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Veritas NetBackup™ Appliance Administrator's Guide

Last Published: 2023-10-10

Product(s): Appliances (5.1.1)

Platform: NetBackup Appliance OS

About data erasure

Data erasure enables you to erase the data on any storage disk on a NetBackup appliance. The data erasure complies with NIST SP800-88. When you erase the data on a storage disk, the data that was stored on the disk is destroyed and cannot be recovered. Once a data erasure operation is running on a disk, it is blocked from any other storage management operations.

If you start erasing data from the disks that contain partitions, you can no longer backup to or restore from those partitions. Veritas recommends that you complete or cancel all jobs on the partition that is to be erased.

Note:

The erased data cannot be recovered. Make sure that the data has been backed up and verified, or that the data is no longer needed.

Data erasure overview

The data erasure is only supported from the NetBackup Appliance Shell Menu. The following command operations are available from the Main > Manage > Storage view:

Erase Configure
Configures to erase data on one or more disks at a time. A wizard guides you through the configuration. Data erasure starts immediately after the configuration completes. The time duration of erasure is determined by the size of the disks, the pass algorithm used, and the workload on the appliance.
Erase Show
Shows the erasure operations in progress and the erasure status for all the storage disks on the appliance.
Erase Abort
Aborts a running erasure operation.

Disk selection

The data erasure wizard lets you select the disks from where you want to erase the data. The wizard lists all the storage disks on the appliance with the following exceptions:

Disks where the erasure process is in progress
You can erase the data from the same disk again as needed.
Note:
The disk with the Configuration partition can only be erased one time because the data erasure feature is no longer available after the Configuration partition has been destroyed.
Disks that are allocated to the Optimized Share Reserve
You need to delete the Optimized Share Reserve before you can erase the data on the disk.

On a NetBackup appliance, a storage disk can contain one storage partition or many different partitions. The Configuration, NetBackup Catalog, MSDP Catalog are metadata partitions and cannot be erased prematurely.

Before your selection, note the following:

The disk with the Configuration partition can only be erased when the other disks no longer contain partitions and the Optimized Share Reserve no longer exists.
Caution:
You cannot configure the data erasure after the erasure starts on the disk with the Configuration partition.

For example, you can consider the following best practice to erase data on the disks:

Delete the Optimized Share Reserve if any exists, and then perform data erasure on the disks that were allocated to the Optimized Share Reserve.
Erase data on the disks with AdvancedDisk and MSDP partitions
Erase data on the disks with MSDP Catalog and NetBackup Catalog partitions
Erase data on the disk with the Configuration partition

Pass algorithm

To minimize the chance that the erased data is recoverable, the data erasure provides options for the pass algorithm that is used to overwrite all of the data on a disk. When you are prompted, specify one of the following pass algorithms for the current configuration:

One-pass algorithm
Overwrites the disk with a randomly-selected digital pattern. This option takes the least amount of time.
Three-pass algorithm
Overwrites the disk a total of three times. The first pass, it uses a pre-selected digital pattern. The second pass uses the binary complement of the previous pattern, and the last pass uses a randomly-selected digital pattern.
Seven-pass algorithm
Overwrites the disk a total of seven times. In each pass, the data is overwritten with a randomly-selected digital pattern or with the binary complement of the previous pattern.

You can only use one of the three pass algorithms each time you configure the data erasure. However, you can configure the data erasure multiple times. For example, you need to configure the data erasure two times if you want to erase data on some disks with the one-pass algorithm and the other disks with the seven-pass algorithm. If you want to configure the data erasure again, you do not need to wait for the current erasure operations to complete.

After the erasure

After you have erased data on all the storage disks on the appliance, use the IPMI console to power off the appliance.

Note:

The data erasure always shows the following error message when it initializes the erasure task on the Configuration disk. This is because the status of the initialization is not available at that time. For more details about this issue, refer to the NetBackup Appliance Release Notes.

Note:

After a data erasure process is complete, the erased disks are in an unusable state. If you want to restore the disks to a usable state, perform a factory reset on the appliance.

See Configuring the data erasure.

See Viewing the data erasure status.

See Aborting the data erasure.