Veritas NetBackup™ Appliance Fibre Channel Guide

Last Published:
Product(s): Appliances (3.3.0.1, 3.2)
Platform: NetBackup Appliance OS
  1. About NetBackup Fibre Transport and SAN Client
    1.  
      About NetBackup Fibre Transport
    2. About NetBackup SAN Client and Fibre Transport
      1.  
        About the SAN Client license key
  2. About optimized duplication and Auto Image Replication over FC
    1.  
      About Fibre Transport for optimized duplication and Auto Image Replication between appliances
  3. About backup to tape support
    1.  
      About backup to tape support for NetBackup appliances
  4. VMware support
    1. About NetBackup appliance as a VMware backup host
      1.  
        NetBackup appliance as backup host: component overview
      2.  
        Notes on NetBackup appliance as a VMware backup host
    2.  
      About appliance dynamic multi-pathing for VMware backups with SAN transport
  5. Supported Fibre Channel features on NetBackup appliances
    1.  
      About supported Fibre Channel features on NetBackup appliances
    2.  
      Fibre Channel feature support for appliance HBA configurations
    3.  
      Supported data transfer methods for NetBackup appliances
    4.  
      About Fibre Transport paths for NetBackup appliances
  6. NetBackup Appliance rear panel configurations
    1.  
      About the NetBackup 5230 rear panel configurations
    2.  
      NetBackup 5240 Appliance I/O configuration options
    3.  
      NetBackup 5240 Appliance total I/O on-board and PCIe ports
    4.  
      NetBackup 5250 Appliance rear panel I/O configuration options
    5.  
      NetBackup 5330 Appliance compute node PCIe slot I/O configuration options
    6.  
      Available NetBackup 5340 Appliance PCIe-based I/O configurations
    7.  
      Available NetBackup 5350 Appliance PCIe-based I/O configurations
  7. About the HBA port mode configuration
    1.  
      Supported Fibre Channel port configurations for the NetBackup 5230 appliances
    2.  
      Supported Fibre Channel port configuration for the NetBackup 5240 appliances
    3.  
      Supported Fibre Channel configurations for the NetBackup 5250 appliance
    4.  
      Supported Fibre Channel port configurations for the NetBackup 53xx appliances
    5.  
      About the factory default port mode configuration
    6.  
      Default port mode configuration for FTMS, optimized duplication, and Auto Image Replication
  8. Zoning the FC SAN
    1.  
      How to determine appliance HBA WWPNs
    2.  
      About zoning the SAN for NetBackup appliances
    3.  
      About HBA link status on the NetBackup Appliance Shell Menu
  9. About the Fibre Transport page on the NetBackup Appliance Web Console
    1. Settings > Network > Fibre Transport
      1.  
        About the HBA port mode configuration table
  10. Configuring Fibre Transport on the appliance
    1.  
      About Fibre Transport media server verification
    2.  
      Guidelines for changing NetBackup appliance FT target ports to receive data streams from multiple SAN Client FC initiator ports
    3. How to configure Fibre Transport for optimized duplication and Auto Image Replication over FC
      1. Configuring Fibre Transport to other NetBackup appliances
        1.  
          About the Fibre Transport chunk size
      2.  
        How to configure two NetBackup 52xx or 53xx appliances in different domains for MSDP replication
  11.  
    Index

About supported Fibre Channel features on NetBackup appliances

The appliances are rack-mount servers that run on the Linux operating system. NetBackup Enterprise Server software is already installed and configured to work with the operating system, the disk storage units, and the robotic tape device.

To use the NetBackup Enterprise Server software on the NetBackup appliance with the supported Fibre Channel (FC) features, you must configure the appliance FC settings first.

The NetBackup 52xx and 53xx appliances support the use of FC with some or all of the following features depending on hardware configuration:

  • SAN Client

  • Optimized duplication

  • Auto Image Replication

  • NetBackup for VMware

  • Tape out

Note:

NetBackup appliance supports the use of the DD Boost plug-in and its capabilities.

SAN Client

This feature provides high-speed backups and restores of NetBackup clients. A SAN client is a special NetBackup client that can back up large amounts of data rapidly over a SAN connection rather than a LAN. The backup and restore traffic occurs over FC, and the NetBackup server and client administration traffic occurs over the LAN.

You must enable the Fibre Transport media server (FTMS) feature on the NetBackup 52xx or 53xx appliance to use it for backing up SAN clients.

Optimized duplication

Note:

Optimized duplication over FC is only supported with NetBackup appliance products, and not supported with non-appliance NetBackup servers.

Optimized duplication copies the deduplicated backup images between appliances within the same domain.

For optimized duplication over FC, the duplication source must be a NetBackup 52xx or 53xx appliance. The duplication destination can be a NetBackup 52xx or 53xx appliance.

The source and the destination must use the same NetBackup primary server. The optimized duplication operation is more efficient than normal duplication because only the unique, deduplicated data segments are transferred. Optimized duplication reduces the amount of data transmission over your network and is a good method to copy your backup images off-site for disaster recovery.

You must configure appliances at both the source and the destination for optimized duplication over FC.

See How to configure Fibre Transport for optimized duplication and Auto Image Replication over FC.

Note:

In the Activity Monitor from the NetBackup Administration Console, the Transport Type field in the Detailed Status tab always reports LAN for duplication jobs over FC. To see the correct transport type, refer to the details in the Status box.

Auto Image Replication

Note:

Auto Image Replication over FC is only supported with NetBackup appliance products, and not supported with non-appliance NetBackup servers.

The backups that are generated in one NetBackup domain can be replicated to storage in one or more target NetBackup domains. This process is referred to as Auto Image Replication.

You must configure appliances at both the source and the destination for Auto Image Replication over FC.

You can use a NetBackup 52xx or 53xx appliance as the replication destination.

See How to configure Fibre Transport for optimized duplication and Auto Image Replication over FC.

For information about Auto Image Replication, see the NetBackup Deduplication Guide.

Note:

In the Activity Monitor from the NetBackup Administration Console, the Transport Type field in the Detailed Status tab always reports LAN for duplication jobs over FC. To see the correct transport type, refer to the details in the Status box.

NetBackup for VMware

This feature provides backup and restore of the VMware virtual machines that run on VMware ESX servers. NetBackup for VMware takes advantage of VMware vStorage APIs for data protection. The backup process is off-loaded from the ESX server to a VMware backup host.

Starting with NetBackup 52xx and 5330 appliance software version 2.5, you can use the appliance as a VMware backup host. Earlier software versions required a separate Windows system as the host.

For information about how to configure a NetBackup 52xx or 53xx as a VMware backup host, refer to the following topics:

See About NetBackup appliance as a VMware backup host.

See Notes on NetBackup appliance as a VMware backup host.

For complete details about NetBackup for VMware and how to configure VMware policies, see the NetBackup for VMware Administrator's Guide.

Tape out

NetBackup appliance supports backups to tape so that you can connect one or more tape libraries to them with FC. An FC host bus adapter (HBA) provides for connection to a TLD tape storage device.

For information about how to configure a NetBackup 52xx or 53xx for backups to tape, refer to the following topic:

See About backup to tape support for NetBackup appliances.

See Fibre Channel feature support for appliance HBA configurations.