Veritas NetBackup™ Flex Scale Installation and Configuration Guide
About disk erasure
Disk erasure destroys all data stored on the appliance disks by overwriting the disks with a digital pattern. The operation cannot be reverted and the erased data cannot be recovered. Ensure that the data has been backed up and verified, or that the data is no longer needed before you erase the disks. The data erasure process complies with the National Institute of Standards and Technology Special Publication 800-88 (NIST SP800-88).
Note:
Veritas recommends that you erase the disks before you perform a factory reset.
Before erasing the disks on the node, note the following points:
Disks cannot be erased when a node is a part of the cluster.
Once a data erasure operation is running on a disk, no other storage operations can be performed on the disk. Data cannot be accessed from the node once disk erasure begins.
Disk erasure can take up to days or weeks to complete depending on the size of the disk and the pass algorithm used.
To minimize the chance that the erased data is recoverable, the data erasure feature provides options for the pass algorithm that is used to overwrite all of the data on the disks. The following pass algorithms are supported:
One-pass algorithm: Overwrites the disks with a randomly-selected digital pattern. This option takes the least amount of time.
Three-pass algorithm: Overwrites the disks a total of three times. The first pass, it uses a pre-selected digital pattern. The second pass uses the binary complement of the previous pattern, and the last pass uses a randomly-selected digital pattern.
Seven-pass algorithm: Overwrites the disks a total of seven times. In each pass, the data is overwritten with a randomly-selected digital pattern or with the binary complement of the previous pattern.
You can configure data erasure multiple times. You can only use one of the three pass algorithms each time you configure the data erasure.
Data erasure is only supported from the NetBackup Flex Scale Appliance Shell Menu. The following command operations are available from the Main >Manage > Storage view:
Erase Configure: Specify the pass algorithm to use to erase the disks. The time required for disk erasure is determined by the size of the disks and the pass algorithm used.
Erase Show: Shows the progress of the erasure operations and the erasure status for all the disks.
Erase Abort: Stops the erasure operation, which is in progress.