates before an upgrade as follows:

    • Log in to the NetBackup Appliance Shell Menu and navigate to the following view:

      Network > Security > Export

    • Enter the following export option details:

      Export [EnterPasswd] [PathValue]

      Where [EnterPasswd] is the field used to answer the question, "Do you want to enter a password?". You must enter yes or no.

      Where [PathValue] is the location where you want to place the exported certificates.

    • After the export has completed, back up both of the .pfx files to a non-appliance location.

      After the upgrade has completed, re-import the device certificates. Contact Veritas Support to configure IPsec functionality on your appliance.

      See Post upgrade tasks.

  • Delete previously downloaded release updates, client packages, and client add-ons.

    To make sure that there is enough space in the /inst partition during the upgrade, first delete all previously downloaded release updates, client packages, and client add-ons from the appliance. As a best practice, always remove downloaded packages after all appliances and clients have been upgraded.

    If you do not delete the previously downloaded packages and the /inst directory on the appliance does not contain enough space, the preflight check and the Appliance Upgrade Readiness Analyzer tool prevent the upgrade. Even if enough space exists to allow the upgrade to start, the upgrade may fail if the old client add-ons are not removed. For downloaded packages on high availability (HA) nodes, you must remove the packages from both nodes.

    The following describes the package removal methods:

    NetBackup Appliance Web Console

    NetBackup Appliance Shell Menu

    • On the appliance to be upgraded, select Manage > Software Updates.

    • In the Downloaded Software Updates table, click the radio button to the left of a release update, client package, or client add-on in the list, then click Delete.

    • On the appliance to be upgraded, check for all downloaded release updates and client packages by entering the following command: Manage > Software > List Downloaded.

    • To remove each downloaded release update and client package, enter the following command: Manage > Software > Delete update_name. Where update_name is the release update or the client package file name.

    • To see a list of all downloaded client add-ons, enter the following command: Manage > Software > List AddOns.

    • To remove each downloaded client add-on, enter the following command: Manage > Software > Rollback eeb_name. Where eeb_name is the client add-on file name.

      Note:

      You must include the .rpm extension when you enter the client add-on file name.

  • If you have multiple media servers to upgrade, you must perform the upgrade process on each individual media server.

    Appliance media servers (nodes) in an HA setup are updated one at a time. Both nodes must use the same appliance software version. Once you have upgraded one node, you must upgrade the other node immediately.

    See About upgrades for NetBackup Appliance HA setups.

  • If a traditional NetBackup primary server is used with an appliance media server, that primary server must have the same NetBackup version or later as the media server appliance. For example, before you upgrade a media server appliance to version 5.3, first upgrade the NetBackup primary server to version 10.3.

    See About corresponding NetBackup software versions .

  • Make sure that the NetBackup primary server is active and running throughout the duration of an appliance media server upgrade. In addition, make sure that the NetBackup processes are started or running on both the primary server and the media server.

  • If you have enabled the STIG feature on an appliance and you need to upgrade it or install an EEB on it, do not plan such installations during the 4:00am - 4:30am time frame. By following this best practice, you can avoid interrupting the automatic update of the AIDE database and any monitored files, which can cause multiple alert messages from the appliance.

  • NetBackup clients must use the same or an earlier software version as the appliance. Clients cannot run at a later version than the appliance. For example, a client with NetBackup version 10.3 can only be used with an appliance server with version 5.3 or later. Client add-ons must also be the same as the client version.

    See About corresponding NetBackup software versions .

  • Upgrades to version 3.2 and later using the NetBackup Appliance Shell Menu or the Appliance Management Console (AMS) do not support ECA deployment during the upgrade. After a successful upgrade, you can enable the ECA for NetBackup. For details, see the NetBackup Appliance Commands Reference Guide. Additionally, you can configure the ECA to the appliance infrastructure services such as mongodb, tomcat, and nginx. For details, see the NetBackup Appliance Security Guide.

  • Starting with appliance software version 4.0, Guest users and existing local users cannot access a Universal Share or CIFS shares. After an upgrade to versions 4.0 and later, you can grant access to these shares as follows:

    • Guest users: Replace a Guest user by creating a new local user.

    • Existing local users: Change the passwords for these users.

  • Use a compatible version of the NetBackup Administration Console to manage the NetBackup services.

    The NetBackup Administration Console is backward-compatible. A patch release (x.x.x.x) console is compatible with a major (x.x) or minor NetBackup release (x.x.x) that shares the same first and second digits.

  • The image within the SSD/ISO partition is refreshed after the upgrade.