Veritas NetBackup™ Appliance Release Notes

Last Published:
Product(s): Appliances (3.1)

New Operational Notes for NetBackup Appliance 3.1

Note:

If you are familiar with the Operational Notes for the previous release, review this section to see only the newly documented content for this release. You should also check the Release content appendix of this document to see the issues that have been resolved for this release.

Note:

The notes and the known issues that are documented in this section may also apply to previous releases.

The following list contains the notes and the known issues that are newly documented for this release:

  • About Media Server Deduplication Pool (MSDP) changes in NetBackup 8.1

    If you upgrade your NetBackup 5220 appliance to appliance version 3.1, there will be a performance degradation of up to 35%. The performance degradation occurs because NetBackup 8.1 upgraded to new Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) Publication 180-1 SHA-2 cryptographic algorithms to improve the NetBackup MSDP deduplication hashing technology. The 5220 appliance models were shipped with older Intel processors that do not have the ability to accelerate secure hash algorithms. This causes an increase in the processor load, resulting in a degradation of deduplication performance. Other appliance models are not affected.

    Veritas recommends either of the following workarounds:

    • Refresh your 5220 hardware with current shipping 5240 appliances by contacting the Veritas Sales team.

    • Do not upgrade the NetBackup 5220 appliance to 3.1 as the End of Support Life (EOSL) for 5220 is August 14, 2018.

      The End of Support Life for NetBackup 5220 appliance is also documented here:

      https://sort.veritas.com/eosl

    Additionally, NetBackup 5020 and 5030 deduplication appliances with software version 1.4.5 or later cannot perform an optimized deduplication to NetBackup 8.1 or a NetBackup 3.1 or later appliance. Optimized deduplication is not supported with NetBackup 8.1 and NetBackup appliance 3.1 releases.

  • Some EEBs have been introduced recently that let you manage appliances with versions 2.7.3 or 3.0 from the Appliance Management Console:

    https://www.veritas.com/support/en_US/article.100040019

    If you reimage or perform a factory reset on a 3.0 NetBackup appliance and then upgrade this appliance to 3.1 from the Appliance Management Console, you may be asked to enter a token on the Additional requirements screen.

    When you enter a token, the upgrade fails saying that it needs a reissue token. The following error message appears on the Activity Monitor:

    V-409-777-1182 - A reissue token is required. Enter the reissue token for the required host to get a host ID based certificate.

    This happens only when the 3.0 appliance is configured as a media server and connected to a 3.1 master server. To resolve this issue, restart the upgrade process and enter the reissue token. See the NetBackup Security and Encryption Guide for more information about the reissue token.

  • The NetBackup job may hang when you use Fibre Channel (FC) for optimized duplication or Auto Image Replication between NetBackup appliances with the software version 3.1 and earlier versions. When the NetBackup job hangs, do the following to work around the issue:

    • Identify the software version of the source and target appliances. You can use the following command to verify the appliance software version.

      Main > Appliance > Status

    • If the source appliance uses software version 3.0 or earlier, and the target appliance uses 3.1, you need to log on to the source appliance and adjust the chunk size to 128 KB or a greater value.

      To adjust the chunk size, run the following command from the NetBackup Appliance Shell Menu.

      Main > Support > FibreTransport Chunksize

  • When you enable the Fibre Transport media server (FTMS) for SAN Client on the NetBackup appliance 3.1 and then run backup jobs for SAN clients, you may find that the jobs do not go over Fibre Channel (FC). The FTMS target port status shows Disconnected. If this issue occurs, refer to the Technical Note 100041215 for more information.

  • When you allocate space on a physical appliance media server, note that the unallocated space shown in the NetBackup Appliance Web Console may not be accurate. This is because 100GB space is automatically reserved by the NDMP Log partition. For checking the partition detail, you can go to the NetBackup Appliance Shell Menu, and run the Main > Manage > Storage > Show Partition command.

  • After an upgrade to version 3.1, before adding any packages or files to the repository you must first increase the size of the /config partition to 150 GB. For complete details, see the Appliance Management Guide.

  • Changing the management role of an Appliance Management Server (AMS) to agent is not supported. Similarly, changing the management role of an agent to AMS is not supported.

  • If you install your own certificate on the AMS or change the hostname of the AMS, then all the agents that were already registered must be added again. Similarly if you install your own certificate on the agent or change the hostname of the agent, you must add the agent again to the AMS. For more information, see the Appliance Management Guide.

  • Consider a scenario where an agent is being managed by an AMS and then a factory reset is performed on the specific agent. In this case, the agent is still displayed on the Home page in the AMS but some of the operations performed on that agent will fail. There will be no other indication on the AMS that the agent is no longer added to the AMS. To resolve this issue, you can remove the agent from the Appliance Management Console and then add the agent again to the specific AMS. For more information, see the Appliance Management Guide.

  • An input/output error occurs when accessing Universal Shares due to the VpFS service not running. If you experience this issue, contact Veritas Technical Support and reference internal Technote 100040197.

  • Universal Share management actions can time-out when there is heavy MSDP load. For complete details, refer to the Technote 100040183.

  • The NetBackup CloudCatalyst Appliance Configuration Wizard fails if you reuse cloud storage server configuration details that do not include a region.

