Veritas NetBackup™ Flex Scale Installation and Configuration Guide

Last Published:
Product(s): Appliances (2.1)
Platform: NetBackup Flex Scale OS
  1. Preparing for NetBackup Flex Scale deployment
    1.  
      Deployment overview
    2.  
      Deployment options
    3.  
      NetBackup Flex Scale configuration requirements
    4.  
      Firewall and network ports requirements
    5.  
      Considerations for using IPv6 addresses
  2. Configuring NetBackup Flex Scale
    1.  
      Assigning a public IP address to network adapter eth1 of a node
    2.  
      NetBackup Flex Scale configuration methods
    3.  
      Configuring NetBackup Flex Scale using the setup wizard
    4. Configuring NetBackup Flex Scale using a configuration file
      1.  
        YML configuration file for deploying NetBackup primary and media servers
      2.  
        YML configuration file for deploying media servers
    5.  
      Changing the maintenance user account password
  3. Troubleshooting NetBackup Flex Scale deployment
    1.  
      NetBackup Flex Scale logs
    2.  
      Connection timeout errors during patch installs, upgrades, and rollback operations
    3.  
      Initial configuration wizard displays a driver node not selected error
    4.  
      Initial configuration wizard displays a license error after successfully configuring the cluster
  4. NetBackup Flex Scale upgrades and patch management
    1. About NetBackup Flex Scale upgrades and EEB
      1.  
        Pre-upgrade steps
      2.  
        Considerations for upgrade when disaster recovery is configured
    2.  
      Performing a patch upgrade using GUI
    3.  
      Installing EEBs using GUI
    4.  
      Performing a patch upgrade using REST APIs
    5.  
      Installing EEBs using REST APIs
    6.  
      About rolling upgrade
  5. Removing NetBackup Flex Scale
    1. About disk erasure
      1.  
        Configuring data erasure
      2.  
        Viewing the data erasure status
      3.  
        Aborting data erasure
    2.  
      About NetBackup Flex Scale node factory reset
    3.  
      Performing a factory reset on a node
  6. Appendix A. Installing NetBackup Flex Scale
    1.  
      About NetBackup Flex Scale software installation
    2.  
      Enabling remote IPMI connections
    3.  
      Setting up the RAID configuration on the nodes
    4.  
      Configuring the BIOS settings on the nodes
    5.  
      Downloading the product installer ISO
    6.  
      Mounting the ISO file on the nodes
    7.  
      Installing NetBackup Flex Scale using the ISO
    8.  
      Installing Emergency Engineering Binaries (EEBs)

NetBackup Flex Scale configuration requirements

A NetBackup Flex Scale appliance configuration consists of a minimum of 4 nodes and a maximum of up to 16 nodes that can host the following components:

  • a single instance of a highly-available NetBackup primary server across the cluster

  • a single instance of the NetBackup media server per node

  • a single instance of the NetBackup storage server per node

For the best possible configuration experience, ensure that you have the following information available with you, depending on the number of nodes in your appliance.

NetBackup

The following details are required for configuring NetBackup services and components if you deploy a cluster with both NetBackup primary server and media servers:

  • 1 public IP address and 1 resolvable host name or Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN) for the NetBackup primary server

  • 1 public IP address and 1 resolvable host name or FQDN for the NetBackup media server per node

  • 1 IP address and 1 resolvable host name or FQDN for the NetBackup storage server per node

The following details are required if you deploy a cluster with only media servers:

  • Resolvable host name or FQDN of the NetBackup primary server that is external to the cluster

  • 1 public IP address and 1 resolvable host name or FQDN for the NetBackup media server per node

  • 1 IP address and 1 resolvable host name or FQDN for the NetBackup storage server per node

  • An API key, which is a pre-authenticated token used to identify a user

  • A generic name that the NetBackup primary server uses to identifies all the media servers

NetBackup Flex Scale cluster

The following details are required for configuring the NetBackup Flex Scale cluster services and components:

  • 1 public IP address or the FQDN for the NetBackup Flex Scale cluster

  • If you deploy a cluster with both NetBackup primary server and media servers, 1 public IP address and 1 resolvable host name or FQDN for the NetBackup Flex Scale management and API gateway server. This is also the IP or name that you will use to access the NetBackup Flex Scale UI, which is also called as the infrastructure management console UI.

    If you deploy a cluster with only media servers, the public IP address for the NetBackup Flex Scale cluster is used to access the NetBackup Flex Scale UI.

