Veritas NetBackup™ LiveUpdate Guide

Last Published:
Product(s): NetBackup (8.1.1, 8.1)

About NetBackup LiveUpdate

NetBackup LiveUpdate provides a cross-platform, policy-driven method to distribute NetBackup Release Updates and hot fix downloads to NetBackup hosts.

NetBackup LiveUpdate supports upgrades to major releases and minor releases for NetBackup clients. A separate DVD is included with your 7.7.2 NetBackup media kit for you to copy the LiveUpdate client packages to your NetBackup LiveUpdate server.

Note:

NetBackup LiveUpdate does not support upgrades to major releases and minor releases for NetBackup servers.

Caution:

The client installations that are initiated from LiveUpdate do not deploy security certificates. The lack of a certificate causes backups and restores to fail. Manual steps are required to deploy security certificates. See technote_link for more information on security certificates.

The LiveUpdate process is managed manually to help you control which computers are updated and when the updates occur.

The following describes how updates are downloaded and installed:

  • First, you must manually copy the necessary files to your designated NetBackup LiveUpdate server.

    For NetBackup Release Update packages, download the necessary files from the appropriate Veritas support site. Update packages consist of several compressed files. You must download the full set.

    For major or minor releases starting with NetBackup version 7.1, copy the contents from the DVD that is included in your media kit.

  • Next, create a LiveUpdate policy and run it on your NetBackup master server. The policy starts a LiveUpdate session with each client in the policy.

    For release updates and hot fixes, you can include NetBackup servers in a LiveUpdate policy. For upgrades to major or to minor releases, only clients should be included in a LiveUpdate policy.

  • When you run the LiveUpdate policy, the LiveUpdate agent on each client checks with the LiveUpdate server for any available updates. The agent then launches the NetBackup update installation scripts that install the updates silently.

NetBackup LiveUpdate uses the same agent as Veritas LiveUpdate. The difference is the server where the available product updates reside.

The following describes these differences:

NetBackup LiveUpdate

  • You set up and configure a LiveUpdate server in your backup environment for distribution of NetBackup release update files.

  • You download the updates manually to this server from the NetBackup support site.

Veritas LiveUpdate

The LiveUpdate agent is preconfigured to contact the Veritas website where updates for Veritas products other than NetBackup are available.

For more information about Veritas LiveUpdate, go to http://www.veritas.com.

When you install or upgrade to NetBackup 7.7.2, the following LiveUpdate agent is installed automatically:

Windows systems

Windows LiveUpdate Agent version 3.3.0.92

UNIX systems

Java LiveUpdate Agent version 3.6.25

See About Java JRE support.

Before you can use NetBackup LiveUpdate, you must set up and configure your NetBackup LiveUpdate server. This server can be either a web server or a shared disk. The only requirement is that it must be accessible by all of the NetBackup hosts that you want to update.

Note:

Currently, to use a Windows shared disk you must set up the share as a null share. For more details, refer to the following tech note at http://www.veritas.com/docs/TECH55675.

This server is used to download and store NetBackup release update files. The server is also used to store the client packages that are included with major and minor releases. From this server, the files are distributed and installed on the computers in your NetBackup environment.

The following describes the NetBackup LiveUpdate installation capabilities:

Remote installation

  • Downloaded release updates and hot fixes can be installed remotely to NetBackup servers and clients.

  • Client packages in major and minor releases can be copied to the NetBackup LiveUpdate server and installed remotely to NetBackup clients.

Cross-platform installation

  • Windows and UNIX hosts can be updated from a single LiveUpdate policy.

  • The policy can be created and run from either a Windows or a UNIX host.

Clustered systems

  • Release updates and hot fixes can be downloaded and installed on Windows and UNIX clustered systems.

  • Client packages in major and minor releases can be copied to the NetBackup LiveUpdate server and installed on clients in Windows and UNIX clusters.

Using LiveUpdate for update installation does not require local administrator privileges on NetBackup installations, except on Windows clustered systems. You must, however, have privileges to run NetBackup policies from the NetBackup master server.

NetBackup LiveUpdate is an additional method to distribute updates quickly and more conveniently. The current program for customers to obtain updates remains in place.