Veritas NetBackup™ Virtual Appliance Getting Started Guide

Last Published:
Product(s): Appliances (3.0)

NetBackup Virtual Appliance deployment guidelines

Use the following configuration guidelines when you deploy a new NetBackup Virtual Appliance:

Table: Appliance deployment guidelines

Parameter

Description

Deployment requirements

To deploy a NetBackup Virtual Appliance, you need a VMware vCenter Server user account and access to the vSphere Web Client. The appliance supports vSphere versions 5.5 and 6.0. Your vCenter Server account must have at least the minimum privileges required to deploy an OVF template.

Refer to the VMware documentation for more information.

Connectivity during deployment

When you perform the appliance deployment, Veritas recommends that you take precautions to avoid loss of connectivity. Any loss of connectivity during deployment results in failure.

The computer that you use to deploy the appliance should be set up to avoid the following events:

  • Conditions that cause the computer to go to sleep

  • Conditions that cause the computer to shut down or to lose power

  • Conditions that cause the computer to lose its network connection

Environment requirements

The appliance uses 16 GB of RAM and 8 virtual CPUs (vCPUs).

Make sure that both requirements are met before you deploy the appliance.

Recommendations for optimal performance

For optimal performance, Veritas recommends that you adhere to the following best practices:

  • Set a CPU reservation to provide the appliance with full utilization of the configured vCPUs.

  • Do not overcommit the vCPUs on the ESX host. The number of vCPUs that are assigned to all virtual machines on the host should be equal to or less than the number of cores on that host.

  • Set a memory reservation to provide the appliance with full utilization of the available memory.

  • Do not overcommit the memory on the ESX host. The amount of memory that is assigned to all virtual machines on the host should be equal to or less than the amount of memory on that host.

  • Do not enable hyper-threading.

  • Use thick provisioning for the appliance virtual disks.

  • The NetBackup Virtual Appliance has a heavy I/O workload, so it should be isolated from shared storage as much as possible. At a minimum, make sure that the appliance uses a different datastore than other virtual machines with a heavy I/O workload.

Required names and addresses

Before the initial deployment, gather the following information:

  • Data center and storage details

  • Appliance host name and IP address

  • Netmask and Gateway IP address

  • DNS information

  • Names for AdvancedDisk and MSDP disk pools and storage units

  • New passwords for the admin and maintenance accounts

    Note:

    The default password for appliance access is P@ssw0rd.

See NetBackup Virtual Appliance initial deployment checklist.

Licenses

The appliance comes with a not for resale (NFR) license key that expires after a specific period of time. The appliance does not provide a warning message that this license key is about to expire. Therefore, Veritas recommends that you change this key to a permanent key after you deploy the appliance.

Make sure that you replace the NFR key with a permanent key before it expires.

Warning:

The NetBackup Virtual Appliance has a specific license key, and if the correct key is not installed, the appliance services stop functioning after the evaluation key expires. Make sure that the permanent license key that you add is correct for NetBackup Virtual Appliance.