VERITAS NetBackup BusinesServer A Scalable Backup Solution for UNIX or Heterogeneous Workgroups V E R I T A S W H I T E P A P E R
Table of Contents Overview...................................................................................1 VERITAS NetBackup BusinesServer................................................................2 Network considerations.........................................................................2 Device support.............................................................................3 Windows NT specific functionality...............................................................3 Extensible architecture........................................................................3 High Performance Backups......................................................................4 Easy Backup Management and Recovery Operations....................................................5 Configuring NetBackup BusinesServer.............................................................5 Automated, unattended backups................................................................6 Ad hoc backups............................................................................6 Recoveries.................................................................................6 Reporting.................................................................................6 Protecting Critical Data.........................................................................7 Extensible, Scalable Backup and Recovery............................................................8 Adding clients for easy growth..................................................................8 Managing multiple NetBackup domains with VERITAS Global Data Manager................................8 Seamless upgrades to VERITAS NetBackup DataCenter................................................8 Summary...................................................................................9
Overview Much of the work powering today s economy takes place in small, heterogeneous workgroup configurations, rather than the traditional, large enterprise environments associated with big business. Consider the following scenarios: A remote office for a larger enterprise is tasked with developing and implementing new technologies, or discovering and serving emerging markets. The servers are UNIX-based, but system administration resources are scarce. A start-up is building its business with long, hard hours and an eye to future growth. The developers use Unix systems, while others share Windows-based applications and data. A small business hosts its Web server on a Linux systems, while running administrative operations on Windows platforms. In each of these scenarios, the data running the business is absolutely critical these businesses or workgroups cannot afford downtime any better than their larger, enterprise counterparts. They need powerful, reliable backup and recovery tools to protect their data and ensure a fast recovery from a wide variety of errors. Unfortunately, these are examples of groups that are not well served by today s mainstream backup and recovery tools. Desktop-based backup and recovery products cannot manage the critical Unix-based servers and don t provide the scalability to handle the data needs as the business grows. At the same time, enterprise backup and recovery tools are generally costprohibitive for these companies and require significant management time and expertise. VERITAS NetBackup BusinesServer is a robust and fully-functional backup and recovery solution that meets the specific needs of small to mid-size UNIX or heterogeneous workgroups. With NetBackup BusinesServer, workgroups don t have to compromise performance for ease of use, or functionality for affordability. NetBackup BusinesServer provides: Flexibility and functionality to handle evolving needs and architectures Performance to handle large amounts of data effectively, while protecting network bandwidth Easy ongoing management using graphical interfaces and wizard-driven configuration Application-specific protection for critical data and database applications Scalability to address business growth or integration with other offices Using NetBackup BusinesServer, workgroups can schedule automated backups of critical data, ensuring that the data they depend on is protected. Administration is simple and users can perform their own recoveries, reducing the administrative burden of backup and recovery management. And NetBackup is a highly adaptable, scalable solution; optional modules extend the products functionality, and application-specific agents provide online database backup capabilities. www.veritas.com VERITAS NetBackup BusinesServer Page 1
