Veritas NetBackup™ Appliance Release Notes

Veritas Smart Meter is a web-based tool that enables Veritas customers and partners to monitor their protection capacity. It helps you manage your NetBackup deployment more efficiently, spot trends, and plan for the future. With accurate, near real-time reporting, it reveals the total amount of data that is backed up. Alerts provide you a warning before you exceed your capacity limits. Smart Meter requires NetBackup 8.1.2 and later. For complete details, see the Veritas Smart Meter Getting Started Guide.

Starting with this release, NetBackup appliances include an option to enable FIPS compliant encryption in the Veritas Operating System (VxOS), as defined by the Federal Information Processing Standards 140-2. The option is available from the NetBackup Appliance Shell Menu. For more information, see theNetBackup Appliance Security Guide.

Starting with this release, NetBackup appliances support the NetBackup role-based access control (RBAC) feature. When you perform the initial configuration on a new master server appliance with version 3.1.2, or when upgrading a master server appliance to version 3.1.2, the nbasecadmin user is created automatically. This user is set to the Security Administrator role for RBAC to perform the necessary RBAC functions from the NetBackup Web UI. For more information, see the NetBackup Web UI Security Administrator's Guide.

Starting with this release, the NetBackup Key Management Service (KMS) supports encryption for MSDP. After KMS is configured and running on the master server, you can enable KMS encryption for MSDP on all of the media servers that are associated with the master server. For more information, see the NetBackup Appliance Security Guide.

Starting with this release, the Windows client add-on is no longer included with the NetBackup Appliance client add-on package. If you need to install or upgrade the Windows client add-on, log in to your Veritas Entitlement Management System (VEMS) account and download it.

Starting with this release, a rollback no longer occurs automatically if the post-upgrade self-test fails. Instead, the upgrade process is paused until you select one of the following options:

If the upgrade fails for any other reason, a rollback occurs automatically as usual. For more information, see the NetBackup Appliance Upgrade Guide.

Starting with this release, new pages that let you view appliance details and performance charts have been added in the Appliance Management Console. You can view these pages by clicking the appliance hostname from the Home page and viewing the Overview and Performance tabs. In addition, you can also compare performance metrics with up to four other appliances that use the same AMS. See the the Appliance Management Guide for more information.

The Appliance Management Server (AMS) and agent updates are included with NetBackup appliance software release 3.1.2. Additionally, these AMS and agent updates can be downloaded separately as a management update package. If you have configured NetBackup appliance version 3.1.1 as an AMS, you can download this management package to get the latest updates. The management update package must be installed on the 3.1.1 AMS. After you update the AMS, the agents that are registered to the AMS can be updated automatically or manually. You can view the AMS and agent version from the Home page of the Appliance Management Console. See the Appliance Management Guide for more information.

Starting with this release, the Instant Access feature is supported on NetBackup 5330, 5240 or 5340 appliances. This feature allows you to create an Instant Access VM from a NetBackup backup image. The VM is available almost instantaneously, achieving a near-zero recovery time objective. NetBackup mounts the VM snapshot directly on the backup storage device to allow your ESXi host or cluster to treat the snapshot as a normal VM.

For information about how to use this feature, see the NetBackup Web UI VMware Administrator's Guide.

Starting with this release, the FIPS options are supported for use with appliances (nodes) in a high availability (HA) setup. You must configure the FIPS options on both nodes and the configurations must match.

Starting with this release, the STIG feature remains enabled after an upgrade on both appliances (nodes) in an HA setup.

Starting with this release, a new type of Fibre Channel (FC) HBA card is supported to provide high-speed SAN Client backups and restores at 16Gb/s. For more information about new available appliance I/O configuration options, see the following documents:

NetBackup 5240 Appliance Product Description

NetBackup 5340 Appliance Product Description

For more information about SAN Client configuration, see the NetBackup Appliance Fibre Channel Guide.

After you upgrade to the software version 3.1.2, if you want to replace any existing 8Gb FC HBA cards with new 16Gb FC HBA cards, additional configurations are required.

To replace FC HBA cards and reconfigure the Fibre Transport Deduplication and SAN Client FTMS features on your appliance, do the following:

For complete details on Fibre Transport commands and how to configure the Fibre Transport deduplication and SAN Client FTMS in a target appliance, see the following documents:

NetBackup Appliance Commands Reference Guide

NetBackup Appliance Fibre Channel Guide

Starting with this release, to complete a new HA setup you must approve the host name mappings in the NetBackup Administration Console on the associated master server. If the mappings are not approved, the MSDP service will not be online after a switchover. Host name mapping approval is also required before you upgrade an HA configured appliance to version 3.1.2 or later. Otherwise, the preflight check does not allow the upgrade to start. For complete details on approving the host name mappings for an HA setup, see the following documents:

NetBackup 53xx Appliance Initial Configuration Guide

NetBackup Appliance Upgrade Guide

Starting with this release, the Main > Settings > Password command allows you to change the password for local users only. Passwords for remote users can no longer be changed with this command.

Starting with this release, a firewall policy provides added network security for the appliance. This feature changes the firewall default zone from "trusted" to "public". To provide maximum security, specific incoming connections (NetBackup ports in the firewall rules) are opened automatically while others are blocked automatically during various operations. After the appliance initial configuration is completed, default settings are enforced for open NetBackup ports on the appliance. The following commands have been added to let you view the currently open appliance ports, and to modify and then synchronize them with the open NetBackup ports:

Main > Settings > Security > Ports > Show

Main > Settings > Security > Ports > ModifyNBUPortRange

For more information about this feature and the related commands, see the following documents:

NetBackup Appliance Security Guide

NetBackup Appliance Commands Reference Guide

Starting with this release, NetBackup appliances gather telemetry information during upgrades. This feature gathers information at various stages of the upgrade in the form of events. If a failure occurs, it also collects logs to help identify the root cause of the failure. If Call Home is enabled, the collected logs and events are sent to the AutoSupport server. If Call Home is disabled, the logs and events are saved on the appliance.

Starting with this release, the Telnet package has been removed from the Veritas Operating System (VxOS). The package has been removed to comply with the STIG feature when it is enabled on NetBackup appliances. For more information, see the NetBackup Appliance Security Guide.