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NetBackup™ Snapshot Client Administrator's Guide

Last Published: 2022-10-23

Product(s): NetBackup & Alta Data Protection (10.1)

About NetBackup and Snapshot Manager integration for snapshot management

NetBackup interfaces with snapshot management servers to manage arrays for discovery of devices and snapshot lifecycle management. Snapshot management severs are installed separately apart from NetBackup and they have plugins for various storage arrays. Veritas Snapshot Manager (TM) is an example of a snapshot management server for NetBackup. Using the NetBackup Snapshot management framework, you can use Snapshot Manager for taking snapshots of your images. You can protect all the on-premises storage arrays that are supported by Snapshot Manager.

The following table describes the underlying tasks.

Table: Tasks for snapshot management

Task	Description
Configure the Snapshot Manager server in NetBackup.	You can configure the Snapshot Manager server as a snapshot management server. To configure the Snapshot Manager server in NetBackup you need to add the credentials of the Snapshot Manager server. See NetBackup Administrator's Guide, Volume I
Configure the Snapshot Manager plug-ins in NetBackup.	The Snapshot Manager plug-ins that are installed on the Snapshot Manager server must be registered and configured in NetBackup with the associated Snapshot Manager server. See NetBackup Administrator's Guide, Volume I
Configure a Standard policy to use VSO snapshot method.	See Configuring a Snapshot Manager policy. See Selecting the snapshot method.
Backup and restore procedures	See About performing a backup. See About performing a restore.

Considerations

Consider the following when integrating NetBackup with Snapshot Manager:

Deletion of Snapshot Manager host entry and its associated plug-ins is not supported in NetBackup.
Using Snapshot Manager, if you delete plug-ins that are configured in NetBackup, the images of snapshots that are taken using Snapshot Manager will be unusable.
Back up from snapshot and index from snapshot is supported. Replication operations are not supported.
For snapshot and index for snapshot, you can use any available storage unit.
Post integration, all the related operations must be performed from NetBackup. Results of operations that are performed outside NetBackup, will not be visible in NetBackup. Snapshot Manager has its own RBAC, where NetBackup is one of the users and operations performed only through NetBackup will be visible in NetBackup. For example, even though you can add Snapshot Manager plug-in from Snapshot Manager, you must add the plug-in from NetBackup, or the plug-in may not be visible in NetBackup.
HP-UX Native volume group Version 2.0 and later is not supported.
Raw device and raw partitions are not supported.
File system verification is not supported. You must skip the verification step and perform a force rollback. In the Restore Marked Files dialog box, select the Skip verification and force rollback check box.
Consider all the Snapshot Manager limitations.
Refer to the Veritas Snapshot Manager Installation and Upgrade Guide.
NetBackup integration is not supported with the Snapshot Manager freemium version.
It is recommended not to reinstall the Snapshot Manager server but to upgrade it. However, if you reinstall the Snapshot Manager server you need to reconfigure the Snapshot Manager server and the associated Snapshot Manager plug-ins.
Perform the following tasks for RHEL:
In the recent RHEL version, there are changes in usage of partition delimiter. Based on last character in the device path, OS decides if partition delimiter must be added or not. To address the change, update the udev rule to add partition delimiter 'p' on RHEL
- Open the /lib/udev/rules.d/62-multipath.rules file.
- Update the existing line:
```
RUN+="$env{MPATH_SBIN_PATH}/kpartx -an $tempnode", \
ENV{DM_MULTIPATH_NEED_KPARTX}=""
```
  To
```
RUN+="$env{MPATH_SBIN_PATH}/kpartx -an -p p $tempnode", \
ENV{DM_MULTIPATH_NEED_KPARTX}=""
```
- Restart the multipath service. Run the following command:
  # service multipathd restart
For devices in LVM, if multiple paths are used, ensure that multipathing service is enabled.
On SUSE Linux, ensure that the automount service is disabled.
Junction mount point on filler or array is not supported for snapshot operations with VSO FIM snapshot method.
For client-side nested mount points, rollback of parent mount points is not supported.