Veritas NetBackup™ Flex Scale Installation and Configuration Guide

Last Published:
Product(s): Appliances (1.3)
Platform: NetBackup Flex Scale OS

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 master 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:

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

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

  • 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 console 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

Networking

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

  • 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, it is recommended to 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.

User accounts

The following details are required for configuring the administrator user accounts:

  • At least 1 user name and password for the NetBackup Flex Scale appliance administrator user role

  • At least 1 user name and password for the NetBackup administrator user role

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.