Question re. VA7400 and backup

[perfman_1]

I am fairly new to the VA7400s and HP9000 world in general. pardon me if this is something basic.

We have a HP9000 box connected to VA7400 array through dual fiber. LUNs are created on VA7400 and are visible to UX and Oracle hosted on UX.
System is not in production so i can still mess with it to find things out. :-)

We have a Windows 2003 storage server that is going to be made as Netbackup Enterprise master media server, and is supposed to backup Oracle/UX via a Gig network backbone.

Here is the interesting part. I was thinking if we could connect the VA7400 to the Netbackup storage server(win2003) via Fiber, and make the LUNs visible to netbackup, JUST AS READ mode (if possible), then we could backup using Fiber as opposed to going through Network.

Is this a recommended approach? I want to know what you guys think about it. Please let me know.

The objective is to backup the Oracle data residing in VA7400 through fiber as opp. to performing the same over the network.

All inputs and recommendations are welcome. I am ready to take the hit. :-)

[Nguyen Anh Tien]

Recommend you use HP Data protector software.
This software enable you to backup from VA7400 to backup server directly via FC cable (Disk Agent and Media Agent working together). it is called LAN free backup.
Normally win2003 can not understand LUN (because these LUN has vxfs file system type) so that you can not backup as you declare above.
HTH
tien

[perfman_1]

Well, we have decided to go with Netbackup just to be able to support our previous backup exec tapes and old backups, and in order for a common platform.

I wonder if Netbackup has something similar to LAN free backup. Your point about UX LUNs and windows well taken.

Thanks

[Bill Costigan]

You need something to read the LUNs and write the tape. This could be done through the fiber as long as the 'something' is connected to both the va and the tape via fiber.

Generally, you'll need a HPUX system to read the LUNs on the va because it knows what an HPUX disk looks like while W2K3 does not.

You'll also have to make sure oracle isn't writing to the LUNs during the backup.

We've scripted the following,

1.Put Oracle in backup mode
2.Use the va to make clones of all the LUNs within the VG containing the oracle files.
3.Resume oracle
4.mount the clone LUNs on a second HPUX server
5.back up the LUNs by reading them through the via the fiber and writing to a tape also via the fiber through the second HPUX server.

[Chauhan Amit]

Hi,

There Will be a option in Netbackup also for SAN Backup.

The VERITAS NetBackup Master/Media Server can be set up multiple ways.

a) Master/Media Server for a SAN environment: Controls the SAN environment plus backs up the Server on which it resides.
b) Master/Media Server for a LAN environment: Controls the LAN environment plus backs up the Server on which it resides.
c) Media Server for a LAN environment: Backs up a server in a LAN environment, but does not control the entire environment.

Good Luck.

-Amit