NetBackup™ Deployment Guide for Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Services (EKS) Cluster

Last Published:
Product(s): NetBackup (10.1)
  1. Introduction to NetBackup on EKS
    1.  
      About NetBackup deployment on Amazon Elastic Kubernetes (EKS) cluster
    2.  
      Required terminology
    3.  
      User roles and permissions
    4.  
      About MSDP Scaleout
    5.  
      About MSDP Scaleout components
    6.  
      Limitations in MSDP Scaleout
  2. Deployment with environment operators
    1. About deployment with the environment operator
      1.  
        Prerequisites
      2.  
        Contents of the TAR file
      3.  
        Known limitations
    2.  
      Deploying the operators manually
    3.  
      Deploying NetBackup and MSDP Scaleout manually
    4.  
      Configuring the environment.yaml file
    5.  
      Uninstalling NetBackup environment and the operators
    6.  
      Applying security patches
  3. Assessing cluster configuration before deployment
    1.  
      How does the webhook validation works
    2.  
      Webhooks validation execution details
    3.  
      How does the Config-Checker utility work
    4.  
      Config-Checker execution and status details
  4. Deploying NetBackup
    1.  
      Preparing the environment for NetBackup installation on EKS
    2.  
      Recommendations of NetBackup deployment on EKS
    3.  
      Limitations of NetBackup deployment on EKS
    4. About primary server CR and media server CR
      1.  
        After installing primary server CR
      2.  
        After Installing the media server CR
    5.  
      Monitoring the status of the CRs
    6.  
      Updating the CRs
    7.  
      Deleting the CRs
    8.  
      Configuring NetBackup IT Analytics for NetBackup deployment
    9.  
      Managing NetBackup deployment using VxUpdate
    10.  
      Migrating the node group for primary or media servers
  5. Upgrading NetBackup
    1.  
      Preparing for NetBackup upgrade
    2.  
      Upgrading NetBackup operator
    3.  
      Upgrading NetBackup application
    4.  
      Upgrade NetBackup during data migration
    5.  
      Procedure to rollback when upgrade fails
  6. Deploying MSDP Scaleout
    1.  
      Deploying MSDP Scaleout
    2.  
      Prerequisites
    3.  
      Installing the docker images and binaries
    4.  
      Initializing the MSDP operator
    5.  
      Configuring MSDP Scaleout
    6.  
      Using MSDP Scaleout as a single storage pool in NetBackup
    7.  
      Configuring the MSDP cloud in MSDP Scaleout
  7. Upgrading MSDP Scaleout
    1.  
      Upgrading MSDP Scaleout
  8. Monitoring NetBackup
    1.  
      Monitoring the application health
    2.  
      Telemetry reporting
    3.  
      About NetBackup operator logs
    4.  
      Expanding storage volumes
    5.  
      Allocating static PV for Primary and Media pods
  9. Monitoring MSDP Scaleout
    1.  
      About MSDP Scaleout status and events
    2.  
      Monitoring with Amazon CloudWatch
    3.  
      The Kubernetes resources for MSDP Scaleout and MSDP operator
  10. Managing the Load Balancer service
    1.  
      About the Load Balancer service
    2.  
      Notes for Load Balancer service
    3.  
      Opening the ports from the Load Balancer service
  11. Performing catalog backup and recovery
    1.  
      Backing up a catalog
    2.  
      Restoring a catalog
  12. Managing MSDP Scaleout
    1.  
      Adding MSDP engines
    2.  
      Adding data volumes
    3. Expanding existing data or catalog volumes
      1.  
        Manual storage expansion
    4.  
      MSDP Scaleout scaling recommendations
    5. MSDP Cloud backup and disaster recovery
      1.  
        About the reserved storage space
      2.  
        Cloud LSU disaster recovery
    6.  
      MSDP multi-domain support
    7.  
      Configuring Auto Image Replication
    8. About MSDP Scaleout logging and troubleshooting
      1.  
        Collecting the logs and the inspection information
  13. About MSDP Scaleout maintenance
    1.  
      Pausing the MSDP Scaleout operator for maintenance
    2.  
      Logging in to the pods
    3.  
      Reinstalling MSDP Scaleout operator
    4.  
      Migrating the MSDP Scaleout to another node group
  14. Uninstalling MSDP Scaleout from EKS
    1.  
      Cleaning up MSDP Scaleout
    2.  
      Cleaning up the MSDP Scaleout operator
  15. Troubleshooting
    1.  
      View the list of operator resources
    2.  
      View the list of product resources
    3.  
      View operator logs
    4.  
      View primary logs
    5.  
      Pod restart failure due to liveness probe time-out
    6.  
      Socket connection failure
    7.  
      Resolving an invalid license key issue
    8.  
      Resolving an issue where external IP address is not assigned to a NetBackup server's load balancer services
    9.  
      Resolving the issue where the NetBackup server pod is not scheduled for long time
    10.  
      Resolving an issue where the Storage class does not exist
    11.  
      Resolving an issue where the primary server or media server deployment does not proceed
    12.  
      Resolving an issue of failed probes
    13.  
      Resolving token issues
    14.  
      Resolving an issue related to insufficient storage
    15.  
      Resolving an issue related to invalid nodepool
    16.  
      Resolving a token expiry issue
    17.  
      Resolve an issue related to KMS database
    18.  
      Resolve an issue related to pulling an image from the container registry
    19.  
      Resolving an issue related to recovery of data
    20.  
      Check primary server status
    21.  
      Pod status field shows as pending
    22.  
      Ensure that the container is running the patched image
    23.  
      Getting EEB information from an image, a running container, or persistent data
    24.  
      Resolving the certificate error issue in NetBackup operator pod logs
    25.  
      Resolving the primary server connection issue
    26.  
      Primary pod is in pending state for a long duration
    27.  
      Host mapping conflict in NetBackup
    28.  
      NetBackup messaging queue broker take more time to start
    29.  
      Local connection is getting treated as insecure connection
    30.  
      Issue with capacity licensing reporting which takes longer time
    31.  
      Backing up data from Primary server's /mnt/nbdata/ directory fails with primary server as a client
  16. Appendix A. CR template
    1.  
      Secret
    2.  
      MSDP Scaleout CR

