Veritas NetBackup™ SAN Client and Fibre Transport Guide

Last Published:
Product(s): NetBackup (8.1.1, 8.1)
  1. Introducing SAN Client and Fibre Transport
    1.  
      About NetBackup SAN Client and Fibre Transport
    2.  
      About Fibre Transport
    3.  
      About Fibre Transport media servers
    4.  
      About SAN clients
    5.  
      About the Fibre Transport Service Manager
    6.  
      About NetBackup Release Notes
  2. Planning your deployment
    1.  
      Planning your SAN Client deployment
    2.  
      About SAN Client best practices
    3.  
      SAN Client operational notes
    4. About SAN Client storage destinations
      1.  
        About SAN Client disk storage destinations
      2. About SAN Client tape storage destinations
        1.  
          SAN Client tape storage limitations
    5.  
      How to choose SAN Client and Fibre Transport hosts
    6.  
      About NetBackup SAN Client support for agents
    7.  
      About NetBackup SAN Client support for clustering
    8.  
      About NetBackup SAN Client support for Windows Hyper-V Server
    9.  
      About NetBackup SAN Client unsupported restores
    10.  
      About Fibre Transport throughput
    11.  
      Converting a SAN media server to a SAN client
  3. Preparing the SAN
    1.  
      Preparing the SAN
    2.  
      About zoning the SAN for Fibre Transport
    3.  
      About HBAs for SAN clients and Fibre Transport media servers
    4.  
      When selecting the HBA ports for SAN Client
    5.  
      About supported SAN configurations for SAN Client
  4. Licensing SAN Client and Fibre Transport
    1.  
      About SAN Client installation
    2.  
      About the SAN Client license key
    3.  
      When upgrading SAN Client and Fibre Transport
  5. Configuring SAN Client and Fibre Transport
    1.  
      Configuring SAN Client and Fibre Transport
    2. Configuring a Fibre Transport media server
      1.  
        About the target mode driver
      2.  
        About nbhba mode and the ql2300_stub driver
      3.  
        About FC attached devices
      4.  
        How to identify the HBA ports
      5.  
        About HBA port detection on Solaris
      6.  
        About Fibre Transport media servers and VLANs
      7.  
        Starting nbhba mode
      8.  
        Marking the Fibre Transport media server HBA ports
      9.  
        Configuring the media server Fibre Transport services
    3. Configuring SAN clients
      1.  
        About configuring firewalls for SAN clients
      2.  
        SAN client driver requirements
      3.  
        Configuring the SAN client Fibre Transport service
    4. Configuring SAN clients in a cluster
      1.  
        Registering a SAN client cluster virtual name
      2.  
        Setting NetBackup configuration options by using the command line
    5.  
      About configuring Fibre Transport properties
    6.  
      Configuring Fibre Transport properties
    7. Fibre Transport properties
      1.  
        About Linux concurrent FT connections
    8.  
      About SAN client usage preferences
    9. Configuring SAN client usage preferences
      1.  
        SAN client usage preferences
  6. Managing SAN clients and Fibre Transport
    1.  
      Enabling or disabling the Fibre Transport services
    2.  
      Rescanning for Fibre Transport devices from a SAN client
    3.  
      Viewing SAN Client Fibre Transport job details
    4.  
      Viewing Fibre Transport traffic
    5.  
      Adding a SAN client
    6.  
      Deleting a SAN client
  7. Disabling SAN Client and Fibre Transport
    1.  
      About disabling SAN Client and Fibre Transport
    2.  
      Disabling a SAN client
    3.  
      Disabling a Fibre Transport media server
  8. Troubleshooting SAN Client and Fibre Transport
    1.  
      About troubleshooting SAN Client and Fibre Transport
    2.  
      SAN Client troubleshooting tech note
    3.  
      Viewing Fibre Transport logs
    4. About unified logging
      1.  
        About using the vxlogview command to view unified logs
      2.  
        Examples of using vxlogview to view unified logs
    5.  
      Stopping and starting Fibre Transport services
    6.  
      Backups failover to LAN even though Fibre Transport devices available
    7.  
      Kernel warning messages when Veritas modules load
    8.  
      SAN client service does not start
    9.  
      SAN client Fibre Transport service validation
    10.  
      SAN client does not select Fibre Transport
    11.  
      Media server Fibre Transport device is offline
    12.  
      No Fibre Transport devices discovered

About zoning the SAN for Fibre Transport

Before you can configure and use the NetBackup Fibre Transport (FT) mechanism, the SAN must be configured and operational.

See About supported SAN configurations for SAN Client.

For SAN switched configurations, proper zoning prevents Fibre Transport traffic from using the bandwidth that may be required for other SAN activity. Proper zoning also limits the devices that the host bus adapter (HBA) ports discover; the ports should detect the other ports in their zone only. Without zoning, each HBA port detects all HBA ports from all hosts on the SAN. The potentially large number of devices may exceed the number that the operating system supports.

Instructions for how to configure and manage a SAN are beyond the scope of the NetBackup documentation. However, the following recommendations may help you optimize your SAN traffic.

Table: Best practices for zoning the SAN on NetBackup appliances describes the best practices for zoning the SAN on NetBackup appliances.

Table: Best practices for zoning the SAN on NetBackup appliances

Guideline

Description

One initiator per zone, multiple targets acceptable.

Veritas recommends that you create zones with only a single initiator per zone. Multiple targets in a single zone are acceptable, only if all of the targets are similar.

Tape target resources should be in separate zones from disk target resources, regardless of initiator. However, both sets of resources may share the same initiator.

Be aware of performance degradation when a port is configured for multiple zones.

If you use a single port as an initiator or a target for multiple zones, this port can become a bottleneck for the overall performance of the system. You must analyze the aggregate required throughput of any part of the system and optimize the traffic flow as necessary.

For fault tolerance, spread connectivity across HBA cards and not ports.

To ensure the availability of system connections, if you incorporate a multi-path approach to common resources, pair ports on separate cards for like zoning. This configuration helps you avoid the loss of all paths to a resource in the event of a card failure.

Zone the SAN based on WWN to facilitate zone migrations, if devices change ports.

It is recommended that you perform SAN zoning based on WWN. If switch port configurations or cabling architectures need to change, the zoning does not have to be recreated.

Table: Fibre Channel zones describes the zones you should use for your SAN traffic.

Note:

You must use physical port ID or World Wide Port Name (WWPN) when you specify the HBA ports on NetBackup Fibre Transport media servers.

See How to identify the HBA ports.

Table: Fibre Channel zones

Zone

Description

A Fibre Transport zone

A Fibre Transport zone (or backup zone) should include only specific HBA ports of the hosts that use Fibre Transport, as follows:

  • Ports on the FT media server HBAs that connect to the SAN clients. These ports use the Veritas target mode driver.

    See About the target mode driver.

  • Ports on the SAN client HBAs that connect to the media server ports that are in target mode. The ports on the SAN clients use the standard initiator mode driver.

    You must define the FT media server target ports by physical port ID or World Wide Port Name (WWPN). The target mode driver WWPNs are not unique because they are derived from the Fibre Channel HBA WWPN.

    The NetBackup SAN clients should detect only the HBA ports that are in target mode on the NetBackup media servers. They should not detect HBA ports in initiator mode on the NetBackup media servers. They should not detect the FC HBAs on other hosts.

    To promote multistream throughput, each SAN client should detect all target mode devices of the media server HBA ports in the zone.

External storage zone

If the storage is on a SAN, create an external storage zone. The zone should include the HBA ports for the storage and the FT media server HBA ports that connect to the storage. All of the ports in the storage zone use the standard initiator mode HBA driver.