A MULTI VOLUME VDL · demo-001 demo-002 demo-003 demo-004 demo-005 demo-006 demo-007...

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BakBone Software Ltd 1 July 2006 A MULTI VOLUME VDL Step-by-step configuration guide By Peter de Vente, BakBone Software 25 JULY 2006 Company Confidential BakBone Software Ltd 100 Longwater Avenue, Green Park, Reading, RG2 6GP Mobile: +31 (0)6 1505 1313 Phone: +44 (0)1189 224 800 Fax: +44 (0)1189 224 899

Transcript of A MULTI VOLUME VDL · demo-001 demo-002 demo-003 demo-004 demo-005 demo-006 demo-007...

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BakBone Software Ltd 1 July 2006

A MULTI VOLUME VDL Step-by-step configuration guide

By Peter de Vente, BakBone Software

25 JULY 2006

Company Confidential

BakBone Software Ltd

100 Longwater Avenue, Green Park, Reading, RG2 6GP

Mobile: +31 (0)6 1505 1313 Phone: +44 (0)1189 224 800 Fax: +44 (0)1189 224 899

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Introduction

By default any VDL generated with the NetVault:Backup GUI will be a single

volume VDL. Since version 7.4 it is possible to create multi volume VDLs and

this will help to overcome the file system limits of certain operating systems.

This guide explains how to configure a multi volume VDL. It is tested on

Windows, but except for the screen shots the procedure for Linux and UNIX

is the same.

For any comments, enhancements or suggestions, please mail Peter de Vente

at [email protected].

History

Version 1 - First release, Windows only screen shots, tested on 7.4.2.

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VDL – A Short Explanation

The Virtual Disk Library (VDL) is the implementation of ‘backup to disk’ by

NetVault:Backup. The VDL acts just like a real tape library and can/must be

handled as such. It has drives, slots and media, all being virtual, of course. A

VDL is using the file system of the NetVault Server or SmartClient.

The picture above shows the layout of a VDL on disk. In this case the VDL is

generated on a Windows file system. The VDL has its own .serial file. This file

is just holding the name of the VDL, don’t change this. There are three1

directories, named slots, drives and media.

1 VDLs can have entry/exit ports. If this is configured, then there will also be a ports

directory. This guide will ignore this setting.

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Drives

In the drives directory the following layout can be found:

Each (virtual) drive is represented by a directory. The number of drives can

be changed, but it is not enough just by adding directories. In each directory

a .serial file can be found. In this file the serial number of the drive can be

found. Do not move or change this file or its contents.

Slots

In the slots directory the following layout can be found:

For every slot in the VDL there is one directory. Each directory has a unique

number. It makes sense that the numbering starts with 1 and all others are

incremented with 1, but a slot can have any number ;-).

In each slot there is just one file, named .media. This file holds just one line

of text.

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This line of text is stating the location of the media file. Changing this file or

removing it without a good reason, will result in a non-functional VDL and

loss of data.

Media

The slots and drives directories do not hold any backup data, only the .serial

and .media files. In the media directory the backup data is held in virtual

tapes. A virtual tape is represented by a file with the size of the virtual tape.

The minimal size of a virtual tape is 50 megabytes. The following layout can

be found in a (small) VDL:

Even though each media file is using the full capacity of the virtual tape, in

reality all tapes could be blank and therefore from a NetVault:Backup view

could still be empty. The (internal) usage of the virtual media can only be

seen with the NetVault:Backup GUI. The usage on the file system layer is

always 100%.

With the .media file the relationship between slots and drives and the media

files is made. The following drawing shows the relationship:

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C:

VDL

slots

drives

media

1

2

3

4

1

2

34

5

6

7

8

.serial

.serial

demo-001

demo-002

demo-003demo-004demo-005

demo-006

demo-007

demo-008

.media

.media - WordPad.media - WordPad

C:\VDL\media\demo-008

Points towards

As explained earlier the .media file holds the location of the media file.

Moving media

When using the VDL within NetVault:Backup it can/must be operated as a

real tape library. Virtual tapes (media) can be positioned in a slot or a drive,

but never in multiple slots or drives at the same time, just like the real world.

When moving a tape from a slot to a drive only the .media file is moved, not

the media file it self. The media file will never be moved by NetVault:Backup,

only the .media files are moved. This means that if the media file pointing to

virtual media ‘demo-008’ is moved to the directory ‘../drives/4’, within

NetVault:Backup the tape is loaded in drive 4.

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When selecting unload within the device manager in the NetVault:Backup

GUI, the .media file will be moved back to the original slot directory

‘../slots/8’.

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Layout of a Multi Volume VDL

With the understanding of the single volume VDL in mind, it is not difficult to

imagine a VDL that is spread over multiple volumes. It makes no sense in

spreading the slots and drives directories. They hold no backup data, but

only the .serials and .media files. On Windows those files will only take 4 KB

each. A large VDL with 500 slots and 24 drives will use (500 + 24 + 1) 2.1

MB of disk space. The media files will take a lot of space and will be spread

over more than one volume. An example would be to have 5 volumes, each

holding 100 media files (virtual tapes). When a single media file is 10 GB in

size, one volume will hold one TB of data.

The next drawing shows the layout of a multi volume VDL:

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VDL

slots

drives

1

2

34

5

6

7

8

.serial

VDL

demo-001

demo-002demo-003

demo-004demo-005

demo-006

demo-007

demo-008

My Computer

System (C:)

Data1 (D:)

media

VDL

demo-009

demo-010

demo-011

demo-012demo-013

demo-014

demo-015

demo-016

media

Data2 (E:)

9

10

1112

13

14

15

16

Only

slots

and

drives

Only

media

Only

media

Total

VDL

with

slots,

drives

and

media

In this example the VDL is using three volumes. One volume is holding the

slots and drives directories (C:) and the other two volumes (D: and E:) are

holding the media files, each having eight of them. The media files must

have unique names.

