Protecting IT with NetWorker

NetWorker’s licensing model has changed in recent years allowing existing customers to access additional features they weren’t previously aware of or using. Many administrators have inherited the backup environment they manage due to organizational changes or turnover and are struggling to figure out where all the pieces fit. It is difficult for a NetWorker Administrator to see a road map of where the pieces fit by reading NetWorker’s usual detailed product documentation. Additionally, many storage administrators are also in charge of multiple products and roles when it comes to being an administrator in information technology and this makes it impossible to find time to review all of the guides before being thrust into the role of managing these environments.

In this article, Aaron Kleinsmith describes how NetWorker is used to coordinate backup and recovery activity for an enterprise environment using complimentary EMC products and add-on features such as NetWorker Modules, Snapshot Management, Block-Based Backup, Data Domain, Avamar, Data Protection Advisor, Backup and Recovery Manager, and EMC Backup and Recovery Appliance. Though not inclusive of all possible combinations that can be configured, the article covers the most common options. It includes additional insights into business use cases for different configurations and best practices for the different features.

While not proposed as a replacement for EMC published Installation Guides, Administration Guides, Release Notes, Integration Guides, and so on, this article can be used as a road map and overview of how NetWorker can coordinate protecting data in the enterprise with additional features and complimentary products that may be documented elsewhere, as opposed to bundled together in a single place or document. Best practices are provided for performing backups and recoveries and to which business cases these options can be applied.

The target audience for this article is NetWorker Administrators who want to gain a better understanding of how NetWorker can address the needs of their clients, i.e. database administrators, network administrators, server administrators, and email administrators that manage the organization’s enterprise environment, but not usually the backup infrastructure.

Read the full article.