{"id":6251,"date":"2017-04-27T20:13:23","date_gmt":"2017-04-27T10:13:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/?p=6251"},"modified":"2018-12-11T08:39:40","modified_gmt":"2018-12-10T22:39:40","slug":"basics-compatibility-guide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/2017\/04\/27\/basics-compatibility-guide\/","title":{"rendered":"Basics – Compatibility Guide"},"content":{"rendered":"

Regardless of whether you’re new to NetWorker or have been using it for a long time, if there’s any change happening within the overall computing environment of your business, there’s one thing you always need to have access to: compatibility guides.<\/p>\n

As I’ve mentioned in a few times, including my book<\/a>, there won’t be anything in your environment that touches more things other than the network itself<\/em> than your enterprise backup and recovery product. With this in mind, it’s always critical to understand the potential impact of changes to our environment on the backups.<\/p>\n

NetWorker, as well as majority of the rest of the Dell EMC Data Protection Suite, no longer has a static software compatibility guide. There’s enough variables that a static software compatibility guide is going to be tedious to search and maintain. So instead of being a document, it’s now a database, and you get to access it and generate custom compatibility information for exactly<\/em> what you need.<\/p>\n

\"bigStock<\/a><\/p>\n

If you’ve not used the interactive compatibility guide before, you’ll find it at:<\/p>\n

http:\/\/compatibilityguide.emc.com:8080\/CompGuideApp\/<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

My recommendation? Bookmark it. Make sure it’s part of your essential NetWorker toolkit. (And for that matter: Data Domain OS, Boost Plugins, ProtectPoint, Avamar, etc.)<\/p>\n

When you first hit the compatibility landing page, you’ll note a panel on the left-hand from where you can choose the product. In this case, when you expand NetWorker, you’ll get a list of versions since the interactive guide was introduced:<\/p>\n

\"Part<\/a><\/p>\n

Once you’ve picked the NetWorker version, the central panel will be updated to reflect the options you can check compatibility against:<\/p>\n

\"Part<\/a><\/p>\n

As you can see, there’s some ‘Instant’ reports for specific quick segments of information; beyond that, there’s the ability to create a specific drill-down report using the ‘Custom Reports’ option. For instance, say you’re thinking of deploying a new NetWorker server on Linux and you want to know what versions of Linux you can deploy on. To do that, under ‘NetWorker Component’ you’d select ‘Server OS’, then get a sub-prompt for broad OS type, then optionally drill down further. In this case:<\/p>\n

\"Part<\/a><\/p>\n

Here I’ve selected Server OS > Linux > All to get information about all compatible versions of Linux for running a NetWorker 9.1 server on. After you’ve made your selections, all you have to do is click ‘Generate Report’ to actually create a compatibility report. The report itself will look something like the following:<\/p>\n

\"Part<\/a><\/p>\n

Any area in the report that’s underlined is a hover prompt: hovering the mouse cursor over will popup the additional clarifying information referenced. Also note the “Print\/Save Results” option \u2013 if say, as part of a change request, you need to submit documentary evidence, you can generate yourself a PDF that covers exactly what you need.<\/p>\n

If you need to generate multiple and different compatibility reports to generate, you may need to click the ‘Reset’ button to blank out all options. (This will avoid a situation where you end up say, trying to find out about what versions of Exchange on Linux are supported!)<\/p>\n

As far as the instant reports are concerned – this is about quickly generating information that you want to get straight away – you click on the option in the Instant Reports, and you don’t even need to click ‘Generate Report’. For instance, the NVP option:<\/p>\n

\"Part<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Part<\/a>That’s really all there is to the interactive compatibility guide \u2013 it’s straight forward and it’s a really essential tool in the arsenal of a NetWorker or Dell EMC Data Protection Suite user.<\/p>\n

Oh, there’s one more thing \u2013 there’s other compatibility guides of course: older NetWorker and Avamar software guides, NetWorker hardware guides, etc. You can get access to the legacy and traditional hardware compatibility guides via the right-hand area on the guide page:<\/p>\n

\"Part<\/a><\/p>\n

There you have it. If you need to check NetWorker or DPS compatibility, make the Interactive Compatibility Guide your first point of call.<\/p>\n

\n

Hey, don’t forget my book is available now in paperback and Kindle formats<\/a>!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Regardless of whether you’re new to NetWorker or have been using it for a long time, if there’s any change…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[1243,1360],"class_list":["post-6251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-basics","tag-basics","tag-compatibility"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t