Veritas NetBackup™ CloudPoint Install and Upgrade Guide

Last Published:
Product(s): NetBackup (8.3.0.1, 8.3)
Platform: Linux,UNIX,Windows
  1. Section I. CloudPoint installation and configuration
    1. Preparing for CloudPoint installation
      1.  
        About the deployment approach
      2.  
        Deciding where to run CloudPoint
      3.  
        About deploying CloudPoint in the cloud
      4.  
        Meeting system requirements
      5.  
        CloudPoint host sizing recommendations
      6.  
        Creating an instance or preparing the physical host to install CloudPoint
      7.  
        Installing Docker
      8.  
        Creating and mounting a volume to store CloudPoint data
      9.  
        Verifying that specific ports are open on the instance or physical host
    2. Deploying CloudPoint using the Docker image
      1.  
        Installing CloudPoint
      2.  
        Verifying that CloudPoint installed successfully
      3.  
        Configuring AWS KMS in CloudPoint
    3. CloudPoint cloud plug-ins
      1. AWS plug-in configuration notes
        1.  
          Prerequisites for configuring the AWS plug-in
        2.  
          Configuring AWS permissions for CloudPoint
        3.  
          AWS permissions required by CloudPoint
        4.  
          Before you create a cross account configuration
      2. Google Cloud Platform plug-in configuration notes
        1.  
          Google Cloud Platform permissions required by CloudPoint
        2.  
          Configuring a GCP service account for CloudPoint
        3.  
          Preparing the GCP service account for plug-in configuration
      3. Microsoft Azure plug-in configuration notes
        1.  
          Configuring permissions on Microsoft Azure
      4.  
        How to configure the CloudPoint cloud plug-ins?
    4. CloudPoint storage array plug-ins
      1. NetApp plug-in configuration notes
        1.  
          NetApp plug-in configuration parameters
        2.  
          Configuring a dedicated LIF for NetBackup access
        3.  
          Supported CloudPoint operations on NetApp storage
      2. Nutanix Files plug-in configuration notes
        1.  
          Nutanix Files plug-in configuration prerequisites
        2.  
          Nutanix Files plug-in considerations and limitations
        3.  
          Supported CloudPoint operations on Nutanix Files File Server
        4. Troubleshooting NetBackup issues for Nutanix Files
          1.  
            Backup jobs for Nutanix Files fail due to snapshot import and export operations failures
          2.  
            Plug-in configuration may fail if the Nutanix Files version is unsupported
      3. Dell EMC Unity array plug-in configuration parameters
        1.  
          Supported Dell EMC Unity arrays
        2.  
          Supported CloudPoint operations on Dell EMC Unity arrays
      4. Pure Storage FlashArray plug-in configuration notes
        1.  
          Supported Pure Storage FlashArray models
        2.  
          Supported CloudPoint operations on Pure Storage FlashArray models
      5. HPE RMC plug-in configuration notes
        1.  
          RMC plug-in configuration parameters
        2.  
          Supported HPE storage systems
        3.  
          Supported CloudPoint operations on HPE storage arrays
      6. Hitachi plug-in configuration notes
        1.  
          Hitachi plug-in configuration parameters
        2.  
          Supported Hitachi storage arrays
        3.  
          Supported CloudPoint operations on Hitachi arrays
      7. InfiniBox plug-in configuration notes
        1.  
          InifiniBox plug-in configuration parameters
        2.  
          Supported CloudPoint operations on InfiniBox arrays
      8.  
        How to configure the CloudPoint storage array plug-ins?
    5. CloudPoint application agents and plug-ins
      1.  
        Microsoft SQL plug-in configuration notes
      2. Oracle plug-in configuration notes
        1.  
          Optimizing your Oracle database data and metadata files
      3.  
        MongoDB plug-in configuration notes
      4.  
        About the installation and configuration process
      5.  
        Preparing to install the Linux-based agent
      6.  
        Preparing to install the Windows-based agent
      7.  
        Downloading and installing the CloudPoint agent
      8.  
        Registering the Linux-based agent
      9.  
        Registering the Windows-based agent
      10.  
        Configuring the CloudPoint application plug-in
      11.  
        Configuring VSS to store shadow copies on the originating drive
      12.  
        Creating a NetBackup protection plan for cloud assets
      13.  
        Subscribing cloud assets to a NetBackup protection plan
      14. About snapshot restore
        1.  
          Process for restoring SQL AG databases
      15.  
        Restore requirements and limitations for Microsoft SQL Server
      16.  
        Restore requirements and limitations for Oracle
      17.  
        Restore requirements and limitations for MongoDB
      18.  
        Steps required before restoring SQL AG databases
      19.  
        Recovering a SQL database to the same location
      20.  
        Recovering a SQL database to an alternate location
      21. Additional steps required after a SQL Server snapshot restore
        1.  
          Steps required after a SQL Server disk-level snapshot restore to new location
      22.  
        Additional steps required after restoring SQL AG databases
      23.  
        SQL snapshot or restore and granular restore operations fail if the Windows instance loses connectivity with the CloudPoint host
      24.  
        Disk-level snapshot restore fails if the original disk is detached from the instance
      25.  
        Additional steps required after a MongoDB snapshot restore
      26.  
        Additional steps required after an Oracle snapshot restore
      27.  
        Additional steps required after restoring an AWS RDS database instance
    6. Protecting assets with CloudPoint's agentless feature
      1.  
        About the agentless feature
      2.  
        Prerequisites for the agentless configuration
      3.  
        Granting password-less sudo access to host user account
      4.  
        Configuring the agentless feature
  2. Section II. CloudPoint maintenance
    1. CloudPoint logging
      1.  
        About CloudPoint logging mechanism
      2. How Fluentd-based CloudPoint logging works
        1.  
          About the CloudPoint fluentd configuration file
        2.  
          Modifying the fluentd configuration file
      3.  
        CloudPoint logs
    2. Troubleshooting CloudPoint
      1.  
        Restarting CloudPoint
      2.  
        Troubleshooting CloudPoint logging
      3.  
        CloudPoint agent fails to connect to the CloudPoint server if the agent host is restarted abruptly
      4.  
        CloudPoint agent registration on Windows hosts may time out or fail
      5.  
        Disaster recovery when DR package is lost or passphrase is lost
    3. Upgrading CloudPoint
      1.  
        About CloudPoint upgrades
      2.  
        Supported upgrade path
      3.  
        Upgrade scenarios
      4.  
        Preparing to upgrade CloudPoint
      5.  
        Upgrading CloudPoint
    4. Uninstalling CloudPoint
      1.  
        Preparing to uninstall CloudPoint
      2.  
        Backing up CloudPoint
      3.  
        Unconfiguring CloudPoint plug-ins
      4.  
        Unconfiguring CloudPoint agents
      5.  
        Removing the CloudPoint agents
      6.  
        Removing CloudPoint from a standalone Docker host environment
      7.  
        Restoring CloudPoint

