EMC NetWorker
EMC NetWorker (NetWorker; formerly known as Legato NetWorker) is an enterprise backup application that provides central backup management for various applications on various operating systems, with various backup methods to various types of storage media.
The IBM ProtecTIER product can be deployed as a Virtual Tape Library (VTL) or a File System Interface-Common Internet File System (FSI-CIFS) share and FSI-Network File System (NFS) export to NetWorker to enhance its data protection ability.
This chapter describes suggested settings and procedures to integrate ProtecTIER VTL and FSI in a NetWorker environment in order to achieve optimal backup throughput and the factoring ratio of the ProtecTIER system. The suggested configurations and results might vary in different environments. Review the configuration with your NetWorker specialist for the best configuration that fits into your environment.
This chapter contains the following topics:
 
Note: ProtecTIER GA Version 3.4 was released with only the Virtual Tape Library (VTL) interface support. File System Interface (FSI) support was added to ProtecTIER PGA 3.4 Version. For details, see the announcement letter:
15.1 Overview
EMC NetWorker is a centralized and automated backup and recovery product for heterogeneous enterprise data. The NetWorker Server hosts the configuration information and NetWorker databases that track the backups and volumes. It runs on all major operating systems, such as AIX, Linux, Windows, Oracle Solaris, and HP-UX. Apart from server software, the NetWorker server always has the NetWorker Storage Node and NetWorker Client installed.
The NetWorker Storage Node is the host that has direct access to tape or disk media. It uses this access to read and write data to storage devices. It sends tracking information only to the NetWorker Server. The NetWorker Client is installed on the customer’s servers to generate save sets, and sends them to or retrieves them from the storage node. Different clients are available for the integration of special applications, such as NetWorker for IBM DB2.
A NetWorker datazone consists of one NetWorker Server, several NetWorker Storage Nodes, and several NetWorker Clients. Figure 15-1 illustrates the integration of NetWorker components into a datazone.
Figure 15-1 NetWorker components in a NetWorker datazone
NetWorker writes data to volumes and identifies the volumes with specified volume IDs. A volume is a physical storage media, such as magnetic tape, an optical disk, or a file system. The volume ID can be changed only when a volume is relabeled. NetWorker organizes the volumes into media pools. A ProtecTIER virtual cartridge or FSI share is seen as a volume in NetWorker and is sorted into specific media pools.
15.2 EMC NetWorker in a VTL environment
The ProtecTIER product can be deployed as a VTL when you integrate it with NetWorker. In traditional tape backups, tape drive sharing can be costly with NetWorker because of the need for an additional license for dynamic drive sharing. With VTL, many virtual tape drives can be created and dedicated to different storage nodes without wasting tape resources.
15.2.1 General suggestions
Follow these general suggestions to achieve optimum performance and factoring ratio of the ProtecTIER product with NetWorker:
•Ensure that you have adequate NetWorker licenses before you do the implementation.
•Check the compatibility of ProtecTIER with the NetWorker Server hardware and software, operating system, and storage area network (SAN) switches.
•Review the configuration with your NetWorker specialist to avoid an adverse performance effect to your environment.
•Disable client compression and encryption.
•Whenever possible, use the same Network Time Protocol (NTP) or time server for the ProtecTIER and NetWorker servers to ease maintenance and troubleshooting tasks.
15.2.2 Suggestion if a ProtecTIER server is used as a VTL
Follow these suggested configurations to achieve optimum performance and the optimum factoring ratio of the ProtecTIER server in your VTL environment:
•Ensure that you have the VTL option enabled or an appropriate number of autochanger and library slot licenses for NetWorker.
 
Attention: Two licenses are required for EMC NetWorker to function: the Autochanger Module (which must be compatible with the number of slots that are created in the ProtecTIER server) and Virtual Tape Library Capacity (for the number of terabytes that exist in the ProtecTIER server). Without these two licenses, NetWorker cannot function correctly and you might receive the following error:
The VTL is not properly licensed. Make sure the VTL is properly enabled and authorized (VTL frame enabler needed). See your EMC representative.
