Netting Out NetBackup Blog

Our passion is protecting your data. Check out news and insights from the Symantec NetBackup team addressing datacenter issues like disaster recovery, deduplication, Windows application protection and continuous data protection.

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  Updated: AbdulRasheed 22 Jan 2013

  Frequently Asked Questions on NetBackup Accelerator

  NetBackup Accelerator is an exciting feature introduced in NetBackup 7.5 and NetBackup Appliances software version 2.5. This blog is not a substitute for NetBackup documentation. NetBackup Accelerator transforms the way organizations do backups, I am compiling a list of frequently asked questions from NetBackup Community forums and providing answers. If you have follow up questions or feedback, post them as comments. I shall try to answer the questions or someone else in the community can jump in. Fasten your seat belts! You are about to get accelerated!  What is NetBackup Accelerator? NetBackup Accelerator provides full backups for the cost of an incremental backup. cost reduction in full backups = reduction in backup window, backup storage, client CPU, client memory, Client disk I/O, network bandwidth etc. NetBackup Accelerator makes this possible by making use of a platform and file system independent track log...
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  Updated: Mayur Dewaikar 22 Jan 2013

  Don't Get Duped by Dedupe

  If you are evaluating dedupe solutions, the dedupe ratios claimed by dedupe vendors are bound to intrigue you.  I have seen claims of dedupe rates as high as 50:1 and I am sure there are claims of even higher dedupe than that. Are such dedupe rates realistic? Speaking truthfully, yes, but one must understand the assumptions and the math behind such high dedupe rates.  These dedupe rates generally have the following assumptions: Logical Capacity: Logical capacity is the amount of data one “would have” stored with no dedupe or compression. So for example, if you are protecting 20 TB of data for 30 days and if you are running daily backups, your total data protected data (in theory) is 20 x 30= 600 TB. In practice, for an environment with average change rate, backend dedupe capacity is equal to the front end capacity for a 30 day retention period. So assuming 20 TB of dedupe storage is needed, your dedupe ratio is 600/20 = 30:1. While this makes...
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  Updated: AbdulRasheed 22 Jan 2013

  Symantec NetBackup 5220 Appliance featured at SC ’11 Super Computing conference

  When Lisa Graff, VP/GM of Intel’s Platform Engineering Group took the stage at a special event during SC ’11 Super Computing Conference in Seattle, I was not the only one who had wondered why the new launch was named EPSD 3.0, when there was no 2.0.  Within 10 minutes of her announcement speech, she articulated why it wasn’t just a 2.0! Okay, what is EPSD? It stands for Intel Enterprise Platform and Services Division. This group designs and builds server board and related products for Channel and alliances. When Symantec, the world-leader in security and storage solutions, sought a partner to help deliver it's award winning backup software in an appliance form factor, it selected Intel EPSD for an enterprise class server board. The result can be found in the NetBackup 5220, a single-vendor, purpose-built, enterprise backup...
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  Updated: Jed Gresham 22 Jan 2013

  DR of the Living Dead

  With the one-two punch of an earthquake in the Mid-Atlantic US followed closely by a hurricane potentially hitting the same region, Disaster Recovery is probably a popular discussion right now in the Washington DC area.  Of course Business Continuity professionals write contingency plans for all types of disasters, not just ones caused by nature.  Don’t you want to ask God, or Mother Nature, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster what else we should be planning for, and in what order or combination?  Do you think DC Business Continuity professionals have planned for things like enemy countries parachuting in armies of robotic killer crabs with pompadours and lasers?  What about zombies?  And is there a real difference between planning for zombies or natural disasters?  Well, that’s what I’d like to explore today; the nuances of disaster planning for the zombie apocalypse as it pertains to data protection. I’d like you to treat...
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  Updated: AbdulRasheed 22 Jan 2013