Meeting system requirements

CloudPoint host requirements

The host on which you install CloudPoint must meet the following requirements.

Table: Operating system and processor requirements for CloudPoint host

Category

Requirement

Operating system

  • Ubuntu 16.04 and 18.04 Server LTS

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 7.x

Processor architecture

x86_64 / AMD64 / 64-bit processors

Table: System requirements for the CloudPoint host

Host on which CloudPoint is installed

Requirements

Amazon Web Services (AWS) instance

  • Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instance type: t3.large

  • vCPUs: 2

  • RAM: 16 GB

  • Root disk: 64 GB with a solid-state drive (GP2)

  • Data volume: 50 GB Elastic Block Store (EBS) volume of type GP2 with encryption for the snapshot asset database; use this as a starting value and expand your storage as needed.

Microsoft Azure VM

  • Virtual machine type: D2s_V3 Standard

  • CPU cores: 2

  • RAM: 16 GB

  • Root disk: 64 GB SSD

  • Data volume: 50 GB Premium SSD for the snapshot asset database; storage account type Premium_LRS; set Host Caching to Read/Write.

Ensure that do the following before you deploy CloudPoint on an RHEL instance in the Azure cloud:

  • Register the RHEL instance with Red Hat using Red Hat Subscription Manager

  • Extend the default LVM partitions on the RHEL instance so that they fulfil the minimum disk space requirement

Google Cloud Platform (GCP) VM

  • Virtual machine type: n1-standard-2

  • vCPUs: 2

  • RAM: 16 GB

  • Boot disk: 64 GB standard persistent disk, Ubuntu 16.04 Server LTS

  • Data volume: 50 GB SSD persistent disk for the snapshot asset database with automatic encryption

VMware VM

  • Virtual machine type: 64-bit with a CloudPoint supported operating system

  • vCPUs: 8

  • RAM: 16 GB or more

  • Root disk: 64 GB with a standard persistent disk

  • Data volume: 50 GB for the snapshot asset database

Physical host

(x86_64 / AMD64)

  • Operating system: A 64-bit CloudPoint supported operating system

  • CPUs: x86_64 (64-bit), single-socket, multi-core, with at least 8 CPU count

  • RAM: 16 GB or more

  • Boot disk: 64 GB

  • Data volume: 50 GB for the snapshot asset database

Disk space requirements

CloudPoint uses the following file systems on the host to store all the container images and files during installation:

  • / (root file system)

  • /var

The /var file system is further used for container runtimes. Ensure that the host on which you install or upgrade CloudPoint has sufficient space for the following components.

