Rename client script

Question

One thing I have been tasked with is to have a consistent naming of clients across all backup zones, ie those clients that have been entered as a client by the short name will be deleted and readded as their FQDN as long as they check out successfully with DNS now (with hosts files being largely phased out). Since there are several hundred clients I will do this by script so here is what I am planning to do:

nsradmin query to extract the following fields and write to a temp file:

type;name;client id;comment;scheduled backup;schedule;browse policy;retention policy;directive;group;save set;remote access;remote user;password;backu
p command;Save operations;aliases;parallelism;application information;ndmp;storage nodes;clone storage nodes;recover storage nodes

Split temp file up into individual temp files for each client entry.

For each file extract name and determine if short or long name - if long name do nothing further, if short name:

extract FQDN from aliases field
run DNS lookups against short and FQDN; run reverse lookup

If problem update comment field to indicate DNS issues and do nothing further with this client

Delete client entry using nsradmin and client temp file
Amend client temp file changing short name to FQDN; amend comment field
Use client temp file to create new entry; apply twice due to using same client ID

Can anyone see anything missing here; particularly with checking other client types for that client, pools etc?

DavidHampson · Answer

What would happen with the media database entries, would they be removed when the client is removed or would it be at next nsrim run - this would necessitate scanning a large number of tapes in?

website · Answer

This is one trouble thing,you need to change whole index information.It's not suggested.

DavidHampson · Answer

That should not be a problem, I will retain the client ID and set the index path field to be /nsr/index/shortname. The question is does the media database remove its entries when the client is deleted (like doing an nsrmm -d) or do they remain and get cleared down at the next run of nsrim? The first case would necessitate scanning in lots of media again - probably impractical, the second should not. I will run some tests on this and see what happens...

ble1 · Answer

When you delete the client mdb won't be touch. As soon as it is renamed due to the same clientid this will be reflected to mdb. After that you just need to stop NW, rename old clientname dir in index to new one and start it up.

aismaili · Answer

my suggestion would be to manually conduct your steps on one client and see if the results you achieve is what you want. next, develop a script and run it on one another client before running it over across all others.

DavidHampson · Answer

Thanks Hrvoje, I hoped that would be the case!

DavidHampson · Answer

HrvojeYou were correct. There is just one thing I think it will be useful to add here, that the index needs renaming to what the new client name will be prior to it being recreated otherwise it creates a new client index.If you can reply to this I can give you your green star as I have already marked your response as helpful!

ble1 · Answer

Yes, but even if you get new client index, by stopping NW and moving old index folder to new one (mv old_name new_name) will do the trick.

dugans1 · Answer

Hi david, (Hoping for that green star)if you export the client id and the short name and create the new client with the old client id and the short name in the alias colum, i think that might waork and you would not need to touch the Media DB. If i'm wrong please post so i know.

DavidHampson · Answer

Already solved Scott - I captured the nsradmin output, split it into sections for each client, extracted the name, verified rpcinfo -p (ping fails for some clients as they are behind a firewall), verified name resolution was consistent and extracted FQDN, if OK delete client, rename index to /nsr/index/fqdn, add client (twice) using nsradmin and including client ID, add any other client instances (once). All worked okay on an old server, we are going run the script on out production boxes sometime this month.

NetWorker

Rename client script

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