Veritas NetBackup™ Appliance Decommissioning and Reconfiguration Guide

Last Published:
Product(s): Appliances (3.3.0.1, 3.2, 3.1.2, 3.1.1, 3.1)
Platform: NetBackup Appliance OS

About reconfiguring a NetBackup appliance

If you experience problems with the appliance software, you can attempt to roll back the appliance software to a checkpoint or you can perform a factory reset operation. With the factory reset option, you can reset the appliance to its original default settings or if checkpoints exist, you can reset the appliance to an existing checkpoint. If you chose to perform a factory reset, you have the option to preserve your catalog configuration and existing data.

In a disaster recovery situation you must determine if you have lost all of the data and any software updates that were currently on the media or master server appliance. Or you may determine that you have an opportunity to save all of the data. No matter which scenario you face, you must image the appliance and then reconfigure the appliance in the same way you did as a new appliance. Veritas recommends that you record all of your initial configuration information so that you can reference that information should you need to reconfigure.

Note:

During the reimaging process, all storage shelves that were already attached to the appliance should remain attached. In addition, do not attach any additional storage shelves.

Note:

Because NetBackup 5200 appliances are no longer shipped, Veritas does not support the ability to reimage a 5200 that has an earlier version of software with the current 2.6.0.x software release. You must reimage the 5200 appliance with the same supported software version, such as 2.5, and then upgrade to the 2.6.0.x release.

Warning:

Due to storage configuration enhancements beginning with NetBackup Appliance 2.6, it is not possible to retain storage information if you reimage a 2.6.x appliance to a version earlier than 2.6. If you need to preserve your backup data, you can only use a version that is within the same release line. For example, you can maintain your backup data if you reimage a 2.6.0.2 appliance to version 2.6.0.1. However, you cannot maintain your backup data if you reimage a 2.6.0.2 appliance to version 2.5.4.

Best practices before you begin reconfiguring your appliance

Before you reconfigure your appliance, you should consider the following with regards to license keys:

  • If you intend to preserve data during the reconfiguration process, you must use the NetBackup Appliance Shell Menu. Reconfiguration using the NetBackup Appliance Web Console is not supported in this release.

  • If during the reconfiguration process, the media or master server appliance goes through an initial configuration, then you must use the NetBackup Appliance Shell Menu to install the license keys before the initial configuration process begins. In addition, the user name and password may be set back to the default values if a factory reset operation was performed.

Record your configuration information before you begin a reconfiguration

Before you begin a reimage process, Veritas recommends that you record the configuration information that you entered when you performed the initial configuration process on the appliance. If a factory reset is run after the reimage process completes, you should enter the same configuration information to connect to the appliance. In addition, after a factory reset the user name and password are reset to the default values.

  • Network configuration:

    • Network interface

    • IP address

    • Subnet mask

    • Gateway

    • Network name

  • Host configuration:

    • For Domain Name System (DNS) - Domain name suffix, DNS IP address, and the Search domain

    • For non-DNS systems - IP address, Fully qualified host name, and the short host name

  • User name and password - Default user name is admin and the default password is P@ssw0rd.

  • Role configuration - It is important that you configure the appliance using the same role as you did when it was initially configured.

  • Storage configuration - If your media server appliance that has backup data on a disk that you want to preserve, you can record the following information so you have it available when you are ready to configure your storage.

    • Storage pool size

    • Disk pool name

    • Storage unit name

    • Deduplication password

See Reconfiguring a 52xx master server appliance using the NetBackup Appliance Shell Menu.

See Reconfiguring a 52xx or 53xx media server appliance using the NetBackup Appliance Shell Menu.