  • IP address details for the dedicated management network and IPMI (optional)

  • 1 private IP and a private subnet for the internal communication between the cluster nodes

The following example shows how to calculate the IP addresses that you need to specify for a cluster with N nodes:

Table:

Network

Per node

For cluster

Total

Private

Not required

1 IP address and subnet mask

You can use the default private IP range and subnet mask or specify a custom IP address range and subnet mask. If you use the default private IP address range and subnet mask, you don't need to specify any details.

Management

1 IP address for the management network

1 IP address for the NetBackup Flex Scale management gateway and API server

1 IP address for the NetBackup Flex Scalemanagement console

N+2

Data

1 IP address for the media server

1 IP address for the storage server

1 IP address for the NetBackup primary server

2N+1

IPMI (optional)

1 IP address for the IPMI interface

Not required

N

Networking

The following cabling diagram shows how to connect four NetBackup Flex Scale nodes. Ensure that you follow the same steps when connecting additional nodes.

Note the following requirements:

  • Private network NICs of all appliance nodes must connect to a dedicated switch or VLAN and should be separate from other networks, such as data network and management network.

  • The network switch or switches need to be configured prior to configuring the appliance network interfaces.

  • NetBackup Flex Scale uses IP address 172.16.X.X for private network NICs by default. If 172.16.x.x are reserved by the company, change private IP addresses to other local network addresses, such as 192.168.x.x or other subnets such as 172.20.x.x, when you run initial configuration from the GUI.

  • It is recommended to use 25 Gb for both data (north-south) network and private (east-west ) network, however 10 Gb may be used with the following caveats:

    • If using 25 Gb network for data ( north-south) network, you must use 25 Gb for the private (east-west) network as well. Using 10Gb for the east-west network is not supported in this case.

    • If using 10 Gb network for data ( north-south) network, you can use 25 Gb or 10 Gb for the private (east-west) network.

  • The following network configuration is supported:

    • Both the management and the data network in a single subnet without any VLAN.

    • Management network in a single subnet with or without any VLAN and data network in a separate subnet with a separate VLAN.

    • If you add an additional data network, it must be in a separate subnet with a separate VLAN from any existing network, including the private network.

The following details are required for configuring the network settings:

  • IP address and subnet mask of the network gateway server from your existing network

  • DNS and NTP server details.

    The IP address of the DNS server must be reachable from all the data and management networks. The DNS is considered as common across all networks and must resolve IP and FQDNs from all the data and management network source IP addresses.

  • This is applicable if you are configuring the cluster using a yml file.

    If you have configured your network to use Virtual LANs then ensure that you provide the VLAN IDs in the yml file. Use the parameter vlan_id in the yml configuration template to specify the VLAN ID.

    For example, if network adapter eth1 is already tagged with a VLAN ID, you must specify that VLAN ID in the yml file. Here's a snippet from a sample yml configuration file that shows how to specify the VLAN ID:

    common_network_setting:
      data:
        bond:
          enable: true
          mode: balance-alb
          option: ''
        ipv4:
          gateway_ip: 10.xx.xx.1
          subnet_mask: 255.255.248.0
        ipv6:
          prefix_length: ''
          router_ip: ''
        vlan_id: '1200'

    Note:

    NetBackup Flex Scale does not block the cluster configuration if you do not specify the VLAN IDs. However, you may not be able to access the cluster nodes from the public network even after the cluster is configured successfully.

If you wish to configure the appliance for disaster recovery (DR), the following additional IP addresses are required:

  • 1 public IP address for the heartbeat on each site

  • 1 public IP address for Veritas Volume Replicator (VVR) replication on each site

Note:

All the IP addresses must have a FQDN that is resolvable from the DNS server.

Jumbo frames

Set the maximum transmission unit (MTU) property, which controls the maximum transmission unit size for an Ethernet frame to 9000 bytes. By default the MTU is set to 1500 bytes. For optimal performance, you must set a larger frame size to enable jumbo frames for the eth4, eth5, eth6, and eth7 network interfaces. To take advantage of jumbo frames, the Ethernet cards, drivers, and switching must all support jumbo frames.

System clock

Synchronize the system clock on all the nodes before you begin the cluster configuration.

Warning:

The cluster configuration may fail if the system clocks are not synchronized across the cluster.

User accounts

You need at least one user name and password to configure a user account.

You can use a single user account and assign both NetBackup Flex Scale and NetBackup administrator roles to the same account. However, two separate user accounts are recommended. You can configure multiple user accounts and assign them the desired roles. But a minimum of one user is required.