Ask the Expert: NetWorker Day-to-Day Operations - A Customer's Perspective

Hello

1) Looks like you do have long running sessions >24 hours..wohhoo..we are not alone..

what are they and is that a concern? maybe big size or hdfs?

2) Do you do cap plan for your backup volumes/types/size using native reports from Networker? or using some other 3rd party tools?

3) are you happy with cloning performance? how do you manage that and how long typically finishes for you?

that's all for now...

Thanks!

Hi Dan,

If your local DD breaks down, how will you recover the data? Have you made any (disaster) recovery plan?

Hey Tim,

A fully articulated DR plan is on our project roadmap. We do replicate data to a secondary DD and to tape.

Hey Thierry101! Ha! Yes we do Not my preference, but you have to work with what you have. All the culprits are NDMP backups to tape. I don't lose any sleep over it.  I do a monthly report for my client using a mix of native NetWorker reports and DPA. I myself don't get to deep into the analysis to help plan budget. I'll provide the requested metrics to mgmt and let them deal with that, I'm really not that smart.

We are using the optimized cloning and Its pretty good. I would like some more granularity as far as the scheduling, but other than that it's fine. We had only recently reconfigured the cloning from the GUI, previously we had used some scripts. The GUI gives me a better idea of what is going on.

We clone data from DD to secondary DD and also clone from DD to tape. In some cases I have at any time 3 copies of some datasets at these locations. The DD's are kind of new, so we a currently still getting organized as to what data will be written where. We have two data centers, with 1 DD990 at each location. The plan is to identify the location of all my backup clients and direct the backups to the local DD, then clone the data from it's primary to it's secondary. Does that make sense?

I am afraid this thread will be locked next week.

we have similar setup...how long your DAG exchange 2010 (if you have) clone to opposite DD takes?

do you dedicate them out ?

Will share my day to day task next week.........

Dan, I'm a total newbie to Networker, thank you for sharing your knowledge. I have your site bookmarked for future reference.

Is this nsrim a command that is scheduled automatically ?   or needs to be invoked by the admin?

Would output of the command be present in the Daemon log ?

It seems similar to Garbage collect in avamar and or expire inventory in TSM  just trying to put the function of it into

terms I understand.

Nsrim is run at the completion of the savegrp command if it had not been run in the last 24 hours. It identifies this by checking the timestamp of /nsr/mm/nsrim.prv. NSRIM will update the save set browse and retention times in the media database then invoke nsrck to remove any entries in the client file indexes that have expired. THis process is especially important to ensure tape and disk volumes are recycled. A tape or disk volume will become eligible to be reused when all of the savesets are identified as recyclable.

Thanks

Jack D.

Hey Thierry101! we dont use Networker to protect exchange. They instead use snapmanager on Netapp.

Hey JackD. I wanted to do this specific topic for guys like you. It wasnt very long ago I landed here to take care of NetWorker, although I was well experience in other backup products, Networker at times really made my head hurt.

NSRIM will run automatically.You can confirm by checking the access time on the /nsr/mm/nsrim.priv file.

I have seen occurrances where nsrim was running but not completeing. we found orphanded processes from previous attempts. Are you having an issue with media reclamation or space issuses on disk targets? It is similar to avamar garbage collect, without the activity restrictions. Althiugh it can be run when backups are going. Its best to run when quiet.

send me a note in my ECN inbox and keep in touch

Hey everyone, I wanted to write more here, but it will have to wait for another time. Crazy busy day here

I want to thanks EMC and Mark Brown for the invite to share some knowledge here. I want to leave you with some links to some great documents that should be mandatory reading.

Theory of Core Operations - I discovered this document last year. It looks like an amazing document on all aspects of NetWorker.

Guide to NSRADMIN -  Preston over at nsrd.info wrote a great micromanual focused on nsradmin alone. You need to know nsradmin

Enterprise Systems Backup and Recovery: A Corporate Insurance Policy - A great book and worth every penny. If you are a NetWorker admin, one day Preston's website will save you. Eventually it will happen. He provides great content and engages in the community. Really, he is my Yoda.

Also, I want to thank EMC support. These people are amazing. They have saved me on many occasions, talked me down from many ledges. I call them all the time. Helena and Lionel in Toronto are great. Also shout outs to Erik Webb and David Muetzenberg.

Keep in touch. feel free to add me here on ECN, follow me @backupbuddha on twitter and at backupbuddha.ca.

Also check out mainland.ca and @mainlandis on twitter.

This Ask the Expert event has now ended. Many thanks to se7en (aka Dan) for hosting the discussion and for the great resources above!

Please feel free to continue this discussion, though it will not be formally moderated. Other subject matter experts on NetWorker are welcome to post their thoughts and experiences on the topic. Thank you to all who participated in this event!

Dan,

Thank you for sharing just great information.  Your Pain is my GAIN

Appreciate you taking time out of your schedule to share your experience.

I'm going to be checking the NSRADMIN information @ nsradmin.info  It's always good to have a Yoda in your corner!

JD