7.5.2 and ADV_FILE devices

 Features, NetWorker  7 Responses »
May 042010
 

There is a bug with the way NetWorker 7.5.2 handles ADV_FILE devices in relation to disk evacuation. I.e., in a situation where you use NetWorker 7.5.2 to completely stage all savesets from an ADV_FILE device, the subsequent behaviour of NetWorker is contrary to normal operations.

If following the disk evacuation, either the standard overnight volume/saveset recycling checks are done, or an nsrim -X is explicitly called, before any new savesets are written to the ADV_FILE device, NetWorker will flag the depopulated volume as recyclable. The net result of this is that it will not permit new savesets to be written to the volume until such time as it is relabelled, or flagged as not recyclable.

When a colleague asked me to investigate this for a customer, I honestly thought it had to be some mistake, but I ran up the tests and dutifully confirmed that NetWorker under v7.5.2 was indeed doing it. However, it just didn’t seem right in comparison to previous known NetWorker behaviour, so I stepped my lab server back to 7.4.5, and NetWorker didn’t mangle the volume after it was evacuated. I then stepped up to 7.5.1, and again, NetWorker didn’t mangle the volume after it was evacuated.

This led me to review the cumulative patch cluster notes for 7.5.2.1 – while there’s been a more recent version released, I didn’t have it handy at the time. Nothing was mentioned on the notes that seemed to relate to this issue, but since I’d got the test process down to a <15 minute activity, I replaced the default 7.5.2 install with 7.5.2.1, and re-ran the tests.

Under 7.5.2.1, NetWorker behaved exactly as expected; no matter how many times “nsrim -X” was run after evacuating a disk backup unit volume, NetWorker did not mark the volume in question as recyclable.

My only surmise therefore is that one of the actual documented fixes in the 7.5.2.1 cumulative build, while not explicitly referring to the issue at hand, happened to (as a side-effect), resolve the issue.

To cut a long story short though, I would advise that if you’re backing up to ADV_FILE devices using NetWorker 7.5.2 that you strongly consider moving to 7.5.2 cumulative patch cluster 1 – i.e., 7.5.2.1.

 Posted by Preston de Guise at 17:07  Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,

Cumulative patch clusters

 NetWorker, Support  2 Responses »
Mar 252010
 

In the last few days, cumulative patch clusters have been released for the following versions of NetWorker:

  • 7.6 – Patch cluster 7.6.0.3 released.
  • 7.5.2 – Patch cluster 7.5.2.1 released.
  • 7.4.5 – Patch cluster 7.4.5.56 released.

As per usual, these haven’t been released to PowerLink, but can be requested via your authorised support partner. Remember that cumulative patch clusters don’t contain any new features – they’re just accumulated key bug fixes. If you’re having any issues with either your current 7.6.0.x, 7.5.2 or 7.4.5.x install, you may want to talk to your support partner about the fixes included in those cumulative patch clusters.

[Edit - 2010-03-26] Apologies, I meant to say that cumulative patch cluster 7.4.5.6 had been released for the 7.4.5 tree, not 7.4.5.5.

 Posted by Preston de Guise at 20:24  Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,

Aside – Top Stories for February

 Aside, NetWorker  No Responses »
Mar 012010
 

Close enough together that I have to declare them a tie, the top stories for February were:

It’s fair to say that Carry a jukebox with you is remaining a big hit all the time – a bit like the “NSR peer information” story, and so February will be the last month that it gets included in consideration for top articles.

Towards the end of the month, with the release of NetWorker 7.5 SP2, there was quite a lot of interest in the articles “NetWorker 7.5.2 released” and “NetWorker 7.5.2 – What’s it got?“. Obviously if you’ve got Windows 2008 or Windows 7 clients that you need to backup, 7.5 SP2 is almost a no-brainer – you’ll really need to be using it. So far, based on my testing on Linux, 7.5 SP2 is looking fairly good for that platform too. As always, everyone should read the release notes before deciding whether to upgrade their environments.

