Veritas NetBackup™ Flex Scale Best Practices and Troubleshooting Guide

• 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

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

• 1 public IP address and either 1 resolvable short host name or FQDN for the NetBackup media server per node

• 1 IP address and either 1 resolvable short host name or FQDN for the NetBackup storage server per node

• Resolvable short host name or FQDN of the NetBackup primary server that is external to the cluster

• 1 public IP address and either 1 resolvable short host name or FQDN for the NetBackup media server per node

• 1 IP address and either 1 resolvable short 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

• 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 either 1 resolvable short host name or FQDN for the NetBackup Flex Scale management server. The IP address, name, or FQDN assigned to the management server is used to access the NetBackup Flex Scale web UI and the infrastructure management 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 infrastructure management UI.

• IP address details for the dedicated management network and IPMI (optional)

• Private subnet for internal communication between the cluster nodes. Specify the starting private IP address for the subnet.

  For example:

  private_network:
      ipv4:
        ip: 172.16.0.1
        subnet: 255.255.224.0
      ipv6:
        ip: 'fd00::2'
        prefix_length: '115'

Note the following requirements:

• Private network NICs of all appliance nodes must connect to separate dedicated switches or VLANs and should be separate from other networks, such as data network and management network.

  Ensure that the private network is different from the data and the management network and is not reachable from an external network.

• The network switch or switches need to be configured prior to configuring the appliance network interfaces.

• NetBackup Flex Scale uses IP address 172.16.0.0/19 for private network NICs by default. If IP from 172.16.0.0/19 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.

• 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.

• You can choose to have an IPv4 or an IPv6 address for the public network. Mixed mode with an IPv4 and IPv6 is not supported. For example, an IPv6 address for the management network and an IPv4 address for the data network (or vice versa) is not supported.

• The following network configuration is supported:

  • Both the management and the data network in a single subnet, with or without any VLAN.

  • Management and data networks in separate subnet with or without any VLAN, which are reachable from each other.

  • If you add an additional data network, it must be in a separate subnet.

• IP address and subnet mask of the network gateway IP from your existing network

• NTP server details

  The IP address or the FQDN of the NTP server that you want to use to set and synchronize the system clocks on the cluster nodes.

• DNS details

  Configuring a DNS server for the cluster is optional. If you configure a DNS server, you need to specify only the IP addresses during the cluster configuration. You do not have to specify the short host names or FQDNs during the cluster configuration. If you don't configure a DNS server for the cluster, ensure that you have the IP addresses and the corresponding short host names or FQDNs for all the nodes and NetBackup services.

  If a DNS server is specified and you are using short host names instead of FQDNs, you must also specify the search domain as part of the DNS settings.

  The following options are supported for DNS configuration:

  • Configure a different DNS server for the management network and the data network. As a DNS server is configured for the cluster, you need to specify only the IP addresses for the cluster configuration; you do not have to specify the short host names or the FQDNs.

  • Configure the same DNS server for the management network and the data network. As DNS server is configured for the cluster, you need to specify only the IP addresses for the cluster configuration; you do not have to specify the short host names or FQDNs.

  • Configure a DNS server only for the management network. Here, you need to specify only the IP addresses for the management network during the cluster configuration, but you must specify both the IP addresses and the corresponding short host names or FQDNs for the data network.

  • Configure DNS server only for the data network. Here, you need to specify only the IP addresses for the data network during the cluster configuration, but you must specify both the IP addresses and the corresponding short host names or FQDNs for the management network.

  • Do not configure a DNS server for the management network and the data network. As no DNS server is configured for the cluster, the host names and domains are resolved to IP addresses using the /etc/hosts file. You need to specify the IP addresses and the corresponding short host names or FQDNs during the cluster configuration.

    You can either use FQDNs or short host names when you specify the data and management network host names. In the network settings, if a DNS server is specified and short host names are used for configuration, you must also specify the search domain so that the short host names can be resolved.

• 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:
  management:
      ipv4:
        gateway_ip: 10.xx.xx.10
        subnet_mask: 255.255.248.0
      ipv6:
        prefix_length: ''
        router_ip: ''
      dns:
        dns_server: 172.16.8.12
        search_domain:
        - engba.veritas.com
      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.

• 1 public IP address for the heartbeat on each site

• 1 public IP address for Veritas Volume Replicator (VVR) replication on each site