Adding volumes to a 400 TB Media Server Deduplication Pool

When you configure a storage server for a 400 TB Media Server Deduplication Pool, you specify the pathname of the first storage volume. Before you can use the Media Server Deduplication Pool, you must add the other two volumes to the disk pool.

The following are the minimum hardware requirements for adding volumes to a 400 TB MSDP:

CPU: A 64-bit processor with a minimum clock rate of 2.4-GHz is required. A minimum of 8 cores are required, 16 cores are recommended.
Memory: Minimum 256 GB. You may need to add more memory if you have additional roles performed by the same media server. For example, when the media server is used as a VMware backup host, an NDMP backup agent and a primary server.
Swap: 64 GB
Storage:
- Metadata disk: RAID 0+1 is recommended, with at least 1 TB of space.
- Veritas recommends eight mount points, each mount point must have a separate RAID group, a RAID 6 is recommended. Both the metadata disk and data disk should have more than 250 MB/sec of read or write speed.
- File Systems: NetBackup supports VxFS, XFS, or Ext4, but VxFS is recommended. The number of storage volumes can vary based on your setup. The maximum amount of storage space is 400 TB. The following procedure uses 8 file systems of 50 TB each for the example.

See About provisioning the storage for MSDP.

To add volumes to a 400 TB Media Server Deduplication Pool

On the MSDP storage server, you must create, format, and mount new storage volumes. One of the storage volumes must have 1 TB or greater of storage space (this storage is for metadata). The other storage volumes can equal up to 400 TB of storage space.
This procedure uses 8 file systems of 50 TB each for the example.
Note:
The number of storage volumes can vary based on your setup. The maximum amount of storage space is 400 TB.
Mount a 1 TB storage volume (for metadata) at:
```
/msdp/cat
```
Mount the eight storage volumes on:
```
/msdp/vol1
...
/msdp/vol8
```
Create a touch a file at /etc/nbapp-release if it doesn't exist.
Create a subdirectory that is called data under each mounted volume:
```
/msdp/vol1/data
...
/msdp/vol8/data
```
Configure the MSDP through the Storage Server Configuration Wizard and Ensure that the Use alternate path for deduplication database option is checked.
Provide the storage path as /msdp/vol1 and the database path as /msdp/cat.

Add additional 50 TB storage volumes to the deduplication pool:

/usr/openv/pdde/pdcr/bin/crcontrol --dsaddpartition /msdp/vol2/data
...
/usr/openv/pdde/pdcr/bin/crcontrol --dsaddpartition /msdp/vol8/data

Verify that the deduplication pool contains the new volumes using the following command:
```
/usr/openv/pdde/pdcr/bin/crcontrol --dsstat 2 | grep Mount
Mount point count: 8
```

Configuring 400 TB on a Windows MSDP server

To enable 400 TB support, create the following file:

mkdir c:\etc
echo Windows_BYO > "c:\\etc\\nbapp-release"

The sizing recommendations for Windows are the same as they are for Linux. One of the storage volumes must have 1 TB of storage space and the other storage volumes can equal up to 400 TB of storage space. Using Windows, there are a few additional requirements:

The DCHeaderHashSize setting in the <MSDP Storage DIR>\etc\puredisk\contentrouter.cfg file must be modified to be 2000000 / number_of_volumes. For example, with the full eight mount points, set the DCHeaderHashSize to 250000.
The volume that is used should be present as nested volumes, not as letter drives (C: Or E:). Veritas qualified this solution using NTFS volumes.

The following is an example volume layout and each data# directory is a nested mount:

"msdp_data" :["f:/msdp/data1" ,"f:/msdp/data2" ,"f:/msdp/data3" ,
"f:/msdp/data4","f:/msdp/data5","f:/msdp/data6", "f:/msdp/data7"],
"f:/msdp/data8"],
"msdp_cat" :["f:/msdp/cat" ]

The crcontrol syntax is the same as Linux. On Windows, crcontrol is located in <INSTALL_DRIVE>\Program Files\Veritas\pdde\. For example:

C:\Program Files\Veritas\pdde\crcontrol --dsaddpartition f:\msdp\data2

Note:

MSDP storage capacity has a defined maximum and not following these settings can result in performance-related issues due to data not being balanced across all volumes.

For more information about MSDP storage capacity review the following section:

Note:

NetBackup supports a pool size up to 400 TB. A pool can be a smaller size and expanded later by adding additional volumes.

More Information

Configuring a storage server for a Media Server Deduplication Pool

About MSDP storage capacity

Adding volumes to a 400 TB Media Server Deduplication Pool

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