NetBackup™ Deployment Guide for Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Services (EKS) Cluster

Last Published:
Product(s): NetBackup & Alta Data Protection (10.0.0.1)
  1. Introduction to NetBackup on EKS
    1.  
      About NetBackup deployment on Amazon Elastic Kubernetes (EKS) cluster
    2.  
      Required terminology
    3.  
      User roles and permissions
    4.  
      About MSDP Scaleout
    5.  
      About MSDP Scaleout components
    6.  
      Limitations in MSDP Scaleout
  2. Deployment with environment operators
    1. About deployment with the environment operator
      1.  
        Prerequisites
      2.  
        Contents of the TAR file
      3.  
        Known limitations
    2.  
      Deploying the operators manually
    3.  
      Deploying NetBackup and MSDP Scaleout manually
    4.  
      Configuring the environment.yaml file
    5.  
      Uninstalling NetBackup environment and the operators
    6.  
      Applying security patches
  3. Assessing cluster configuration before deployment
    1.  
      How does the Config-Checker utility work
    2.  
      Config-Checker execution and status details
  4. Deploying NetBackup
    1.  
      Preparing the environment for NetBackup installation on EKS
    2.  
      Recommendations of NetBackup deployment on EKS
    3.  
      Limitations of NetBackup deployment on EKS
    4. About primary server CR and media server CR
      1.  
        After installing primary server CR
      2.  
        After Installing the media server CR
    5.  
      Monitoring the status of the CRs
    6.  
      Updating the CRs
    7.  
      Deleting the CRs
    8.  
      Configuring NetBackup IT Analytics for NetBackup deployment
    9.  
      Managing NetBackup deployment using VxUpdate
    10.  
      Migrating the node group for primary or media servers
  5. Deploying MSDP Scaleout
    1.  
      Deploying MSDP Scaleout
    2.  
      Prerequisites
    3.  
      Installing the docker images and binaries
    4.  
      Initializing the MSDP operator
    5.  
      Configuring MSDP Scaleout
    6.  
      Using MSDP Scaleout as a single storage pool in NetBackup
    7.  
      Configuring the MSDP cloud in MSDP Scaleout
  6. Monitoring NetBackup
    1.  
      Monitoring the application health
    2.  
      Telemetry reporting
    3.  
      About NetBackup operator logs
    4.  
      Expanding storage volumes
    5.  
      Allocating static PV for Primary and Media pods
  7. Monitoring MSDP Scaleout
    1.  
      About MSDP Scaleout status and events
    2.  
      Monitoring with Amazon CloudWatch
    3.  
      The Kubernetes resources for MSDP Scaleout and MSDP operator
  8. Managing the Load Balancer service
    1.  
      About the Load Balancer service
    2.  
      Notes for Load Balancer service
    3.  
      Opening the ports from the Load Balancer service
  9. Performing catalog backup and recovery
    1.  
      Backing up a catalog
    2.  
      Restoring a catalog
  10. Managing MSDP Scaleout
    1.  
      Adding MSDP engines
    2.  
      Adding data volumes
    3. Expanding existing data or catalog volumes
      1.  
        Manual storage expansion
    4.  
      MSDP Scaleout scaling recommendations
    5. MSDP Cloud backup and disaster recovery
      1.  
        About the reserved storage space
      2.  
        Cloud LSU disaster recovery
    6.  
      MSDP multi-domain support
    7.  
      Configuring Auto Image Replication
    8. About MSDP Scaleout logging and troubleshooting
      1.  
        Collecting the logs and the inspection information
  11. About MSDP Scaleout maintenance
    1.  
      Pausing the MSDP Scaleout operator for maintenance
    2.  
      Logging in to the pods
    3.  
      Reinstalling MSDP Scaleout operator
    4.  
      Migrating the MSDP Scaleout to another node group
  12. Uninstalling MSDP Scaleout from EKS
    1.  
      Cleaning up MSDP Scaleout
    2.  
      Cleaning up the MSDP Scaleout operator
  13. Troubleshooting
    1.  
      View the list of operator resources
    2.  
      View the list of product resources
    3.  
      View operator logs
    4.  
      View primary logs
    5.  
      Pod restart failure due to liveness probe time-out
    6.  
      Socket connection failure
    7.  
      Resolving an invalid license key issue
    8.  
      Resolving an issue where external IP address is not assigned to a NetBackup server's load balancer services
    9.  
      Resolving the issue where the NetBackup server pod is not scheduled for long time
    10.  
      Resolving an issue where the Storage class does not exist
    11.  
      Resolving an issue where the primary server or media server deployment does not proceed
    12.  
      Resolving an issue of failed probes
    13.  
      Resolving token issues
    14.  
      Resolving an issue related to insufficient storage
    15.  
      Resolving an issue related to invalid nodepool
    16.  
      Resolving a token expiry issue
    17.  
      Resolve an issue related to inconsistency in file ownership
    18.  
      Resolve an issue related to KMS database
    19.  
      Resolve an issue related to pulling an image from the container registry
    20.  
      Resolving an issue related to recovery of data
    21.  
      Check primary server status
    22.  
      Pod status field shows as pending
    23.  
      Ensure that the container is running the patched image
    24.  
      Getting EEB information from an image, a running container, or persistent data
    25.  
      Resolving the certificate error issue in NetBackup operator pod logs
    26.  
      Resolving the primary server connection issue
  14. Appendix A. CR template
    1.  
      Secret
    2.  
      MSDP Scaleout CR

