Veritas NetBackup™ Deduplication Guide

This topic contains the following sections:

• Important features of image sharing

• Things to consider before you use image sharing

• Configure image sharing

• Using image sharing using NetBackup Web UI

• Using image sharing with the nbimageshare command

• Manual KMS key transfer in Image sharing in case of NetBackup KMS

• Manual steps in image sharing in case of external KMS

• Additional information about image sharing

• In a situation where Cloud Catalyst backed up the deduplicated data to cloud, but the NetBackup catalog was available only on the on-premises NetBackup server. There, the data cannot be restored from the cloud without the on-premises NetBackup server.

  Image sharing in cloud uploads the NetBackup catalog along with the backup images and lets you restore data from the cloud without the on-premises NetBackup server.

• You can launch an all-in-one NetBackup in the cloud on demand called the cloud recovery host, and recover the backup images from cloud.

• Image sharing discovers the backup images that are stored in AWS S3 through the REST APIs, recovers the NetBackup catalog, and restores the images.

• You can use command line options or NetBackup Web UI that have the function as REST APIs.

• Before you install NetBackup, create an instance based on RHEL 7.3 or later (up to RHEL 8.0) in AWS. You can also set up a computer based on RHEL 7.3 or later (up to RHEL 8.0). The recommendation is that the instance has more than 64 GB of memory, 8 CPUs.

• The HTTPS port 443 is enabled.

• Change host name to the server's FQDN.

• Add the following items in the /etc/hosts file:

  "External IP" "Server's FQDN"

  "Internal IP" "Server's FQDN"

  For a computer, add the following items in the /etc/hosts file:

  "IP address" "Server's FQDN"

• For an instance in AWS, change the search domain order in the /etc/resolv.conf file to search external domains before internal domains.

• NetBackup should be an all-in-one setup.

  Refer to the NetBackup Installation Guide for more information.

• Before you run ims_system_config.py to configure the cloud recovery host on RHEL 8, install Python 2, and create a soft link from Python 2 to Python. Theims_system_config.py script uses Python 2.

• After the image is imported to cloud, the image catalog still exists on the cloud. If the image is expired on the on-premises storage, then restoring the image on the cloud fails even though the image catalog exists on the cloud.

• If the image expires on the cloud storage, the image catalog in the cloud is removed but the image data in the bucket is not removed.

• You can restore any image that you import. For the recover the VM as an AWS EC2 instance option, you can recover only the VM images that are full backup images or accelerator-enabled incremental backup images to cloud.

• Image sharing supports many policy types from NetBackup 8.2 or later. In the scenarios, CloudCatalyst, where the images are shared, must have a new installation of NetBackup 8.2 or later.

  See the NetBackup compatibility lists for the latest information on the supported policy types.

• After the image sharing is configured, the storage server is in a read-only mode.

• For information on the VM recovery limitations, refer to the AWS VM import information in AWS help.

• You can configure the maximum active jobs when the images are imported to cloud storage.

  Modify the file path /usr/openv/var/global/wsl/config/web.conf to add the configuration item as imageshare.maxActiveJobLimit.

  For example, imageshare.maxActiveJobLimit=16.

  The default value is 16 and the configurable range is 1 to 100.

  If the import request is made and the active job count exceeds the configured limit, the following message is displayed:

  "Current active job count exceeded active job count limitation".

• The images that are direct to cloud storage can be shared.

  In optimized deduplication or AIR cascading scenarios, only the images in Cloud Catalyst that has optimized deduplication or has an AIR target can be shared.

  If Cloud Catalyst is not set for optimized deduplication or is not an AIR target, you cannot use image sharing. If Amazon Glacier is enabled in Cloud Catalyst, you cannot use image sharing.

  In these scenarios to disable image sharing:

  Modify the <install_directory>/etc/puredisk/spa.cfg file and add the following configuration item:

  EnableIMandTIR=false

• Regarding the errors about role policy size limitation:

  Errors that occur when the role policy size exceeds the maximum size is an AWS limitation. You can find the following error in a failed restore job:

  "error occurred (LimitExceeded) when calling the PutRolePolicy operation:
  Maximum policy size of 10240 bytes exceeded for role vmimport"

  Workaround:

  • You can change the maximum policy size limit for the vmimport role.

  • You can list and delete the existing policies using the following commands:

    aws iam list-role-policies --role-name vmimport
    aws iam delete-role-policy --role-name vmimport --policy-name 
    <bucketname> -vmimport

• The recover operation includes AWS import process. Therefore, a vmdk image cannot be recovered concurrently in two restore jobs at the same time.

• The image sharing feature can recover the virtual machines that satisfy the Amazon Web Services VM import prerequisites.

  For more information about the prerequisites, refer to the following article:

  https://docs.aws.amazon.com/vm-import/latest/userguide/vmie_prereqs.html

• If you cannot obtain the administrator password to use an AWS EC2 instance that has a Windows OS, the following error is displayed:

  Password is not available. This instance was launched from a custom AMI, or the default password has changed. A password cannot be retrieved for this instance. If you have forgotten your password, you can reset it using the Amazon EC2 configuration service. For more information, see Passwords for a Windows Server Instance.

  This error occurs after the instance is launched from an AMI that is converted using image sharing.

  For more information, refer to the following articles:

  • Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud Common Messages

  • How to migrate your on-premises domain to AWS Managed Microsoft AD using ADMT

• You cannot cancel an import job on the cloud recovery host.

• If there is data optimization done on the on-premises image, you might not be able to restore the image that you have imported on the cloud recovery host. You can expire this image, import it again on the image-sharing server, and then restore the image.

• After the backup job, duplication job, or AIR import job completes, you can import the images on a cloud recovery host.