  All new NetBackup 5220: The complete and purpose-built backup appliance

    IDC defines(1) a purpose-built backup appliance as a disk-based solution that utilizes software, disk arrays, server engine(s), or nodes that are used for a target for backup data and specifically data coming from a backup application (e.g., NetBackup, Backup Exec, Networker etc.). These products are stand-alone disk systems purpose built to serve as a target for backup.   Symantec’s NetBackup 5200 series appliances, while purpose built for backups, are much more than a traditional PBBA. For example, the all new NetBackup 5220 appliance can be deployed as a NetBackup master server, media server or both. This modular appliance can be used for implementing a brand new NetBackup domain for a remote office or enterprise without needing additional software based backup application to manage data protection for clients. NetBackup 5220 is not just a purpose built backup target,...
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  Updated: Mayur Dewaikar 22 Jan 2013

  NetBackup Deduplication- FUD vs. Reality

  In my current role at Symantec, I spend a lot of time talking to customers about their data protection strategies. It is interesting to note how much misinformation some of our competitors continue to give customers about Symantec’s deduplication technology.  They continue to scour older product manuals to find information that is inaccurate and continue to use it against Symantec to create FUD in the minds of customers. It has gotten so bad that I am going to recommend one of our competitors to change their tag line from “Where information lives” to “Where MIS-information lives”. OK, jokes apart, I thought it would perhaps be worthwhile to blog about exactly how Symantec approaches deduplication so we can put an end to all this misinformation. ...
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  Updated: AbdulRasheed 22 Jan 2013

  How much does a deduplication solution really cost you?

  There are a number of deduplication solutions from various vendors available for you to choose from. There are plenty of discussions about various kinds of deduplication solutions and how those help to reduce the amount of secondary storage required for backups. In a series of blogs titled The power of NetBackup deduplication, we looked at various aspects of NetBackup deduplication and elaborated on how NetBackup provides a powerful, global, flexible and application aware deduplication technology which stands out from the crowd. The availability of appliance form factor for NetBackup deduplication made it a very popular turnkey solution for enterprise. However we didn’t really say anything about one of the most important decision factor when you are shopping for dedupe, how much does it really cost to implement and maintain a...
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  Updated: AbdulRasheed 22 Jan 2013

  The power of NetBackup Deduplication: Application awareness and global deduplication

  In the previous blog in this series (see links below) on Power of NetBackup Deduplication, we talked about two special powers of NetBackup deduplication, viz. how dedupe processing can be distributed and how backups are securely streamed. Now let us talk about two more exciting differentiators.  Application aware deduplication The technology in NetBackup Appliances for data reduction is NetBackup Deduplication.  Unlike third party vendor solutions where all backup streams are treated the same way in an effort to identify duplicate data with excessive processing overhead, NetBackup Deduplication understands the backup streams. NetBackup Deduplication uses the normalized stream to identify data type, detect file boundaries and does deduplication with less resource overhead. For example, a backup stream from a NetApp filer coming in ufsdump (NDMP backup) format is identified using a deduplication stream handler that can individually process the file objects...
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  Updated: AbdulRasheed 22 Jan 2013

  The power of NetBackup Deduplication: Distributed processing and secure backup streams

  Data deduplication is the most popular form of storage capacity optimization.  Deduplication makes it possible to store more on disk with less backend storage, hence it is a very promising method to eliminate or minimize tape as the backup medium. The traditional deduplication appliances may reduce the storage required for backups, but it still does not address key issues in data protection for enterprise data centers. Shrinking backup windows: The data needs to be streamed to a backup server before it can be written to deduplication storage, hence the backup servers still need resources at the same or higher level as was the case before introducing the deduplication device.  As the production data size increases, the backup infrastructure would need to be upgraded or expanded to maintain the backup window. Flooded network infrastructure: The traditional deduplication appliances are typically end points in a...
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  Updated: Joe Pfeiffer 22 Jan 2013

  Master Servers, Media Servers and now...Storage Servers

  Every NetBackup user understands the 3-tiered architecture NBU has with a Master Server, Media Servers and Clients. NetBackup 6.5 introduced a new 4th tier called a "storage server" that have been getting a lot of attention as of late since it sits at the center of NetBackup 7 deduplication, OpenStorage and even the cloud storage options. Storage servers sit under the control of a media server in the architecture hierarchy and just like how a master server can also be a media server, a storage server can also be a master or media server.  It's a nicely scalable solution since all these tiers can be on one host but as you scale up and out you have the option to start breaking out dedicated media servers and storage servers to load balance or provide multiple points of redundancy (this is backup after all). Where storage servers...