Dell DR4300e NetVault Backup - Setting Up the DR Series System as an RDA or VT - Page 38

38

Setting Up the Dell DR Series System as an RDA or VTL Backup Target for Dell NetVault Backup

A.2.8

Space reclamation guidelines

General Guidelines

The DR v3.2 Appliance Virtual Tape Library feature is presented to operating systems and data management

applications alike as devices either through iSCSI or NDMP protocol connectivity. The DMA interfaces with the

virtual tape library and all its underlying components including the drives and media though these specific

protocols.

The DMA must interact with the virtual tape media during a recycle, reuse or media initialization process in

order for the DR to be able to reclaim space during its own cleaning cycle.

This two-step process is required so that the backup software can reconcile the space by marking the media

as expired then reusing it, consolidating space across volumes/tapes or by simply recycling the media into a

scratch pool. Once these operations have been completed the DRs own cleaning cycle should be used to

reclaim that virtual tape media space which in turn will free up physical space on the DR unit.

Implementing proper media pool, groups and recycling practices will allow the virtual tape media to be used

at optimal levels and that the underlying physical space be reclaimed accordingly by the scheduled DR

reclamation.

Note

: In general the guidelines provided above should be sufficient for normal operations to insure proper

reclamation of space is conducted preemptively. Refer your individual DMA applications for best practices

and guidelines regarding tape reuse.

Product Specific Guidelines

In the event that space becomes an issue or that a user impact requires manual cleaning media can either be

manually Erased, Blanked, Scratched or otherwise recycled and a manual cleaning cycle initiated on the DR

unit.

Section	Page
1 Installing and configuring the DR Series system for use with NetVault Backup	6
1.1 NetVault software prerequisites	6
1.2 Installing and configuring the DR Series system	6
2 Creating and configuring the RDA target container(s) for NetVault Backup	10
2.1 Adding the RDA target container(s) for NetVault Backup	11
2.2 Configuring transport modes for NetVault Backup	14
2.2.1 Setting the mode using the CLI	14
2.2.2 Setting the mode using the GUI	14
2.3 Configuring a backup job for NetVault Backup	16
3 Configuring VTL	17
3.1 Creating and configuring iSCSI target container(s) for NetVault Backup	17
3.1.1 Create an iSCSI VTL container for NetVault Backup	17
3.1.2 Configure the iSCSI target – Windows	19
3.1.3 Configure NetVault Backup to use the newly created iSCSI VTL	23
3.2 Creating and configuring NDMP target container(s) for NetVault Backup	25
3.2.1 Create the NDMP VTL container for NetVault Backup	25
3.2.2 Set up NetVault Backup to use the newly created NDMP VTL	27
4 Setting up the DR Series system cleaner	30
5 Monitoring deduplication, compression, and performance	31
A VTL configuration guidelines	32
A.1 Managing VTL protocol accounts and credentials	32
A.1.1 iSCSI account details and management	32
A.1.2 NDMP account details and management	33
A.1.3 VTL Default Account Summary Table:	34
A.2 Managing VTL media and space use	34
A.2.1 General performance guidelines for DMA configuration	34
A.2.2 Physical DR space sizing and planning	34
A.2.3 Logical VTL geometry and media sizing	35
A.2.4 Media retention and grouping	36
A.2.5 VTL media count guidelines	36
A.2.6 Adding media to the VTL container	37
A.2.7 Updating NetVault Backup to identify newly added VTL media	37

Dell DR4300e NetVault Backup - Setting Up the DR Series System as an RDA or VT - Page 38

General Guidelines, Product Specific Guidelines

Page 38 highlights