Best practices for the SAN Shared Storage Option

Review the following recommendations for SAN SSO:

  • Before installing Backup Exec, be sure that all hardware in the SAN is working and configured properly.

  • Make sure that the primary server is the fastest server and has the fewest extraneous operations.

  • Use a separate primary server for each SAN.

  • Make sure that the HBA drivers, SCSI to fibre bridges, and library firmware have been updated to the hardware vendor’s most current release.

  • Make sure that all HBA cards on the SAN are using the same and the most current firmware and driver levels.

  • Keep the servers in the SAN in the same Microsoft Administration domain. Cross-domain environments can cause authentication problems during install and can block access to resources during backups.

  • Change the display names of libraries and drives to names that reflect the servers or jobs for which you will use them.

  • Run frequent backups of the entire Backup Exec directory tree on each Backup Exec database server in the SAN.

  • Create a separate media set to use only for backups of the Backup Exec directory tree and the Windows operating system on the primary database server. This will reduce the number of tapes you need to catalog to find the files to restore the ADAMM database and catalogs.

  • Use a switch administration tool to verify that each server is in a zone configuration with the tape devices.

  • You must manually refresh Backup Exec administration consoles in a SAN SSO configuration if a member server updates the database. To manually refresh the user interface, right-click the proper component, and then press F5.

Best practices for the SAN Shared Storage Option