Veritas NetBackup™ Virtual Appliance Getting Started Guide

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

• 16 GB of memory and 8 virtual CPUs (vCPUs)

• 8 GB of memory and 4 vCPUs

• 64 GB of memory and 32 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.

• 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.

• NetBackup Virtual Appliance supports hyper-threading and usually performs better when hyper-threading is enabled.

  VMware vSphere recommends that you enable hyper-threading as a performance best practice. VMware vSphere 6.5 and later enable hyper-threading by default to increase hypervisor performance. Note that hyper-threading performance improvements are highly application-dependent, and some applications might see performance degradation. Additionally, there are various microprocessor flaws that may introduce security vulnerabilities when hyper-threading is enabled. Consult your hardware vendor documentation to learn about hyper-threading and possible security vulnerabilities.

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

  Note:

  You do not need to provide the storage details for a master server appliance.

• New passwords for the admin and maintenance accounts

  New password for the nbasecadmin account (master server and combined master and media server only)

  Note:

  You cannot access the NetBackup web UI until you have changed the nbasecadmin user password.

  The default password for all default accounts is P@ssw0rd.

Before the initial deployment, gather the following information:

• NetBackup Virtual Appliance license key

  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:

  If the correct license key is not installed, the appliance services stop functioning after the evaluation key expires. Make sure that the NetBackup license you add includes support for NetBackup Virtual Appliance.

  See Managing license keys on the NetBackup Virtual Appliance.

• Smart Meter customer registration key (master server and combined master and media server only)

  Veritas Smart Meter helps you manage your NetBackup deployment more efficiently, spot trends, and plan for the future. To obtain a key, log in to the Veritas Smart Meter site with your VEMS credentials and go to the Registration Keys page to download the key.