Table: Space considerations for CloudPoint components

Component

Space requirements

CloudPoint Docker containers

10 GB

CloudPoint agents and plug-ins

350 MB for every CloudPoint plug-in and agent configured

Additionally, CloudPoint also requires a separate volume for storing CloudPoint data. Ensure that you create and mount this volume to /cloudpoint on the CloudPoint host.

Table: Space consideration for CloudPoint data volume

Volume mount path

Size

/cloudpoint

50 GB or more

Applications, operating systems, cloud, and storage platforms supported by CloudPoint agents and plug-ins

CloudPoint supports the following applications, operating systems, cloud, and storage platforms.

These assets are supported irrespective of how you configure CloudPoint, whether using the CloudPoint cloud or storage agents and plug-ins (earlier known as off-host plug-ins), or using the CloudPoint application configuration plug-ins (earlier known as on-host plug-ins), or using the CloudPoint agentless feature.

Table: Supported applications, operating systems, cloud, and storage platforms

Category

Support

Applications

Notes:

  • Oracle database applications are not supported in a Google Cloud Platform (GCP) cloud environment.

    This is a limitation imposed by the companies owning these products and services, and is currently outside the scope of CloudPoint.

  • CloudPoint does not support application-consistent snapshots on ext2 file systems.

  • CloudPoint does not support Microsoft SQL Server workloads in a GCP cloud environment.

Operating systems on supported assets

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 7.x

  • Windows Server 2012, 2012 R2, and Windows Server 2016

Note:

CloudPoint agents are not supported on non-English operating systems.

Cloud platforms

  • Amazon Web Services (AWS)

    If you wish to protect applications, the applications must be hosted on a t2.large or a higher specification AWS instance type. CloudPoint currently does not support applications that are running on t2.medium or a lower instance type.

    For protecting Microsoft Windows-based applications, use t2.xlarge or t3.xlarge or a higher specification instance type.

  • Microsoft Azure

    If you wish to protect applications, the applications must be hosted on a D2s_V3 Standard or a higher specification Azure virtual machine type.

    For protecting Microsoft Windows-based applications, use B4ms or D4s_V3 or a higher specification virtual machine.

    Note:

    The CloudPoint Azure plug-in supports disks of type Premium_LRS, Standard_LRS, and StandardSSD_LRS.

    All other disk types are defaulted to Standard_LRS during snapshot restore operations.

  • Google Cloud Platform (GCP)

    If you wish to protect applications, the applications must be hosted on a n1-standard-2 or a higher specification GCP virtual machine type.

Storage platforms

Note:

To allow CloudPoint to discover and protect AWS Nitro-based Windows instances that use NVMe EBS volumes, ensure that the AWS NVMe tool executable file, ebsnvme-id.exe, is present in any of the following locations on the AWS Windows instance:

  • %PROGRAMDATA%\Amazon\Tools

    This is the default location for most AWS instances.

  • %PROGRAMFILES%\Veritas\Cloudpoint

    Manually download and copy the executable file to this location.

  • System PATH environment variable

    Add or update the executable file path in the system's PATH environment variable.

    If the NVMe tool is not present in one of the mentioned locations, CloudPoint may fail to discover the file systems on such instances.

    You may see the following error in the logs:

    "ebsnvme-id.exe" not found in expected paths!"
CloudPoint time zone

Ensure that the time zone settings on the host where you wish to deploy CloudPoint are as per your requirement and synchronized with a public NTP server.

By default, CloudPoint uses the time zone that is set on the host where you install CloudPoint. The timestamp for all the entries in the logs are as per the clock settings of the host machine.

Proxy server requirements

If the instance on which you are deploying CloudPoint is behind a proxy server, that is, if the CloudPoint instance connects to the internet using a proxy server, you must specify the proxy server details during the CloudPoint installation. The CloudPoint installer stores the proxy server information in a set of environment variables that are specific for the CloudPoint containers.

The following table displays the environment variables and the proxy server information that you must provide to the CloudPoint installer. Make sure you keep this information ready; you are required to provide these details during CloudPoint installation.

Table: Proxy server details required by CloudPoint

Environment variables created by CloudPoint installer

Description

VX_HTTP_PROXY

Contains the HTTP proxy value to be used for all connections. For example, "http://proxy.mycompany.com:8080/".

VX_HTTPS_PROXY

Contains the HTTPS proxy value to be used for all connections. For example, "https://proxy.mycompany.com:8080/".

VX_NO_PROXY

Contains the hosts that are allowed to bypass the proxy server. For example, "localhost,mycompany.com,192.168.0.10:80".

CloudPoint services that need to communicate externally via a proxy server use these predefined environment variables that are set during the CloudPoint installation.