Sun Fire X4500 as a Symantec Netbackup 6.
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Sun Microsystems, Inc. Table of Contents Introduction.....................................................................................................................................................3 Configuration .................................................................................................................................................. 4 Overview........................................................................................................................................
3 Introduction Sun Microsystems, Inc. Introduction The Sun Fire(TM) X4500 server delivers massive storage capacity and remarkable throughput making it an ideal nearline storage platform for backup and restore applications. Combining the power of the Solaris 10 Operating System with the data integrity and simplified administration of ZFS, the X4500 becomes an ideal candidate for streamlining and improving backup/restore operations.
4 Configuration Sun Microsystems, Inc. Configuration Overview The below diagram shows an example NBU configuration with the X4500 acting as a Media Server. The default NIC configuration on the X4500 allows up to four physical GigaBit Ethernet connections to be attached. The four connections can be utilized to back up four separate subnets, or the links can be aggregated together using dladm(1M) for improved throughput to a single subnet.
5 Configuration Sun Microsystems, Inc. Solaris Configuration The X4500 server used while testing for this paper was installed with Solaris 10 8/07. This is the recommended version to use with Netbackup as various ZFS improvements were introduced in this build. The X4500 has 48 500GB SATA drives. The two boot drives (c5t0d0 and c5t4d0) are mirrored using Solaris Volume Manager. The rest of the drives are available for backup data.
6 Configuration root@thumper1 # zpool list NAME SIZE USED AVAIL CAP HEALTH nbupool 18.1T 58.6G 18.1T 0% ONLINE Sun Microsystems, Inc. ALTROOT - The size listed in the above command is the actual physical space in the pool. This may differ from the actual space data may occupy as various RAIDZ methods and configurations are not taken into account. See the zpool(1M) man page for more details. ZFS Configuration In this example, the X4500 Media Server is configured to write to Basic Disk Storage Units.
7 Configuration Sun Microsystems, Inc. Netbackup Configuration The X4500 will be configured as a Media Server. In this example, it is assumed that there is a separate Master NBU server. The Netbackup and Media Manager package must be installed on the X4500. It also will require the appropriate server licensing. It is recommended that the Master server's bp.conf file be updated with the new Media server information before installing the software on the media server. An example is shown below.
8 Configuration Sun Microsystems, Inc. Where machinename is the name of the X4500 and masterserver is the name of the Master Server. The results of this command can be verified # nbemmcmd -listhost NBEMMCMD, Version:6.5 The following hosts were found: media thumper1 master sol-230 server sol-230 Command completed successfully. The bp.conf files on both Master and Media servers and any clients should be adjusted for the new Media Server.
9 Configuration Sun Microsystems, Inc. Use the NetBackup GUI for the remaining configuration Verify that the Media Server is recognized via Host Properties -> Media Servers Click on the X4500 hostname to ensure the Media Server is Connected The Master Server will already be listed.
10 To create a Storage Unit using the ZFS filesystems previously configured, follow the below procedures Storage -> Storage Units Right-Click to add new Storage Unit Sun Microsystems, Inc.
11 Storage Unit Configuration • Use Basic Disk as the Type • Ensure the Media Server is the X4500 • Set the Absolute pathname to one of the ZFS filesystems Sun Microsystems, Inc.
12 Follow the same procedures for the rest of the ZFS filesystems you have configured. Sun Microsystems, Inc.
13 Sun Microsystems, Inc. The individual Storage Units could then be used as backup destinations, however, configuring Storage Groups can prove beneficial.
14 Sun Microsystems, Inc. Add the Storage Units that have been created into a Storage Group. The Storage Unit Selection will be Round-Robin. This will ensure that backup streams are allocated across all units.
15 Sun Microsystems, Inc. Once the Storage Group is configured, the Policy Attributes for the backup jobs can be configured to use the Storage Group as the Policy Storage.
16 Frequently Asked Questions Sun Microsystems, Inc. Frequently Asked Questions Q1: How does the X4500 scale as the workload increases? A1: Testing was done to measure scalability by saturating each onboard GigE port in turn. Three Zpool configurations were tested. The RAIDZ1-6Spares (14.3TB of usuable space) configuration is the configuration listed in the example earlier in this guide. The RAIDZ1-NoSpares (16.
17 Frequently Asked Questions Sun Microsystems, Inc. A2: Yes. A Proof-of-Concept was done for a large customer and 10GB Ethernet was part of the testing. Using a Neterion Xframe II and the xge driver, 8 clients capable of delivering 100MB/sec each were configured to backup to a X4500. Jumbo Frames were enabled on all components. Throughput rates of 500-550 MB/sec were achieved using the Zpool/ZFS configurations mentioned above. Image duplication between two X4500 Media Servers was measured at 350 MB/sec.
18 Summary Sun Microsystems, Inc. Summary This guide was a Quick Start introduction into configuring the Sun Fire X4500 as a disk-cache Media Server for Veritas Netbackup 6.5. It gave examples on configuring the zpool and zfs filesystems on Solaris and how to configuration the Netbackup application to utilize the X4500. Using this guide, backup throughput rates of over 1TB per hour are achievable.
19 References Sun Microsystems, Inc. References i. Veritas Netbackup 6.5 Documentation 1. http://seer.entsupport.symantec.com/search_forms/doc_list.asp?DocType=Comp&C LSUB=NBUESVRSUB11682&MSUB=NBUESVRSUB11686&SearchArea=ALL&el=%2C+1& ddProduct=NBUESVR&pid=&width=&SearchTerm=&subject=NBUESVRSUB11686&Pro ductVersion=NBUESVRPVER24910&language=English ii. Sun Fire X4500 Document Collection 1. http://www.sun.com/products-nsolutions/hardware/docs/Servers/x64_servers/x4500/index.html iii.
