Best parctice to virtualize a NetWorker server ?

Hello Prajith,

Any reason ?

It is a Symantec best practice in certains environnement so why not with NetWorker ?

Regards,

F@b

Hello Fab,

Its not recommended to virtualize NetWorker server.

It is always recommended to have a dedicated machine for NetWorker server.

Regards,

Prajith

This is not recommended mainly due to performance reasons.

But I have seen many users using NetWorker server on virtualized environment. Usually in small backup environment it will not usually cause any issues. For larger environment its better to have dedicated machine.

Reasons,

Prajith

Prajith,

I understand that we must have good performance on disks drives,mainly for DB, this is obviously the same thing for dedicated servers.

Today we may have strong virtualized servers so we can use mechanism like SRM and other feature to simplify future evolutions.

We will have about 1000 clients by datazone.

So I want to know if there is points which will be a pain ?

Regards,

F@b

Right,

That's why we want to use our vm infrastructure, it crossing our multi sites !!

So we can move our servers by vm features.

F@b

Personally, I don’t know if it’s best practice or not, but I wouldn’t virtualize it because in the case of a true disaster your vm environment will have to be online in order to get to the networker server.

I suggest you read this article:

NetWorker Server and Storage Node in a VM

https://community.emc.com/docs/DOC-9738

If you have a moderately sized environment with a small number of clients and data volumes, and if you are exclusively using Advanced File Type Devices (AFTDs) – meaning backup to disk – then it is considered entirely feasible and supported to run a NetWorker backup server and/or storage node in a VM.

check this out from https://support.emc.com/kb/116187

Symptoms

NetWorker Server installation in a Virtual Machine on VM-Ware,  Hyper-V, AIX LPAR etc.

Cause

Support and installation options.

Resolution

Yes, NetWorker server is supported on a Virtual Machine.   However, you need to be very careful to provide sufficient  guaranteed resources (especially memory and CPU) to the Virtual  Machine to enable the correct functioning of the NetWorker  server.

However, it is not currently supported to have a VMWare or  Hyper-V Virtual Machine as a Storage Node connected to anything  except Advanced File Type Devices (or File Type Devices).   You cannot connect a NetWorker Server on a VM-Ware or  Hyper-V Virtual Machine to a SAN or a SCSI tape  library.  There is not enough SCSI isolation currently  available through this framework for this to be supported.   There would be a risk of one Virtual Machine disrupting  operations on the SCSI bus for all Virtual Machines resulting in  data loss.

See NetWorker Software Compatibility Guide for full details of  which ESX or Hyper-V versions are supported with which NetWorker  versions.  There are also details of support for other  Virtualization technologies - Xen, IBM LPAR, Solaris Zones, HP  VPAR.

Please mark my answer as "correct/helpful answer" if it helps.

Hello,

Good informations, many thanks to all of you !!

I just want to moderate this with the fact that we don't want to use it as Storage Node, just Server and first article was write on 02/2011 and according to Eric Carter who has written this article : At the time of this writing however, it is still not a recommended practice and has not been qualified for use with NetWorker environments.

I hope that things change especially in regard with competitors.

Maybe you can take a look at this very good article : Psst! Want to touch my backup server? » NetWorker Information Hub

Especially at the end, thanks to Preston De Guise for it !

Regards,

F@b

we want to deploy lan-free backups of 4-8 servers only, hope we can deploy networker in vmware or OVMs

the PTL is connected outside VMware infra