VERITAS NetBackup BusinesServer NetBackup BusinesServer is part of the VERITAS family of backup and recovery products, which provides coverage from the desktop to the enterprise. The NetBackup BusinesServer architecture supports one server with directly-attached storage, and up to four client systems (or eight with an additional Client Extension pack). The NetBackup Server software runs on Windows NT and Windows 2000, Solaris, or HP-UX platforms. The system referred to as the NetBackup Server does not need to be dedicated to backups; it may also host critical data to back up. For example, if the NetBackup Server software is on the same system as a database server, the database backups do not have to travel over the network to the backup devices. NetBackup client software resides on each of the clients. NetBackup supports a wide range of clients, including many UNIX variants, Windows NT and Windows 2000, NetWare, and Macintosh systems. A sample NetBackup BusinesServer architecture protects data on five systems; the server and the four clients. Sales Rep's Computer #2 Accountant's Computer #3 Shop's Computer #3 Research& Development Computer #5 Storage device for daily backups of all five computers Computer #1 Server with VERITAS NetBackup BusinesServer Network considerations All client backups travel through the network to the NetBackup Server, which has the attached storage devices. NetBackup protects network bandwidth in the following ways: The NetBackup clients can compress backup data before sending it over the network. Incremental backups only write changed data, which can significantly reduce the amount of data sent on the network to the backup server. NetBackup BusinesServer provides network bandwidth throttling to ensure that backups cannot overload available network capacity. Page 2 VERITAS NetBackup BusinesServer www.veritas.com
Device support VERITAS provides the most comprehensive range of supported tape devices in the industry, allowing workgroups to use existing equipment or to leverage the latest, high performance tape drive or backup device technology. For a complete list of supported devices, see the VERITAS web site, located at http://www.veritas.com. NetBackup BusinesServer supports up to two tape drives, or a robotic tape library with up to two drives and up to thirty slots. Using a robotic tape device provides truly unattended backup operations. Windows NT and Windows 2000 specific functionality For environments with Windows NT and Windows 2000 systems, VERITAS NetBackup BusinesServer provides additional, Windows-specific functionality. For example: Administrators can configure Windows NT and Windows 2000 virus scanning and cleaning to take place before or after backups and restores. The Microsoft Exchange Agent provides extensive granularity by offering the flexibility to backup the entire database or individual mailboxes with individual mail message restore. The optional Windows NT and Windows 2000 Intelligent Disaster Recovery module provides bare metal recovery to a completely new Windows system, using bootable media created with the NetBackup server. To ensure ALL files are fully protected, the optional Open Transaction Manager for Windows NT and Windows 2000 and NetWare will ensure full protection. A graphical user interfaces simplifies user-directed backups. Extensible architecture A number of optional modules and agents extend the core function to meet specific backup environment needs. For example, an encryption module offers 40- or 56- bit encryption for environments in which the backup security is an issue. A Microsoft Windows NT and Windows 2000-based environment might want to add the Exchange Server agent to provide online backups of Exchange Server. NetBackup agents are available for most popular database systems. This extensible architecture lets businesses build exactly the solution they need, and adapt as systems and requirements change. www.veritas.com VERITAS NetBackup BusinesServer Page 3
High Performance Backups Tape device vendors have made tremendous advances in tape device performance in recent years. Native operating system utilities cannot begin to leverage the speed of these devices, as they cannot send the data fast enough to keep the device streaming at maximum capacity. NetBackup provides optimal backup performance, leveraging the tape device s true capabilities: NetBackup can multiplex up to eight streams to a single tape device. This helps tape devices run at or near peak performance. On recovery, NetBackup can correctly assemble the appropriate data from the backup tape, transparently to the administrator or user. NetBackup reads backup data into shared memory, buffering data flows to ensure continuous data transfer. Parallel backup operations provide fast backups for large volumes of data. NetBackup BusinesServer can implement up to eight parallel backup streams from one job. These streams must come from different physical devices, or else the parallelism will impede instead of improve performance. Parallel streams are also possible on recovery, for large restore operations. For data residing on the VERITAS File System (VxFS), NetBackup can provide direct I/O processing for very fast access. The VERITAS File System is a high performance, highly available file system that improves storage manageability. For more information, see the VERITAS web site. Page 4 VERITAS NetBackup BusinesServer www.veritas.com
