NetBackup™ AdvancedDisk Storage Solutions Guide

Last Published:
Product(s): NetBackup & Alta Data Protection (11.0)
  1. Introducing AdvancedDisk
    1.  
      About the AdvancedDisk storage option
  2. Licensing AdvancedDisk
    1.  
      About the AdvancedDisk license
    2.  
      License AdvancedDisk
  3. Configuring AdvancedDisk
    1.  
      Configuring the AdvancedDisk option
    2.  
      About AdvancedDisk file system requirements
    3.  
      Configure the NetBackup service credentials for CIFS storage and disk storage units
    4.  
      About AdvancedDisk storage servers
    5.  
      About AdvancedDisk data movers
    6.  
      About AdvancedDisk preferred or required read servers
    7.  
      About data encryption for AdvancedDisk storage
    8.  
      About key management for encryption of NetBackup AdvancedDisk storage
    9. Configuring key management for NetBackup AdvancedDisk storage encryption
      1.  
        Set up the KMS database for NetBackup AdvancedDisk storage encryption
      2.  
        Create a KMS key group for NetBackup AdvancedDisk storage encryption
      3.  
        Create a KMS key for NetBackup AdvancedDisk storage encryption
      4.  
        Save a record of the KMS key names for NetBackup AdvancedDisk storage encryption
    10. Configure an AdvancedDisk storage server
      1.  
        AdvancedDisk storage server configuration options
    11.  
      About AdvancedDisk disk pools
    12.  
      Configure a CIFS disk volume for AdvancedDisk encryption
    13. Configure an AdvancedDisk disk pool
      1.  
        NetBackup nbdevconfig command options for AdvancedDisk disk pools
      2.  
        AdvancedDisk disk pool properties
    14. Configure an AdvancedDisk storage unit
      1.  
        AdvancedDisk storage unit properties
      2. About AdvancedDisk storage unit recommendations
        1.  
          About configuring a favorable client-to-server ratio
        2.  
          About throttling traffic to the media servers
    15.  
      About storage lifecycle policies
    16. Creating a storage lifecycle policy
      1.  
        Storage lifecycle policy settings
    17.  
      Creating a backup policy
    18.  
      Resilient network properties
    19.  
      Specify resilient connections for clients
  4. Managing AdvancedDisk
    1. Manage AdvancedDisk storage servers
      1.  
        View AdvancedDisk storage servers
      2.  
        Determine the AdvancedDisk storage server state
      3.  
        View AdvancedDisk storage server attributes
      4.  
        Remove AdvancedDisk storage server attributes
      5.  
        Remove an AdvancedDisk storage server from disk pool access
      6.  
        Delete an AdvancedDisk storage server
    2. Manage AdvancedDisk disk pools
      1.  
        View AdvancedDisk disk pools
      2.  
        About changing the AdvancedDisk disk pool size
      3.  
        Adding volumes to an AdvancedDisk disk pool
      4.  
        Change the AdvancedDisk disk pool properties
      5.  
        Determine the AdvancedDisk disk pool state
      6.  
        Changing AdvancedDisk disk pool state
      7.  
        Determine the AdvancedDisk disk volume state
      8.  
        Change AdvancedDisk disk volume state
      9.  
        Merge AdvancedDisk disk pools
      10.  
        Remove a volume from an AdvancedDisk disk pool
      11.  
        Delete an AdvancedDisk disk pool
    3.  
      About monitoring AdvancedDisk storage capacity and usage
    4.  
      Monitor NetBackup disk activity
    5.  
      View AdvancedDisk disk reports
    6. Display detailed AdvancedDisk storage usage information
      1.  
        NetBackup disk volume capacity and usage reference
    7.  
      Display KMS key information for AdvancedDisk encryption
  5. Troubleshooting AdvancedDisk
    1. About unified logging
      1.  
        About using the vxlogview command to view unified logs
      2.  
        Examples of using vxlogview to view unified logs
    2. About legacy logging
      1.  
        Creating NetBackup log file directories for AdvancedDisk
    3.  
      NetBackup AdvancedDisk log files
    4.  
      AdvancedDisk troubleshooting
    5.  
      Resolve an incorrect storage type problem

About AdvancedDisk disk pools

A disk pool represents disk volumes on the underlying disk storage. NetBackup aggregates the disk volumes into pools of storage you can use for backups. A disk pool is the storage destination of a NetBackup storage unit.

Disk pools are either AdvancedDisk type or AdvancedDisk_crypt type.

See About data encryption for AdvancedDisk storage.

For the AdvancedDisk_crypt disk type on CIFS storage, you must configure the disk volumes before you configure the disk pool.

See Configure a CIFS disk volume for AdvancedDisk encryption.

See Configure an AdvancedDisk disk pool.

Cohesity recommends that disk pool and disk volume names be unique across your enterprise.

The following are disk pool and volume considerations for AdvancedDisk storage:

Capacity management

If an AdvancedDisk disk pool is a storage destination in a storage lifecycle policy, NetBackup capacity management applies. If you share the volumes in an AdvancedDisk disk pool with other users, NetBackup cannot manage disk pool capacity or storage lifecycle policies correctly.

Volume selection

NetBackup selects disk volumes based on available capacity and predicted size of the backup. NetBackup tries to write backup data to a single volume.

Disk spanning

If necessary, backup images span disk volumes in a disk pool. (Exception: NetBackup does not span volumes for the AdvancedDisk_crypt type of disk pool.) Backup images do not span across multiple disk pools.

To reduce disk spanning, each volume in a disk pool should be larger than your largest backup. NetBackup then can store your largest backup on a single volume if that volume does not contain other backup images.

Note:

Some file systems limitations can affect whether or not NetBackup can detect file system capacity accurately. On those file systems, Cohesity recommends that you do not span backup images across volumes.

See About AdvancedDisk file system requirements.

Disk size and performance

NetBackup assumes that all disk volumes within a disk pool are similar in size and performance characteristics. Although you can use dissimilar disk volumes in a disk pool, performance may be unpredictable.

If you have the disk volumes that have significantly different characteristics, group them into multiple disk pools. Each of those disk pools should contain the volumes that have similar characteristics.

Disk contention

NetBackup queues backup and restore jobs if insufficient resources are available.

To limit the possibility of write contention between backup jobs (and therefore job queuing), ensure that a disk pool contains a sufficient number of volumes. The number of volumes should be equal to or greater than: the total number of maximum concurrent jobs that are allowed in all of the storage units that use a disk pool.

Volume managers

The AdvancedDisk storage implementation presents mounted file systems as disk volumes to NetBackup. Therefore, you can use AdvancedDisk disk pools with the volume managers that work at a level closer to the hardware than the file system.