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NetBackup™ Snapshot Manager for Cloud Install and Upgrade Guide

Last Published: 2024-03-27

Product(s): NetBackup & Alta Data Protection (10.4)

Google Cloud Platform plug-in configuration notes

The Google Cloud Platform plug-in lets you create, delete, and restore disk and host-based snapshots in all regions where Google Cloud is present.

NetBackup Snapshot Manager supports the following GCP regions:

Table: GCP regions supported by NetBackup Snapshot Manager

GCP regions
asia-east1 asia-east2 asia-northeast1 asia-northeast2 asia-south1 asia-southeast1
australia-southeast1
europe-north1 europe-west1 europe-west2 europe-west3 europe-west4 europe-west6 europe-west10
northamerica-northeast1 southamerica-east1
us-central1 us-east1 us-east4 us-west1 us-west2 us-west3- Utah us-west4 Nevada us-east5 (Columbus) us-south1(Dallas)
asia-south australia-southeast2 europe-central2 europe-west12 (Turin) northamerica-northeast2 southamerica-west1 me-west1 (Tel Aviv) me-central1 (Doha) me-central2 (Dammam)

Note:

To list and use multi-regional encryption keys, the supported GCP region/location options are: global, us, europe and asia.

The following parameters are required for configuring the Google Cloud Platform plug-in:

Table: Google Cloud Platform plug-in configuration parameters

NetBackup Snapshot Manager configuration parameter	Google equivalent term and description
For Service Account configuration
Project ID	The ID of the project from which the resources are managed. Listed as project_id in the JSON file.
Client Email	The email address of the Client ID. Listed as client_email in the JSON file.
Private Key	The private key. Listed as private_key in the JSON file. Note: You must enter this key without quotes (neither single quotes nor double quotes). Do not enter any spaces or return characters at the beginning or end of the key.
Region	A list of regions in which the plug-in operates.
For Credential configuration
Project ID	The ID of the project from which the resources are managed. Listed as project_id in the JSON file.
Client Email	The email address of the Client ID. Listed as client_email in the JSON file.
Private Key	The private key. Listed as private_key in the JSON file. Note: You must enter this key without quotes (neither single quotes nor double quotes). Do not enter any spaces or return characters at the beginning or end of the key.

Configuring multiple accounts or subscriptions or projects

If you are creating multiple configurations for the same plug-in, ensure that they manage assets from different Regions. Two or more plug-in configurations should not manage the same set of cloud assets simultaneously.
When multiple accounts are all managed with a single NetBackup Snapshot Manager, the number of assets being managed by a single NetBackup Snapshot Manager instance might get too large and it would be better to space them out.
To achieve application consistent snapshots,
- Ensure that the prerequisites for provider managed consistency are met. For more information, refer to Quick installation commands for SSM Agent on RHEL 8 or 9.
- If above prerequisites are not met, then agent/agentless network connections between the remote VM instance and NetBackup Snapshot Manager is required. This would require setting up cross account/subscription/project networking.

GCP plug-in considerations and limitations

Consider the following before you configure this plug-in:

If a region is removed from the GCP plug-in configuration, then all the discovered assets from that region are also removed from the NetBackup Snapshot Manager assets database. If there are any active snapshots that are associated with the assets that get removed, then you may not be able perform any operations on those snapshots.
Once you add that region back into the plug-in configuration, NetBackup Snapshot Manager discovers all the assets again and you can resume operations on the associated snapshots. However, you cannot perform any restore operations on the associated snapshots.
Missing permission exception during discovery: By default, while adding a new GCP provider plug-in configuration, no permission check would be done for GCP cloud related operations. To enable permission check during GCP provider plug-in configuration, add skip_permissions_check = "no" parameter under the GCP section in flexsnap.conf file.
The maximum attachment points on GCP instances are 128 and NetBackup Snapshot Manager host uses 2 attachment points, which leaves 126 attachment point for backup/restore jobs. So at any point in time NetBackup Snapshot Manager can backup/restore instance as long as attachment points are available (which is 126 attachment points). If all the attachment points are used, backup/restore jobs start failing with following error message:
Failed to attach disk.
The maximum number of labels that can be attached to GCP instances are 64 and NetBackup Snapshot Manager uses 2 labels. If any instance has more than 62 labels, backup/restore may fail.
Reconfiguration of Service Account based GCP provider plug-in configuration with same/overlapping regions and different credential type is not supported.

More Information

Google Cloud Platform permissions required by NetBackup Snapshot Manager

Configuring a GCP service account for NetBackup Snapshot Manager

Preparing the GCP service account for plug-in configuration