Storage Node V/s. Dedicated Storage Node Licensing

AFAIK, if you have DSN license and configure the device on a physical node, only data from this physical node could be backed up. That's the way DSN is supposed to work, can only backup data from it's own. If you want to backup data from another client, you should use SN (and expend a lot more money).

Really, I don't know if in such scenario you could use DSN, I would guess that you need SN license for that. From the docs I have here, you cannot use the virtual name as a SN, so you'll have to use the physical name as SN. This way, when you're going to backup data from the virtual one, it's like data is coming from another client, so DSN would not work.

Anyway, I don't know if I was clear enough. You get these erros when trying to backup something or just after configure the devices?

Regards,

Correct. EMC might change that soon if tests are successful for one current beta version (then DSN will work for clustered systems too).

Yes.

Was the behaviour same for version 6.x as well?

What is possible is that license check was not enforced before, but using DSN in cluster is not supported if you are going to backup virtual host. Funny enough, this will change soon, but until that moment he needs to pay as anyone else.

All I have done is upgrade a 6.x setup to 7.3.x and upgrade Dedicated Storage Node(v6) to Dedicated Storage Node(v7).

The customer never had a storage node license and has been using the same config for years.

What else could have gone wrong?

Is this adjustable or is it a probable bug in the previous version?

It's not a bug, but rather such design. You can't adjust it.

But it is difficult to understand and explain why it was working in 6.x and why not in 7.x?

Because license check has been enforced. Soon you will see the same thing with VTL licenses I believe. I believe it is more difficult to explain why customer was not made aware of it before.

Sad though that there are many things in EMC that the customer comes to know after purchasing when he is struck somewhere like in this case Customer would never understand why he should purchase SN license just because he has upgraded to a supported version. Interestingly, EMC sales makes these Sales without bothering to discuss these things while preparing BOM & Commercials.

They have recently sold 40 NRM licenses and when they are about to deliver, they recollect it is EOL product - then why do you sell them to new customers?

Because of money - of course In this specific case, with DSN license and cluster, if you can prove customer has been told they won't need one by Legato you can get them give you temp one until 7.4 is released (where this is planned to change). If not, it is not Legato fault, but of person who said we will purchase this and that.

if your systems are clustered, and your using a Virtual system name, do you mean a Cluster Alias. If so does the Cluster Alias have a dedicated DNS entry (IP address). If this is the case, why not setup the Tape drives as being connected to the Cluster Alias, i.e. create the Cluster Alias as the storage Node... this way anything the cluster alias can see is backed up as being local....and it would only require a DSN license to facilitate the backups.

or if this is not feasable or not an option, is it possible to perform Service failovers without SLA issues, as you could use a savepnpc functionality to have the Services all Failover to one single Cluster Mameber to perform the backups, and then the post command could return them back to the requires cluster members. Again maybe not feasable if you need to perform Hot backups or cant affect SLA;s.