Simplified Backup Management and Recovery Operations Most workgroups have limited system administration resources; backup solutions that require extensive training or effort to deploy or maintain simply are not practical. NetBackup BusinesServer is designed for these environments. Because it centralizes backup administration for multiple clients, NetBackup BusinesServer makes it easier for organizations to ensure that vital data is protected. But the product does not introduce a significant administrative burden it was designed to provide a low total cost of ownership, with multiple features to simplify administration: Guided backup configuration Automated, unattended backups Ad hoc or user directed backups User directed recoveries Recoveries to alternate machines Backup status reports The result is a product that provides protects critical data minimal administrative overhead. Guided backup configuration NetBackup BusinesServer provides extensive tools to simplify the process of setting up the configuration and the backups. This wizard-driven configuration is familiar to NT users; with NetBackup BusinesServer, it is also available on the UNIX version of the server. NetBackup wizards include the following: The Getting Started wizard provides step-by-step help on setting up NetBackup BusinesServer. The Configure Storage Devices wizard and Configure Volume wizard helps define tape libraries, tape drives and associated media. Together with the peripheral autodiscovery feature, which automatically identified attached tape devices, this reduces the process of configuration storage to simple, point-and-click operations. The Configure the Catalog wizard helps set up backups for the BusinesServer configuration and catalog information itself. The Create a Backup Policy wizard helps schedule automated, unattended backups. Using these configuration aids, organizations can install, configure, and start using NetBackup quickly and easily. www.veritas.com VERITAS NetBackup BusinesServer Page 5
Automated, unattended backups NetBackup BusinesServer provides workgroups with completely automated backup capabilities. Integration with a robotic tape device provides unattended backups as well. Tape management: NetBackup automates processes such as tape media tracking and labeling. It tracks the backup tape shelf life through customized retention periods. Incremental backups: NetBackup provides variety of backup levels, including full backups, cumulative incremental backups, and differential incremental backups. A cumulative backup writes all changes since the last full backup. A differential backup writes changes since the previous differential backup, for even further granularity on backups. NetBackup automatically restores the incremental backups appropriately on recovery. The person designated as the backup administrator can elect to receive email notification of all backup activity. Ad hoc backups NetBackup also supports ad hoc backups, performed either by someone in a backup administrator role or by users of NetBackup clients systems themselves. This is useful in many occasions. For example, an administrator might perform backups before upgrading software, while a user might perform a backup after completing a critical project. These backups can supplement the automated, scheduled backups. Users can configure ad hoc backups through the NetBackup client interface. The process itself is simple; the user simply selects the files or folders to back up, then executes the process. The backup uses the backup policies (such as backup media) already configured for this client. In addition, the administrator is able to specify the time periods during which users can do backup and restores. Recoveries When you need to restore data from NetBackup BusinesServer, the process is fast and simple. Users can use the NetBackup client software to initiate their own file restores, providing fast, self-service recoveries. The user selects the file(s) or directory to restore and starts the recovery. In its default configuration, clients can only restore their own backup files, for obvious security reasons. However, there are cases in which clients should be able to restore files backed up from another machine (alternate client restores). NetBackup can be configured to allow alternative client restores in specific situations. Reporting NetBackup BusinesServer provides a complete set of reports for managing, verifying, and troubleshooting backup operations. Reports include backup and media status reports. All reports are accessible from the graphical interface. Page 6 VERITAS NetBackup BusinesServer www.veritas.com