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Step-by-step Guide

To create a multi volume VDL there are several ways that will do the job.

This guide will describe one, but does not claim to be the best, most efficient

or simplest way. Any suggestions are welcome.

Preparations

Before starting, the volumes to be used must be up and running. There is no

need to have the volumes to be the same size, but it makes life easier in the

next steps if they are.

VDLs need normal file systems to be placed on. Don’t use compression or

encryption on the file systems used by VDLs. Both will decrease the speed of

the overall NetVault:Backup environment.

The creation of the new VDL is split in a few steps:

1. Creation of a small VDL with all the needed drives.

2. Creation of the needed slots.

3. Creation of the needed .media files.

4. Creation of the media files.

5. Configuring the extended VDL.

Step 2, 3 and 4 can be automated with scripts, but there is no exclusive way

how to perform these steps.

In this example the VDL will use three different locations (volumes):

1. Slots and drives at C:\Volume1

2. Eight media files at C:\Volume2

3. Eight media files at C:\Volume3

Lack of hardware prevented to have real volumes, but the principle will be

the same.

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Step 1: Creation of a small VDL with all the needed drives

1. Start the NetVault:Backup GUI.

2. Go to Device Management.

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3. Select Add.

4. Select Add Library.

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5. Right-click the NetVault Server or NetVault SmartClient where the VDL

should be configured. For SmartClients additional licenses are needed.

Make sure the license keys are installed before continuing.

6. Select ‘Create virtual library’ from the menu.

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7. Fill in the correct settings for the new VDL.

Library location = C:\Volume1 (slots and drives only)

Library name = VDL (example only, choose something you like)

Barcode prefix = demo- (example only, same a s above)

Number of drives = 4 (this should be the amount you need for the

total VDL, depending on your license this can be limited.)

Number of slots = 1 (we will make the rest by hand)

Media capacity (MB) = 50 (this is the minimum, the correct media

files will be made in a next step)

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8. Press OK when finished filling in the fields as described.

9. Depending of your settings you will find a similar layout on your first

volume.

DO NOT CONTINUE CONFIGURING THE NEW VDL AT THIS POINT!!!

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Step 2: Creation of the needed slots

In our example we need 16 slots, holding 16 media file pointers (.media). In

the first step we only made one slot, so we need another 15. This can be

done by hand or by using a script.

1. Create a script that makes 15 new directories in the slots directory.

See example below.

Put the script at the root of the Volume1 directory. To make 15 more slots in

the C:\Volume1\VDL directory execute the following command:

makeslots 2 16 VDL

2. Check the slots directory to see if all 16 slots are there.

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Step 3: Creation of the needed .media files

After the previous step only the directory 1 under the slots directory has a

.media file. All other slots are empty. The slots should be filled with .media

files pointing to the other two volumes.

In this example the first eight slots will point to C:\Volume2\VDL and the last

eight slots will point to C:\Volume3\VDL.

1. Create a script that makes the correct .media files. See example

below.

2. Execute the script for the first 8 slots.

makedotmedia demo- C:\Volume2\VDL\media C:\Volume1\VDL\slots 1 8

3. Execute the script for the last 8 slots (watch out, other volume!)

makedotmedia demo- C:\Volume3\VDL\media C:\Volume1\VDL\slots 9 16

4. Check one or two .media files to see if they are correct.

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This is the .media file of slot 1:

This is the .media file of slot 10:

Make sure that each .media is conform the following rules:

• If there are no leading zeros in the media names, e.g. demo-1 (demo-

001), add them.

• Make sure there is only a single line in the file (no CR’s, LFs, empty

lines etc.)

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Step 4: Creation of the media files

Next step is to fill the volumes with the media files (virtual tapes). This can

be done by a NetVault:Backup tool called nvmakemedia. Make sure that

the complete path towards the media files is present as the tool will

not make them and will fail if the path is not present! This means that

if you defined that a media file must be present at C:\Volume2\VDL\media,

this path must be there before using the nvmakemedia tool.

1. Open a command box.

2. Go to the NetVault:Backup utililties directory.

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3. Execute the nvmakemedia tool without options to see how the tool

must be used.

4. Execute the nvmakemedia tool to create the missing media for the

VDL. In this example 50m (smallest possible) is chosen for file size.

5. If any media is missing you will be prompted to have it be created.

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6. Type Y for any media that is missing, check that the correct path will

be used.

7. To check if all needed media are created, execute the same command

again.

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Step 5: Configuring the extended VDL

To finalize the procedure, the VDL must be configured within the

NetVault:Backup GUI.

1. Go to Device Management in the NetVault:Backup GUI.

2. Double-click on the NetVault Server of SmartClient to open it.

3. Select the newly created VDL in the tab ‘Library Selection’.

4. Select the ‘Drive Selection’ tab.

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5. Double-click on the NetVault Server or SmartClient to open it.

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6. For each drive in the ‘Choose Drives’ window on the left a ‘Drive Bay’

must be selected. For bay 1 of 4 double-click on the first drive.

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7. Increase the ‘Select for drive bay’ number with one (press on the

button).

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8. Double-click on the second drive.

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9. Repeat step 15 and 16 for drives 3 and 4.

10. Select the ‘Configure’ tab.

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Each drive should belong to a drive bay.

11. Give the VDL a normal name in the field ‘Library Name’.

12. Click on the save button.

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13. You should now have a Multi Volume VDL. Congratulations!