 Posted by Preston de Guise at 06:43  Tagged with: , , , , , ,

NetWorker 7.5.2 – What’s it got?

 NetWorker  4 Responses »
Feb 252010
 

As I mentioned in a post yesterday, NetWorker 7.5.2 (or NetWorker 7.5 SP2) has been released, and with it comes a bunch of feature enhancements as well as a slew of bug fixes.

One of the criticisms of EMC’s development process for NetWorker for a while was that a new service pack would come out with few, if any of the bug fixes added as hot-fixes and cumulative patch clusters for the previous service pack. This is something that EMC have clearly been improving on, because reading through the release notes with the almost 150 bug fixes cited, I see many “familiar” issues that were addressed in various cumulative patch clusters for 7.5.1. On this alone, I’ll give 7.5.2 high praise.

I’ll be running up 7.5.2 in my lab today and looking at a few test cases, etc., but so far of the improvements that have been made in this new service pack, I’m pretty stoked about the following:

  1. Auto-addition of the update enabler. Starting with this version, if you go up to a version of NetWorker that requires an update enabler, NetWorker will create it automatically for you. You still have to get it authorised of course, but this saves smaller sites from the hassle of upgrading without checking for the enabler and then hitting problems.
  2. Support for Windows 7 clients.
  3. Support for Windows 2008 R2 as a client, storage node, and server. The company I work for, IDATA, got involved in the beta testing for this and were pleased with the results.
  4. DFS-R Granular Recovery. A few months ago, I had an issue where a customer’s SYSTEM STATE: saveset was 18GB, due to DFS-R replication. The release notes indicate this shouldn’t be the case any more – this data should now be broken out of the SYSTEM STATE: saveset into regular file backup/recovery operations.
  5. VCB support for ESX v4. I know I should mention this, but I remain overall unexcited about VCB because of the lack of granular Linux support. vSphere API backups, when they come, will grab far more of my attention, I hope.
  6. Client parallelism on new clients is reduced from the previous (increase to) 12, back to the original 4. Client parallelism for the NetWorker server’s client instance on initial bootstrap/creation remains 12, and I’m fine with this. A reversion to client parallelism of 4 however will make performance tuning in new environments at least a little more sane.

Overall I have high hopes for 7.5 SP2. If you’re currently needing to backup Windows 2008 R2 or Windows 7 hosts, this is probably going to be a no-brainer: you’ll likely want to upgrade at least those clients to it straight away.

Before I recommend 7.5.2 more generally of course, I want to run it through its paces. I will reiterate though – even on first glance, it seems very promising. As is always the case, you should make sure that you read the release notes before you contemplate upgrading – and have a clear downgrade path if you need to. This means that if you’ve been supplied with any hot fixes, or cumulative patch clusters, you need to make sure you still have these available as you’re planning the upgrade.

 Posted by Preston de Guise at 05:59  Tagged with: , ,

NetWorker 7.5.2 (NetWorker 7.5 SP2) released

 NetWorker  5 Responses »
Feb 242010
 

Typical that it happens on a day when I’m travelling, but NetWorker 7.5 SP2 (aka NetWorker 7.5.2) has been released today.

There’s a bunch of updates and bug fixes in this release – I actually have really high hopes for it based on discussions I’ve had with various folks at EMC. I’m about to start an hour long train trip where I’ll be reading the release notes – if you have PowerLink you can access them from here.

I’ll aim to have a summary posting of new features and bug fixes in the next 24 hours. In the interim, let me just say that I’m over the moon to see that one of the first new features is a reversion to default client parallelism of 4 rather than the previous change to 12. This is very good to see changed. (Oh, not to mention support for Windows 2008 R2.)

[Edit, 2010-02-25]

An overview of new features, etc., can be found here.

 Posted by Preston de Guise at 15:22  Tagged with: , ,
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