Protecting Critical Data Applications such as databases often have unique backup and recovery requirements. For example, taking a hot (online) backup of a database typically requires vendor-specific support. NetBackup provides a number of backup agents to address the specific backup and recovery needs of critical applications. These agents extend the functionality of the core product, allowing workgroups or small businesses to configure the precise backup environment that meets their critical needs. The following optional database agents are available for the NetBackup BusinesServer: NetBackup BusinesServer for Oracle on UNIX Online full and incremental backups, tablespace-level backup and recovery NetBackup BusinesServer for Oracle on Windows NT and Windows 2000 Online backups for Oracle on Windows NT and Windows 2000 NetBackup BusinesServer for Sybase on UNIX Hot backups of Sybase databases and transaction logs NetBackup BusinesServer for Informix on UNIX Hot backups at the database, dbspace, and logical log file level NetBackup BusinesServer for Lotus Notes for UNIX Online, non-disruptive backup of Lotus Notes databases and transaction logs NetBackup BusinesServer for Lotus Notes on Windows NT and Windows 2000 Online backups for Lotus Notes on Windows NT and Windows 2000 NetBackup BusinesServer for Microsoft SQL Server on Windows NT and Windows 2000 Online backup at the database, file, file group or transaction log level NetBackup BusinesServer for Microsoft Exchange Server on Windows NT and Windows 2000 Online, non-disruptive backup of Exchange Information Store, Directory Store and Transaction log data. An optional NetBackup BusinesServer NDMP option provides high performance backup of Network Attached Storage Devices, such as Network Appliance file server, to direct attached tape peripherals. www.veritas.com VERITAS NetBackup BusinesServer Page 7
Extensible, Scalable Backup and Recovery As part of the NetBackup product family, NetBackup BusinesServer has the scalability and flexibility to grow and change with your business needs. VERITAS provides a number of different upgrade options that lets companies leverage their NetBackup investment as the business grows or changes. Adding clients for easy growth The basic NetBackup BusinesServer protects data on up to five systems: the BusinesServer system and four remote clients. A Client Extension pack adds four more remote clients to this configuration, and is an easy way to expand the solution as the business needs grow. Managing multiple NetBackup domains with VERITAS NetBackup Global Data Manager A NetBackup server with its associated clients is referred to as a NetBackup storage domain. The VERITAS NetBackup Global Data Manager can manage multiple NetBackup storage domains, whether local or remote, from a single graphical management UI. NetBackup Global Data Manager provides a single view into backup operations for the VERITAS family of backup products, including NetBackup BusinesServer, NetBackup DataCenter, NetBackup Professional and Backup Exec. For example, an enterprise using NetBackup DataCenter could install NetBackup BusinesServer at a remote office, then use NetBackup Global Data Manager to monitor and manage backup operations for all sites centrally. A small office could use NetBackup BusinesServer for its key systems, and Backup Exec for most staff PCs, monitoring all operations with Netbackup Global Data Manager. Seamless upgrades to VERITAS NetBackup DataCenter When a workgroup or business has grown to include more critical servers or systems than NetBackup BusinesServer supports, VERITAS Software provides a seamless upgrade to VERITAS NetBackup DataCenter. Based on a four-tier architecture, NetBackup combines advanced media management with pure speed to address the largest data center installations. The powerful four-tier architecture of NetBackup DataCenter is comprised of master servers, media servers, clients and NetBackup Global Data Manager. By supporting multiple NetBackup domains under a master domain, NetBackup can scale to support thousands or even tens of thousands of systems. DataCenter provides advanced backup features, such as dynamic tape sharing in heterogeneous SAN environments with support for many operating platforms. Upgrade utilities assure a quick and smooth transition to NetBackup DataCenters. Page 8 VERITAS NetBackup BusinesServer www.veritas.com
Summary Remote offices, small businesses, and workgroups shouldn t have to settle for less than complete backup and recovery solutions, nor should their backup solution require significant management overhead NetBackup BusinesServer combines the manageability required by these environments with the adaptability and scalability to grow and change as the business needs change. As part of the VERITAS NetBackup family, NetBackup BusinesServer has a wide range of supported devices and clients, optional agents, and enterprise-class scalability. www.veritas.com VERITAS NetBackup BusinesServer Page 9
VERITAS Software Corporation Corporate Headquarters 1600 Plymouth Street Mountain View, CA 94043 650-527-8000 or 800-327-2232 For additional information about VERITAS Software, its products, or the location of an office near you, please call our corporate headquarters or visit our Web site at www.veritas.com. V E R I T A S W H I T E P A P E R Copyright 2001 VERITAS Software Corporation. All Rights Reserved. VERITAS, VERITAS SOFTWARE, the VERITAS logo, Business Without Interruption, VERITAS The Data Availability Company, VERITAS NetBackup Business Server are trademarks or registered trademarks of VERITAS Software Corporation in the USA and/or other countries. Other product names mentioned herein may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies. Printed in USA. March 2001. 90-00346-399 UNT07-BSWPR-0001