Dell NetWorker 19.9 Administration Guide

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Decommission a Client resource

From the NetWorker 19.4 release onwards, you can decommission a client by modifying the attribute of the Client resource. A new attribute client state has been introduced for the NSR Client resource.

The attribute client state can take the values, active, retired, migrated, scanned, and decommissioned.

When the NetWorker Server is upgraded to 19.4 or a later version, all the clients irrespective of the NetWorker Client version will have the default value of the client state attribute as active.

After the upgrade, if you want to retire a client, you can do so by using nsradmin (CLI), the UI (NetWorker UI or NMC), or the REST interface.

You can change the client state from active to retired. However, the NetWorker server automatically changes the client state from retired to decommissioned when all the active save sets have expired and are deleted from the NetWorker catalog. This automatic transition happens through the Server Protection Policy.

To retire a client, change the client state from active to retired after ensuring that the following prerequisites are met:

If the client is part of any protection group, remove the association.
If the client has tags configured, remove the tags from all the instances of the client.

After the client state is transitioned to retired, the following applies:

Backup (either manually or through policy) operations are not allowed.
Clients cannot be added to any new protection group or tags.
NetWorker server does not perform DNS lookup against a retired client during startup.
New client instances cannot be created.

However, you are allowed to:

Perform recovery, cloning, and staging of existing save sets.
Modify the attribute of a retired client.

If you have to backup the client, you can only do that by transitioning the client state back to active.

NOTE:In such cases, ensure that the client is reachable and the valid entries are added in hosts or in the DNS server.

State transitioning from retired to decommissioned is done automatically by the NetWorker Server, when the retention time of all the save sets of the client has expired.

The following restrictions are applicable for the client in the decommissioned state:

A client cannot be transitioned from active to decommissioned state.
A client in the decommissioned state cannot be changed back to retired or active state.
If you want to take backups for the decommissioned client again, you must delete the client and add it back to the NetWorker Server.

Table 1. Operations allowed in each client stateOperations that are allowed in each state are summarized in the following table.
NetWorker Operations or Features	State: Active	State: Retired/Scanned/Migrated	State: Decommissioned
Member of a policy	Yes	No	No
Manual or Policy Backups or Archive	Yes	No	No
Cloning and Staging of existing save sets	Yes	Yes	No
Restore save sets	Yes	Yes	No
DNS resolution by NetWorker Server	Yes	No	No
Client Metadata Protection (Index backups, media db backup)	Yes	Yes	No
nsrpush Operations (Inventory or Upgrade)	Yes	No	No

Figure 1. Client state transition diagram. This image shows the client state transition:

For more information about the types of clients to which the state transition is not applicable, see the NetWorker Command Reference Guide or the UNIX manual page nsr_client.

In the Administration window, click Protection.
In the expanded left pane, click Clients.
In the right pane, select the Client resource, and then in the Client State column click Right.
Select Edit client state and then select the state as Retired.
A confirmation message appears.
Click OK.