Monitoring the application health

Kubernetes Liveness and Readiness probes are used to monitor and control the health of the NetBackup primary server and media server pods. The probes collectively also called as health probes, keep checking the availability and readiness of the pods, and take designated actions in case of any issues. The kubelet uses liveness probes to know when to restart a container, and readiness probes to know when a container is ready. For more information, refer to the Kubernetes documentation.

Configure Liveness, Readiness and Startup Probes | Kubernetes

The health probes monitor the following for the NetBackup deployment:

  • Mount directories are present for the data/catalog at /mnt/nbdata and the log volume at /mnt/nblogs.

  • bp.conf is present at /usr/openv/netbackup

  • NetBackup services are running as expected.

Following table describes the actions and time intervals configured for the probes:

Table:

Action

Description

Probe name

Primary server (seconds)

Media server (seconds)

Initial delay

This is the delay that tells kubelet to wait for a given number of seconds before performing the first probe.

Readiness Probe

120

60

Liveness Probe

300

90

Periodic execution time

This action specifies that kubelet should perform a probe every given number of seconds.

Readiness Probe

30

30

Liveness Probe

90

90

Threshold for failure retries

This action specifies that kubelet should retry the probe for given number of times in case a probe fails, and then restart a container.

Readiness Probe

1

1

Liveness Probe

5

5

Heath probes are run using the nbu-health command. If you want to manually run the nbu-health command, the following options are available:

  • Disable

    This option disables the health check that will mark pod as not ready (0/1).

  • Enable

    This option enables the already disabled health check in the pod. This marks the pod in ready state(1/1) again if all the NetBackup health checks are passed.

  • Deactivate

    This option deactivates the health probe functionality in pod. Pod remains in ready state(1/1). This will avoid pod restarts due to health probes like liveness, readiness probe failure. This is the temporary step and not recommended to use in usual case.

  • Activate

    This option activates the health probe functionality that has been deactivated earlier using the deactivate option.

You can manually disable or enable the probes if required. For example, if for any reason you need to exec into the pod and restart the NetBackup services, the health probes should be disabled before restarting the services, and then they should be enabled again after successfully restarting the NetBackup services. If you do not disable the health probes during this process, the pod may restart due to the failed health probes.

Note:

It is recommended to disable the health probes only temporarily for troubleshooting purposes. When the probes are disabled, the web UI is not accessible in case of the primary server pod, and the media server pods cannot be scaled up. Then the health probes must be enabled again to successfully run NetBackup.

To disable or enable the health probes

  1. Execute the following command in the Primary or media server pod as required:

    kubectl exec -it -n <namespace> <primary/media-server-pod-name> -- /bin/bash

  2. To disable the probes, run the /opt/veritas/vxapp-manage/nbu-health disable command. Then the pod goes into the not ready (0/1) state.
  3. To enable the probes, run the "/opt/veritas/vxapp-manage/nbu-health enable" command. Then the pod will be back into the ready (1/1) state.

    You can check pod events in case of probe failures to get more details using the kubectl describe <primary/media-pod-name> -n <namesapce> command.