•Consider creating dedicated tape drives for each storage node.
•Use ProtecTIER logical unit number (LUN) masking if multiple storage nodes share virtual tape drives. For more information, see 6.3, “LUN masking for VTL systems” on page 87.
•Add virtual tape drives gradually.
•Disable common device interface (CDI) on all virtual tape drives.
•Use 512 kilobytes (KB) I/O for the virtual tape drives to ensure a good factoring ratio.
•Disable multiplex by setting parallelism to 1 (one) on all virtual drives. You can do so by editing the properties of each virtual tape drive to set the target sessions and maximum sessions value to 1.
•Enable the Auto Media Management for virtual tape libraries to support space reclamation. For details about Auto Media Management, see the Media Management section in the EMC NetWorker Administrator Guide, which is available at the NetWorker Information Hub website:
•Increase the NetWorker media multiplexor daemon (nsrmmd) polling interval and nsrmmd restart interval if you see many nsrmmd restart activities during the backup session. Increase the value gradually, such as nsrmmd polling interval=6, restart interval=4, followed by polling interval=9, restart interval=6, and so on.
15.3 EMC NetWorker in an FSI environment
This section provides steps and preferred practices for configuring and setting up EMC NetWorker (NetWorker) for backup and restore. It also provides NetWorker parameters and settings and suggestions for best performance with ProtecTIER FSI. The suggestions apply to FSI-CIFS and FSI-NFS unless stated otherwise.
15.3.1 Creating a Windows user for EMC NetWorker
To configure EMC NetWorker (NetWorker) for Windows with ProtecTIER FSI-CIFS, you must create a Windows User for NetWorker. Follow the steps in this section to configure NetWorker and run a simple backup job.
Changing NetWorker Services logon properties to the Windows user
Complete the following steps:
1. In the Services window, right-click NetWorker Remote Exec Service and select Properties.
2. The NetWorker Remote Exec Service Properties window opens. Click the Log on tab, click This account, enter the Windows user account that you created. Click OK.
3. You receive a message that the changes do not take effect until the service stops and restarts. Click OK.
4. Repeat these steps with the NetWorker Backup and Recover Server service.
5. Right-click NetWorker Remote Exec Service and click Restart to restart the service. This action also restarts the NetWorker Backup and Recover Server service.
Creating a user in NetWorker
Create a user for NetWorker to access your CIFS share:
1. Open the NetWorker Management Console.
2. From the Console window, click Setup.
3. In the left pane, right-click Users and click New. The Create User dialog box opens.
4. Enter the user name, the appropriate role information (for example, Console Application Administrator, Console User, and Console Security Administrator), and Password to create a user, and then click OK.
15.3.2 Setting up for backup and restore
The following section details the steps for setting up your ProtecTIER FSI-CIFS and FSI-NFS environment to perform backups and restores by using EMC NetWorker.
15.3.3 General configuration suggestions
The following general configuration suggestions can help you configure a NetWorker server for use with ProtecTIER FSI shares:
•Consider a dedicated network for backup. To review the FSI Guidelines for network preparation, see Chapter 5, “ProtecTIER File System Interface: General introduction” on page 65.
•Ensure that you have the NetWorker DiskBackup option enabled.
•The NetWorker storage node supports only advanced file type devices (AFTD) for
FSI shares.
•Use the Universal Naming Convention (UNC) path for device configuration for CIFS shares and references to the FSI mount point on Linux.
•Whenever possible, create different ProtecTIER file systems for different storage nodes.
•NetWorker does not span ongoing saves across multiple AFTD devices. NetWorker suspends all saves being written to AFTDs when the device is full until more space is made available on the device. Plan the AFTDs correctly to have sufficient space that is based on the backup size and retention period.
•Do not share a single FSI share across multiple storage nodes, and create one AFTD in each FSI share on the storage node.
•You can configure NetWorker to split a single save set into multiple sessions in one AFTD. In the AFTD device, each save set is stored as a separate file with a unique saveset ID regardless of its parallelism. Therefore, the effect to the deduplication should be minimal.