    When you reuse a service host in step "[2a/5 oo---] Cloud storage region," the service host displays with a region even if you did not specify a region when you created the previous cloud storage server. When there is no region, the configuration wizard incorrectly displays the cloud instance name as the region name. If you select this region, the wizard eventually fails to configure the cloud storage server and the following error is displayed:

    [Error] Unable to add the cloud storage server to the cloud instance
     'abc123.company.com'. Please factory reset the appliance and 
    retry the configuration.
    [Error] Unable to create the cloud storage server on the appliance. 
    The appliance may be unconfigurable. Please factory reset the 
    appliance and retry the configuration.
    [Error] Please retry the role configuration. If the problem persists,
    contact Veritas Technical Support.
    

    For more details and a workaround for this issue, refer to the Technote 100039991.

  • You cannot view or update the Data Buffer Parameters for an appliance media server from the NetBackup Appliance Web Console with software version 3.1. This only applies for the NetBackup 52xx Appliances that are configured as media servers.

    When you navigate to the Manage > Host > Data Buffer page on an appliance media server, the following error appears:

    Error while retrieving data buffer parameters.

    To view and update the data buffer parameters, use the Settings > NetBackup command from the NetBackup Appliance Shell Menu. For more information, see the NetBackup Appliance Commands Reference Guide.

  • During the setup of the NetBackup 53xx high availability (HA) configuration, the NetBackup media server is restarted automatically. After the restart, the NetBackup client may use the LAN instead of the Fibre Channel for the backup data transactions. To work around this issue, refer to SAN clients use LAN instead of FT.

  • In either an incomplete or a complete NetBackup 53xx HA configuration, Veritas recommends that you do not run the following commands:

    • Support > InfraServices > Stop Database

    • Support > InfraServices > Stop All

    These two commands may stop the database services that are used for the NetBackup 53xx HA configuration. If the services are stopped, contact Veritas Technical Support.

  • If any error occurs during the HA operations, it requires to roll back the operations and restart the system. But the system may not be restarted properly. If you wait for more than 30 minutes for the restart, Veritas recommends that you restart the system manually.

  • In a complete NetBackup 53xx HA configuration, some services that should be online are in offline state when you check the HA status with the command Manage > HighAvailability > Status.

  • In a complete NetBackup 53xx HA configuration, if the following error appears:

    EXIT STATUS 5988: The host name is not part of the host ID-to-host name mapping list.

    Clear the host entries as follows:

    • Log on to the Java-based NetBackup Administration Console.

    • In the left pane, expand Security Management > Host Management.

    • At the bottom of the right pane, select the Mappings for Approval tab.

    • Reject all the host entries that are related to the current HA configuration.

  • If the following message appears while the node removal procedures, you can restart the node where you run the command and try again:

    [Error] Failed to remove the node.

  • In a complete 53xx HA configuration, it may take about six minutes to start or stop the service after the following commands are run successfully:

    • Main > Settings > FibreTransport Deduplication Disable

    • Main > Settings > FibreTransport Deduplication Enable

  • In either an incomplete or a complete NetBackup 53xx HA configuration, the service or services are not in the correct status. You can use the following workaround:

    • Restart the EMM server on the master server.

    • Restart the NetBackup processes.

  • In a complete 53xx HA configuration, if you use the tape devices to back up your data, the following errors may occur:

    INFO EXIT STATUS 2001: No drives are available

    You can restart the Media Manager device daemon on the two nodes as follows to work around this issue:

    • On the master server, log on to the Java-based NetBackup Administration Console as the admin user.

    • Expand Media and Device Management > Devices in the left pane.

    • Right click on the Devices, and select Stop/Restart Media Manager Device Daemon from the shortcut menu.

    • In the drop-down list of the Device host, select the host name of either node in the HA configuration.

    • In the Action area, select the radio button of Stop/Restart, and click OK.

    • Right click on the Devices again, and select Stop/Restart Media Manager Device Daemon from the shortcut menu.

    • In the drop-down list of the Device host, select the host name of the other node in the HA configuration.

    • In the Action area, select the radio button of Stop/Restart, and click OK.

  • In a complete 53xx HA configuration, if one of the nodes is turned off, you may see the following wrong information from the NetBackup Appliance Web Console:

    • The status of the HA configuration is incomplete.

    • The Add Partner button appears.

    The wrong information disappears after the node is powered on.

  • During the node removal procedures, if the node to be removed is accidentally turned off or restarted, the node can still be removed. When the node is powered on, you need to perform the following procedures to avoid the malfunction of the HA configuration:

    • Disconnect the Ethernet cables from the removed node.

    • Disconnect the FC cables from the removed node.

    • Perform the factory reset on the removed node.

  • After the STIG option is enabled, a STIG-compliant password policy automatically overrides and replaces the default appliance password policy. The STIG-compliant password policy is enforced for all appliance users. However, the following password age rules are not enforced for any existing appliance users:

    • Maximum days for password change (PASS_MAX_DAYS)

    • Minimum days for password change (PASS_MIN_DAYS)

    This issue affects all users that were created when the default appliance password policy was in force. Even after these user passwords are changed to meet the STIG-compliant password policy, the age rules are still not enforced. This issue does not affect the users that are created after the STIG option is enabled.

    For complete details about how to resolve this issue, refer to the following article:

    https://www.veritas.com/docs/100040387