[Veritas-bu] Best Practice: Location of the NetBackupCatalog

[WEAVER, Simon (external)]

Hello Larry
You could colour your beard :-) I cannot believe Ed is that old !
 
Simon

________________________________

From: Larry Fahnoe [mailto:fahnoe at fahnoetech.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, May 14, 2008 3:34 PM
To: WEAVER, Simon (external)
Cc: veritas-bu at mailman.eng.auburn.edu
Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] Best Practice: Location of the
NetBackupCatalog


Simon,

I work with Ed.  My beard is gray, Ed doesn't have a beard, but he is
older than both of us.  Respect your elders!  ;-}

--Larry


On 5/14/08, WEAVER, Simon (external) <simon.weaver at astrium.eads.net>
wrote: 


	Ed, 34 years old and probably older than yourself young man, but
as posted, some of the failures I have seen have been quite interesting
to see :-)
	 
	Thanks for your reply
	 
	Warm Regards
	Simon

________________________________

	From: veritas-bu-bounces at mailman.eng.auburn.edu
[mailto:veritas-bu-bounces at mailman.eng.auburn.edu] On Behalf Of Ed Wilts
	Sent: Tuesday, May 13, 2008 10:08 PM
	To: WEAVER, Simon (external)
	Cc: veritas-bu at mailman.eng.auburn.edu
	Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] Best Practice: Location of the
NetBackupCatalog
	
	
	
	On Mon, May 12, 2008 at 10:13 AM, WEAVER, Simon (external)
<simon.weaver at astrium.eads.net> wrote:
	

		

		Presently, I have NetBackup and the catalog installed
locally, on RAID5 set, hot swappable.


	If you lose 2 drives in somewhat rapid succession, your catalog
is gone.  The 2nd drive typically fails while you're rebuilding the
RAIDset after the first one dies due to the high load put on the drives.
If you haven't seen a double-disk failure yet, you're not old enough.
Whether the drives are hot swappable or not doesn't matter.  What
matters is whether the RAID rebuild completes before the 2nd drive dies.
The race is on and sometimes the RAID rebuild doesn't complete in time.
	 
	

		My question is this: Is there a best practice for the
location of the Catalog? For example, SAN attached disk? I sort of feel
uncomfortable with this for several reasons:

		1) If you lose SAN connectivity (due to a major disaster
or failure) the catalog has gone 

	If you lose SAN connectivity, you lose*access* to the catalog -
you don't lose the catalog. 
	

		Being stored locally, means the Server and its
application (including the catalog) goes with it, and does not rely on
an extra layer of hardware for the catalog to be available.

		I think my concerns come from a previous environment
where the catalog was stored on a SAN,  and was totally destroyed and
unrecoverable, which meant a complete import of hundreds of tapes.
		

	The likelihood of a well managed enterprise SAN destroying the
data is FAR less likely than a double-disk failure of a RAID-5 set.
FAR, FAR, FAR less.
	
	

		

		If anyone has any feedback on this, would like to hear
the pro's and con's to storage off the physical server itself. I have
always had the catalog locally stored.

	My catalog is on the SAN.  It's replicated to another SAN array.
It's also backed up to tape and the recovery information is emailed to
my home email address (since my work email is also SAN-based).
	 
	If you can't trust the reliability of your SAN, get another SAN
and/or SAN admin.  And I'm a SAN admin...
	
	   .../Ed
	-- 
	Ed Wilts, Mounds View, MN, USA
	RHCE, BCFP, BCSD, SCSP
	mailto:ewilts at ewilts.org
	
	If I've helped you, please make a donation to my favorite
charity at http://firstgiving.com/edwilts 
	
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-- 
Larry Fahnoe, Fahnoe Technology Consulting, fahnoe at FahnoeTech.com
952/925-0744      Minneapolis, Minnesota       www.FahnoeTech.com 


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