Veritas NetBackup™ Appliance Capacity Planning and Performance Tuning Guide

Last Published:
Product(s): Appliances (3.0)
Platform: NetBackup Appliance OS
  1. About this Guide
    1.  
      About this guide
    2.  
      About the intended audience
    3.  
      About the NetBackup appliance documentation
  2. Section I. Capacity planning
    1. Analyzing your backup requirements
      1. Analyzing your backup requirements
        1.  
          What do you want to backup?
        2.  
          How much data do you want to back up?
        3.  
          When should the backup take place?
        4.  
          What is the retention period?
        5. Record your backup requirements
          1.  
            Template to record computer system information
          2.  
            Template to record database information
          3.  
            Template to record application server information
    2. Designing your backup system
      1.  
        Addressing use cases of backup systems for enterprises
      2.  
        Addressing use cases of backup systems for remote or branch offices
      3. About NetBackup appliances
        1.  
          About the Master Server role
        2.  
          About the Media Server role
      4. Selecting new appliances
        1.  
          Selecting a media server
        2.  
          Selecting a master server
  3. Section II. Best Practices
    1. About the best practices section
      1.  
        About best practices
      2.  
        References to maintenance sites
    2. About implementing deduplication solutions
      1.  
        About implementing deduplication solutions
      2.  
        General recommendations
      3.  
        Oracle
      4.  
        Microsoft SQL
      5.  
        DB2
      6.  
        Sybase
      7.  
        Lotus Notes
    3. Network consideration
      1.  
        About network considerations
      2.  
        About Fibre Channel connectivity
      3. About SAN zone configurations
        1.  
          About zoning the SAN for NetBackup appliances
      4.  
        Validating network bandwidth
    4. Storage configuration
      1.  
        About storage configuration
      2. About configuring a shared storage pool
        1.  
          Calculating the basic stream count for backups
      3. About moving a storage partition for better performance
        1. Moving a partition
          1.  
            Move <partition> dialog
        2.  
          Moving a partition using the NetBackup Appliance Shell Menu
        3.  
          Moving the MSDP partition from a base disk to an expansion disk for optimum performance
    5. Generic best practices
      1.  
        Generic best practices
      2.  
        About Notification settings
      3.  
        About IPMI configuration
      4.  
        Disaster recovery best practices
      5.  
        Job performance
      6.  
        Architecture
      7.  
        NetBackup Catalog Backup
      8.  
        Patching with the SLP (storage lifecycle policies)
      9.  
        VMware backups using appliances
      10.  
        Improving NetBackup Appliance restore performance
  4. Section III. Performance tuning
    1. Role-based Performance Monitoring
      1.  
        Role-based configuration as a factor affecting performance
      2.  
        What affects the performance of a Master Server?
      3.  
        What affects the performance of a media server (MSDP)?
    2. Optimize network settings and improve performance
      1.  
        Optimize network settings and improve performance
      2.  
        SAN Fiber Channel setup
      3.  
        Network bonding
      4.  
        VMware VADP
      5.  
        Jumbo frame implementation for increased MTU
    3. Storage configurations
      1.  
        Storage configurations
      2.  
        Deduplication disk I/O and RAID level settings
      3. RAID Controller operations
        1.  
          RAID Controller commands
      4.  
        Deduplication load balancing
      5.  
        Storage Lifecycle Policies
      6.  
        Auto Image Replication (AIR)
      7.  
        AdvancedDisk settings
      8.  
        Tape Out operations
    4. NetBackup Appliance tuning procedures and performance monitoring
      1. About diagnosing performance issues
        1.  
          About CPU monitoring and tuning
        2.  
          About memory monitoring and tuning
        3.  
          About network monitoring and tuning
        4.  
          About I/O monitoring and tuning
        5.  
          General guidelines to spot a resource bottleneck
      2. About performance tuning practices
        1.  
          About I/O performance tuning
        2.  
          About Oracle backup and restore performance tuning
        3.  
          Setting NET_BUFFER_SZ to 0 on the NetBackup client for better WAN Optimization performance
      3. About tuning procedures and performance monitoring
        1. NetBackup Client performance
          1.  
            Using nbperfchk to validate disk performance on NetBackup Appliances
        2.  
          Other Performance Monitoring commands
  5. Section IV. Quick reference to Capacity planning and Performance tuning
    1. Capacity Planning checklist
      1.  
        Checklist for Capacity planning
      2.  
        Capacity measuring worksheet
    2. Best practices checklist
      1.  
        Best practices checklist
    3. How to monitor the performance of your appliance
      1.  
        About monitoring the performance of your appliance
      2.  
        Performance Monitoring matrix

What do you want to backup?

The first step in analyzing your backup requirements is to identify the systems that you need to backup. The term Systems includes any component that contains vital data which needs to be backed up. There are several parameters and considerations that you will have to take into account for each type of system. Table: Systems to be backed up lists some of these systems and the considerations made to back them up:

Table: Systems to be backed up

System

Considerations to be made

Computer systems

Identify and record the following information, for each computer system:

  • Host name

  • Operating system and its version

  • Location

  • Network technology

  • Whether the computer system is directly or remotely connected to the network

  • Number of resources to be backed up

  • Number of disk drives or tapes, connected to each system

  • Model type of each connected drive or library connected

  • Applications installed on the computer system that are to be backed up

Note:

You can use the templates provided in the Template to record computer system information to gather backup requirements for your organization.

Databases and Application servers

Identify and record the following information, for each database or application server:

  • Host name

  • Location

  • Operating system and its version

  • Server type and application release numbers

  • Network technology - 10 GB Ethernet, 1 GB Ethernet, or SAN Clients

  • Database types, database engines, and their version numbers

  • Method used to backup these databases

  • Whether the databases or application server can be backed up while they are online or offline

    To backup an online database, you need a NetBackup database agent specific to the database engine. Recording this information can help you to identify the various database agents you may require based on your backup requirements. For the compatibility list of all NetBackup database agents, see http://www.veritas.com/docs/000006088.

  • Whether you want to backup the entire database or the raw partitions.

    If you decide to take databases backups using raw partitions by Snapshot Client backup, this may result in a backup size equal to the total size of your raw partition. Identifying this information can help you decide how you would like to backup your databases

Note:

You can use the templates provided in the Template to record database information to gather backup requirements for your organization.

Virtualized datacenters

Identify the following information, about the virtualized infrastructure:

  • Hosts within these virtualized datacenters

  • Operating systems and their versions

  • Type of data stored

  • Type of Hypervisor used

  • Network technology used - 10 GB Ethernet, 1 GB Ethernet, or VADP over SAN

  • Type of backup performed on these virtualized datacenters- incremental, full

More Information

Analyzing your backup requirements

How much data do you want to back up?

When should the backup take place?

What is the retention period?