•When you install the NetWorker server on Windows, create a dedicated user (Workgroup) or add the user (Active Directory) to the Windows Admin and Backup Operator Group of the NetWorker Windows Server. Change the NetWorker Remote Exec server and NetWorker Backup/Restore Server services to be started by the newly created user with administrator rights. The same user must be added as a user of the CIFS shares in the ProtecTIER server with write enabled permission.
•When you install the NetWorker server or storage node on Linux, the read/write permission to the NFS export is granted based on host Internet Protocol (IP) addresses and not on user-level granularity.
For information about AFTD, see Device Operations in EMC NetWorker Administrator Guide.1
Creating the device
To create a device in the NetWorker Administration window, use the Device Configuration wizard and complete the following steps:
1. In the NetWorker Administration window, right-click Devices and click New
Device wizard.
2. In the Device Configuration wizard, click Advanced File Type Device (AFTD) and then click Next.
3. The Select Storage node window opens. Click Enter device path, and in the box that opens, enter the address to the FSI share. Example 15-1 shows the configuration for a FSI-CIFS share by using the Universal Naming Convention (UNC) path.
Example 15-1 Create a device on an FSI-CIFS share
\10.0.20.134 etworker
For Linux systems, the path definition is similar to Example 15-2.
Example 15-2 Create a device on an FSI-NFS export
/mnt/fsi_shares/networker
 
Note: Before creating the AFTD, you must mount the export on the Linux file system.
4. In the next window, click Backup pool type and click Next.
5. In the next window, set the Number of Target Sessions (number of client's connections in parallel) and click Next.
6. The next window should display a summary of the information. Click Configure.
7. After the configuration completes, you should see a confirmation window. Click Finish.
15.3.4 Setting the information to be backed up
Now that you have set up your device, you must define which information you are backing up to this device. To set up the information to be backed up, complete the following steps:
1. In the NetWorker Administration window, click Configuration and then click
Groups → Default.
2. Right-click the existing group and select Client Backup Configuration → Modify.
3. In the first window that opens, do not make any changes. Click Next.
4. The networker data window opens, and shows the operating system, version, and so on. Verify this information and click Next.
5. The next window opens and shows all the directories for all the units that are available. Choose the information that you want to back up and click Next.
6. The next window opens and shows the times for the Browse and Retention policy. Make your required changes and click Next.
7. The next window opens. Although you can change the Group for this policy, for this example, do not change any data. Click Next.
8. Although in the next window, you can choose another Storage Node for Backup and Restore, for this example, do not change anything. Click Next.
9. A summary window opens. If all the information is correct, click Modify.
10. A confirmation window opens. Click Finish.
15.3.5 Setting the time for the backup
Either set the time for your backup or start the backup now by completing these steps:
1. In the NetWorker Administration window, click Configuration.
2. Click Groups, right-click Default Group, and then click Properties.
3. In the Properties dialog box, you can change the time in the Setup pane. In the drop-down box menu, you can either choose whether the backup starts automatically or at a later time. Choose your option and click OK.
15.3.6 Performing a restore
To perform a restore, complete the following steps:
1. Open the NetWorker User.
2. Select the server that backed up the information, and click the Recover icon.
3. Select the information that you want to restore, and click the Recover icon to start the restore operation.
15.3.7 Parameters for best performance with ProtecTIER FSI
This section describes how to get in to diagnostics mode to run diagnostic tests on devices. This section also describes how to turn off compression and encryption in NetWorker.
Setting compression and encryption to none
To set compression and encryption to none, complete the following steps:
1. In the NetWorker Administration window, click Devices.
2. Click View → Diagnostic Mode on the toolbar. The Devices window opens.
3. Click Devices in the navigation tree (on the left). The Devices detail table is displayed.
4. Double-click the mounted device from the detail table. The Device Properties
window opens.
5. In the Device Properties window, click the Cloud tab (Figure 15-2 on page 228).
The Compression and Encryption settings are under the Options pane.
6. Set Compression and Encryption to none.
Figure 15-2 Device Properties window: disable encryption
 
1 NetWorker documentation is at the NetWorker Information Hub: http://nsrd.info/docs.html
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