Veritas NetBackup™ Flex Scale Installation and Configuration Guide
- Preparing for NetBackup Flex Scale deployment
- Configuring NetBackup Flex Scale
- Troubleshooting NetBackup Flex Scale deployment
- NetBackup Flex Scale upgrades and patch management
- Removing NetBackup Flex Scale
- Appendix A. Installing NetBackup Flex Scale
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.
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
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 |
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.
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.
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.
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.