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  1. Home
  3. NetBackup™ Upgrade Guide
  5. Appendix A. Reference
  7. Upgrade requirements for UNIX and Linux
NetBackup™ Upgrade Guide

Upgrade requirements for UNIX and Linux

Table: NetBackup requirements for UNIX and Linux describes the requirements to prepare your UNIX and Linux systems for NetBackup upgrade. Use this table as a checklist to address each item.

For the most up-to-date information about installation requirements, visit the Cohesity SORT website. More information about SORT is available.

See About Cohesity Services and Operations Readiness Tools.

Table: NetBackup requirements for UNIX and Linux

Check

Requirement

Details

 

Operating System

  • For a complete list of compatible UNIX and Linux operating systems, refer to the Software Compatibility List (SCL) at the following website:

    https://support.cohesity.com/s/article/article-100040093

    https://sort.veritas.com/netbackup

Memory

Use the information that is shown to correctly size your server:

  • The SORT website. See About Cohesity Services and Operations Readiness Tools.

  • General details on how to size your NetBackup environment. See Size guidance for the NetBackup primary server and domain.

  • Detailed information about planning and tuning your NetBackup environment are available. These details are found in the NetBackup Backup Planning and Performance Tuning Guide.

 

Disk space

  • The exact amount of space that is required depends on the hardware platform. More information about this topic is available.

    NetBackup Release Notes for 11.2

  • NetBackup catalogs contain information about your backups that become larger as you use the product. The disk space that the catalogs require depends primarily on the following aspects of your backup configuration:

    • The number of files that are backed up.

    • The frequency of your backups.

    • The amount of time that you set to retain your backup data.

If space is an issue, you can install NetBackup on an alternate file system. The installation lets you select an alternate install location, and creates the appropriate link from /usr/openv.

Note:

The value for disk space is for initial installation only. The NetBackup catalog requires considerably more space once the primary server is placed in a production environment.

General requirements

  • Ensure that the gzip and the gunzip commands are installed on the local system. The directories where these commands are installed must be part of the root user's path environment variable setting.

  • All NetBackup installation ESD images, appropriate licenses, and the root password for all servers.

  • A server of a supported hardware type that runs a supported version of its operating system (with applicable patches), adequate disk space, and supported peripherals. For details on these requirements, refer to the NetBackup Release Notes for 11.2.

  • All NetBackup servers must recognize and be recognizable by their client systems. In some environments, this means that each must be defined in the other's /etc/hosts file. Other environments may use the Network Information Service (NIS) or Domain Name Service (DNS).

  • The minimum screen resolution configuration is 1024x768, 256 colors.

Clustered systems

  • Ensure that each node in the NetBackup cluster can run the ssh command or its equivalent. The root user must be able to perform a remote logon to each node in the cluster without entering a password. This remote logon is necessary for installation and configuration of the NetBackup server and any NetBackup agents and options. After installation and configuration are complete, it is no longer required.

  • You must install, configure, and start the cluster framework before you install NetBackup.

  • You must have defined a virtual name using DNS, NIS, or the /etc/hosts file. The IP address is defined at the same time. (The virtual name is a label for the IP address.)

  • Begin the upgrade from the active node, and then upgrade the inactive nodes.

More information about cluster requirements is available.

NetBackup Clustered Primary Server Administrator's Guide

 

Host names

All NetBackup servers must use a host name that is complaint with RFC 1123 ("Requirements for Internet Hosts - Application and Support") and RFC 952 ("DOD Internet Host Table Specification") standards.

These standards include the supported and unsupported characters that can be used in a host name. For example, the underscore character ( _ ) is not a supported character for host names.

More information is available about these standards and about this issue:

RFC 1123: http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1123.txt

RFC 952: http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc952.txt

NetBackup Status Code 130 System Error Occurred: https://support.cohesity.com/s/article/article-100033400

 

NFS compatibility

NetBackup does not support installation on an NFS-mounted directory. File locking in NFS-mounted file systems can be unreliable.

 

btrfs file system

The installation of the NetBackup database on a btrfs file system is not supported. Do not attempt to install the NetBackup database onto a btrfs file system. The database files reside on the primary server in the directories under /usr/openv/db.

Before you attempt a NetBackup upgrade, move the database to a supported file system (such as ext4 or xfs). More information about moving the database before an upgrade is available in the NetBackup Upgrade Guide.

 

Kernel reconfiguration

For some peripherals and platforms, kernel reconfiguration is required.

For more details, see the NetBackup Device Configuration Guide.

 

Red Hat Linux

For Red Hat Linux, NetBackup requires server networking.

 

Other backup software

Remove any other vendor backup software currently configured on your system before you install this product. Other vendor backup software can negatively affect how NetBackup installs and functions.

 

Web Services

The NetBackup primary server includes a configured Tomcat web server to support critical backup operations. This web server operates under user account elements with limited privileges. These user account elements must be available on each primary server (or each node of a clustered primary server). You must create these required account elements before installation.

Note:

Save the details of the user account that you use for the NetBackup Web Services. A primary server recovery requires the same NetBackup Web Services user account and credentials that were used when the NetBackup catalog was backed up.

Note:

If the NetBackup PBX is running in secure mode, please add the web service user as authorized user in PBX. More information about determining PBX mode and how to correctly add users is available.

https://support.cohesity.com/s/article/article-100032858

By default, the UNIX installation script attempts to associate the web server with user account nbwebsvc and group account nbwebgrp. You can override these default values with the NetBackup installation answer file. You must populate the NetBackup installation answer file on the target host before you start the UNIX installation script. Populate the NetBackup installation answer file with custom web server account names as shown.

  1. Log in to the server as root.

  2. Open the file /tmp/NBInstallAnswer.conf with your preferred text editor. Create the file if it does not exist.

  3. Override the default web server user account name by adding the line shown:

    WEBSVC_USER=custom_user_account_name

  4. Override the default web server group account name by adding the line shown:

    WEBSVC_GROUP=custom_group_account_name

  5. Save and close the file.

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