A couple of weeks ago we held our Tech Tuesday session on the new features in NetBackup 7.6 and it garnered the greatest attendance to date. Clearly, there's interest in this topic, and based on the questions we received afterward, there's still some confusion on what the new features are and how they work. Below are a few questions asked during our Tech Tuesday presentation. If you are interested in the full Q & A transcript, send us an email at
techtuesday@datalink.com.
Q: Do you need to have an existing NFS server or is one dynamically created?
A: You install UNIX services for Windows on the Windows machine that acts as the proxy. That Windows machine (which can be a VM) is then used as the "temporary" NFS server.
Q: In instant recovery, can the VM be recovered in a different esxi host?
A: Yes. You can also rename the VM in the process of doing that.
Q: Does that mean if you have an appliance, you need a Windows media server to use the VM instant recovery?
A: It's not a media server. You need a proxy to issue the commands. That can be a VM. It's an API issue that should be resolved at a later time.
Q: Will the snapshots be deduplicated?
A: That depends on the settings of the NetApp volume you are on. If the volume has deduplication turned on, yes. If you are talking about the secondary copy from the NetApp to other storage, then it depends on what that secondary device is and can do.
Q: Are NetBackup Accelerator for VM and VM Instant Recovery only available when using a NetBackup appliance?
A: No. They are available for both appliances and for master/media server running on non-appliance hardware. There is a compatibility list so make sure that you check on that first.
Over the next few blog posts, I'll attempt to clear up the confusion.
There are several marquee features, and some that are not getting much attention, but will definitely help. The big shining stars are: Accelerator for VMware, VMware Instant Recovery, enhanced Replication Director, intelligent Oracle policies, vCloud Director integration, and Virtual Center integration. And there are many other improvements that I'll cover later.
In my next blog, I’ll focus on
Accelerator for VMware. This is a biggie and warrants two parts. For now, I invite you to view our Tech Tuesday webinar:
What’s new with NetBackup 7.6? This will give you a good overview on some of the new features. Stay tuned!