NetWorker: System Reboot Best Practices

Summary: The best practice is to manually stop NetWorker services before rebooting. NetWorker has multiple databases so anytime a server is rebooted it is recommended that NetWorker services be stopped properly before the operating system shuts down. Improper shutdown can have unpredictable results such as database corruption, jobs stop responding, general server instability, and so forth. The most reliable way to do this is to manually stop NetWorker Services and be sure that they are stopped before rebooting. ...

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Instructions

NetWorker has multiple databases so anytime a server is rebooted; It is best practice to manually stop the NetWorker services before the operating system shuts down. This ensures jobs exit cleanly and connections to the NetWorker databases are closed.

It is a good practice to stop the services when no other NetWorker operations (backup, restore, clone, stage job, and so forth) are running. This can be verified from the NetWorker Management Console (NMC) or NetWorker Web User Interface (NWUI). The NetWorker server commands nsrwatch and jobkill can be used to review any NetWorker operations that are running. These commands are detailed in the NetWorker Administration and Command Reference Guides which can be accessed through the Dell Support NetWorker Product Page 


Windows Systems

Perform the following steps as a Windows administrator to stop the services on a NetWorker Server, Storage Node, and Client.

  1. Right-click My Computer, and then select Manage.
  2. Expand Services and Applications, and then select Services.
  3. Right-click NetWorker Remote Exec Service, and then select Stop. 
NOTE: On a NetWorker Server, the NetWorker Remote Exec Service stops the NetWorker Backup and Recovery and the NetWorker Message Queue adapter services. On an NMC Server, stopping the NetWorker Remote Exec Service also stops the NMC server's EMC GST Service.

Alternatively, this can be performed from an administrative command prompt: 
net stop nsrexecd /y

C:\Windows\system32>net stop nsrexecd /y
The following services are dependent on the NetWorker Remote Exec Service service.
Stopping the NetWorker Remote Exec Service service will also stop these services.

   NetWorker Snapshot Management Service
   NetWorker Backup and Recover Server
   NetWorker Message Queue Adaptor
   EMC GST Service

The NetWorker Snapshot Management Service service is stopping.
The NetWorker Snapshot Management Service service was stopped successfully.
The NetWorker Backup and Recover Server service was stopped successfully.
The NetWorker Message Queue Adaptor service was stopped successfully.
The EMC GST Service service was stopped successfully.
The NetWorker Remote Exec Service service was stopped successfully.
  1. Confirm NetWorker services have stopped from the windows services window, or using the command:
tasklist | findstr nsr
tasklist | findstr gst


Logs:

The default location of the NetWorker client, storage node, and server service log is: C:\Program Files\EMC NetWorker\nsr\logs\daemon.raw

For NetWorker Management Console servers, the default service log location is: C:\Program Files\EMC NetWorker\Management\GST\logs\gstd.raw

.raw logs can be rendered with the following command in the logs directory: nsr_render_log daemon.raw > daemon.log 2<&1


Linux Systems

Perform the following steps as the root user to stop the NetWorker processes on a NetWorker server, storage node, or client.

  1. To stop the NetWorker processes:
    1. NetWorker provides its own shutdown script: nsr_shutdown
    2. On sysVinit enabled Linux machines, type: /etc/init.d/networker stop
    3. On systemd enabled Linux machines, type: systemctl stop networker
2. To confirm that the NetWorker processes are not running, type the following command from a prompt: ps -ef | grep nsr

On NetWorker Management Console (NMC) servers run the following command to stop the NMC service and close the NMC database.
  1. To stop the NMC process:
    1. On sysVinit enabled Linux machines, type: /etc/init.d/gst stop
    2. On systemd enabled Linux machines, type: systemctl stop gst
  2. To confirm that the NMC service has stopped, type: ps -ef | grep gst


Mac OS X

Perform the following steps as a Mac Administrator to stop the NetWorker processes on a Mac OS X host.
  1. Open the Mac OS-X Terminal application utility.
  2. To stop the NetWorker processes, type the following command:
sudo launchctl unload /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.xyz.NetWorker.plist
 
Note: The launchd daemon/agent manager controls the NetWorker processes, and NetWorker configures the processes to run continuously on the host in the background. It is not recommended that you manually stop and start NetWorker processes under normal operating conditions.


Logs:

The default location of the NetWorker client, storage node, and server service log is: /nsr/logsdaemon.raw

For NetWorker Management Console servers, the default service log location is: /opt/lgtonmc/logs/gstd.raw

.raw logs can be rendered with the following command in the logs directory: nsr_render_log daemon.raw > daemon.log 2<&1

Additional Information

Related articles:

Affected Products

NetWorker
Article Properties
Article Number: 000198218
Article Type: How To
Last Modified: 15 May 2025
Version:  7
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