Preparing the environment for NetBackup installation on EKS

Ensure that the following prerequisites are met before proceeding with the deployment:

EKS-specific requirements

  1. Create a Kubernetes cluster with the following guidelines:
    • Use Kubernetes version 1.21 onwards.

    • AWS default CNI is used during cluster creation.

    • Create a nodegroup with only one availability zone and instance type should be of atleast m5.4xlarge configuration.

      Note:

      Using separate nodegroups is required for the NetBackup Operator, NetBackup and MSDP deployments.

      The nodepool uses AWS manual or autoscaling group feature which allows your nodepool to scale by provisioning and de-provisioning the nodes as required automatically.

      Note:

      All the nodes in node group must be running on the Linux operating system.

    • Minimum required policies in IAM role:

      • AmazonEKSClusterPolicy

      • AmazonEKSWorkerNodePolicy

      • AmazonEC2ContainerRegistryReadOnly

      • AmazonEKS_CNI_Policy

      • AmazonEKSServicePolicy

  2. Use an existing AWS Elastic Container Registry or create a new one and ensure that the EKS has full access to pull images from the elastic container registry.
  3. Deploy aws load balancer controller add-on in the cluster.

    For more information on installing the add-on, see Installing the AWS Load Balancer Controller add-on.

  4. Install cert-manager by using the following command:

    $ kubectl apply -f https://github.com/cert-manager/cert-manager/releases/download/v1.8.0/cert-manager.yaml

    For more information, see Documentation for cert-manager installation.

  5. The FQDN that will be provided in primary server CR and media server CR specifications in networkLoadBalancer section must be DNS resolvable to the provided IP address.
  6. Create a storage class with EBS storage type and retain reclaim policy. Provide the name of the created EBS storage type in the storageclass name field during the deployment of primary server/ media server CR.

    For more information on creating the storage class with EBS provisioner, see Kubernetes documentation.

  7. If NetBackup client is outside VPC or if you want to access the WEB UI from outside VPC then NetBackup client CIDR must be added with all NetBackup ports in security group inbound rule of cluster. For more information on NetBackup ports, See About the Load Balancer service..
    • To obtain the cluster security group, run the following command:

      aws eks describe-cluster --name <my-cluster> --query cluster.resourcesVpcConfig.clusterSecurityGroupId

    • The following link helps to add inbound rule to the security group:

      Add rules to a security group

Host-specific requirements

  1. Install AWS CLI.

    For more information on installing the AWS CLI, see Installing or updating the latest version of the AWS CLI.

  2. Install Kubectl CLI.

    For more information on installing the Kubectl CLI, see Installing kubectl.

  3. Configure docker to enable the push of the container images to the container registry.
  4. Create the OIDC provider for the AWS EKS cluster.

    For more information on creating the OIDC provider, see Create an IAM OIDC provider for your cluster.

  5. Create an IAM service account for the AWS EKS cluster.

    For more information on creating an IAM service account, see Amazon EFS CSI driver.

  6. If an IAM role needs an access to the EKS cluster, run the following command from the system that already has access to the EKS cluster:

    kubectl edit -n kube-system configmap/aws-auth

    For more information on creating an IAM role, see Enabling IAM user and role access to your cluster.

  7. Login to the AWS environment to access the Kubernetes cluster by running the following command on AWS CLI:

    aws eks --region <region_name> update-kubeconfig --name <cluster_name>

  8. Free space of approximately 8.5GB on the location where you copy and extract the product installation TAR package file. If using docker locally, there should be approximately 8GB available on the /var/lib/docker location so that the images can be loaded to the docker cache, before being pushed to the container registry.