The Hustle

Our requirement:   to ensure we have the latest available NetBackup version installed, essentially to cater for Win2008 servers but also for any other benefits with the latest release.

We initially intended to upgrade to 6.5.2 shortly after its release during the first half of 2008, however this idea was soon binned due to the number of bugs reported in the GA version & 6.5.2A (having only fixed the scheduling issue) was not deemed to be acceptable either. Deciding to monitor the release of 6.5.3 we waited & waited and to all intents & purposes it looked like this was an acceptable version to upgrade to - & then the security hotfix meant 6.5.3.1! However, we did still have every intention of upgrading to this version. But time wore on and then 6.5.4 was on the horizon so it was deemed appropriate to await developments & monitor the forums for possible issues.

There are, so far, only a couple...

With respect to data protection (I'm not going to call it backup, people. I much prefer smarmy and fancy words. Then again shiny objects fascinate me, too!) jobs and such, there's a number of questions that one can expect to be asked.  I know that for my current job I was asked how to set up a three way NDMP backup and how to bring down netbackup services, from a command line, on a windows server.  But how about other questions?  I'm a subscriber to the Veritas Mailing list (I'm oldschool like that) and I was intrigued by one of the posts.

A job seeker was looking for a Storage Job that required Netbackup knowledge.  Unfortunately, the job seeker did not get that job and was a little miffed that they did not have an answer for the following questions:

1. If you wanted to know what IP address netbackup was using to perform
   backups what command would you run and where would you run it?
    
2. How is image stored...

We do our anual DR tests, and now we are looking to step them up a bit.  Might be nice to see what others do or dont do in this arena. 

We have a DR box that is on a seperate network.  We can take that box build it as a master server and import our catalog from NBU 6.5.3.  We can then patch that into our library via fiber single path slowness, combined with the old leftover of a DR box we should have our critical restore done within 24 hours.  

In a true DR scenario where our primary DC was gone.  I would probably more than likely promote our media server to a master server then do the catalog import piece.  I have not done this since the new and improved 6.5 way of doing things with that small catalog file that i get emailed daily to my inbox.  Have others ?  Does it take long?  Realizing we all have different size catalogs, but in general have you had sucess.  Please add any thoughts...

History of NetBackup

 * In 1987, a backup software solution was written by a small group of engineers at Control Data for Chrysler Corporation, and later adopted by other customers of Control Data.
* In 1990, Control Data formed the Automated Workstation Backup System (AWBUS) business unit. The first version of AWBUS supported two tape drives in a single robotic carousel with the SGI IRIX operating system.
* In 1993, Control Data renamed the product to BackupPlus 1.0. (This is why many NetBackup commands have a 'bp' prefix.) Support for media Volume Management and Server Migration/Hierarchical Storage Management was added.
* In the end of 1993, the product and Control Data’s Storage Management 12-person team were acquired by Openvision. This is why, on UNIX platforms, NetBackup installs into /usr/openv. During this time, Open Vision renamed Backup Plus to...