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NetVault 13.0.2 - Administration Guide for Managed Service Providers

Introduction Getting started Configuring clients Managing catalog search Configuring storage devices
About storage devices SAN considerations Quest DR Series systems Quest QoreStor NetVault SmartDisk EMC Data Domain Systems Snapshot Array Manager Virtual Tape Libraries Virtual standalone drives Shared Virtual Tape Libraries Physical tape devices Storage tiers
Backing up data Managing policies Restoring data Managing NetVault dashboard Managing jobs Monitoring logs Managing storage devices
Role-based access to manage storage devices Monitoring device activity Managing disk-based storage devices in list view Managing disk-based storage devices in tree view Managing the Snapshot Array Manager Managing tape libraries in list view Managing tape libraries in tree view Managing tape drives in list view Managing tape drives in tree view Adding shared devices
Managing storage media Managing user and group accounts Managing Tenant Monitoring events and configuring notifications Reporting in NetVault Working with client clusters Configuring default settings for NetVault
About configuring default settings Configuring encryption settings Configuring plug-in options Configuring default settings for post-scripts Configuring default settings for Verify Plug-in Configuring Deployment Manager Settings Configuring Job Manager settings Configuring Logging Daemon settings Configuring Media Manager settings Configuring Network Manager settings Configuring Process Manager settings Configuring RAS device settings Configuring Schedule Manager settings Configuring Web Service settings Configuring Auditor Daemon settings Configuring firewall settings Configuring general settings Configuring security settings Synchronizing NetVault Time Configuring the reporting utility Configuring NetVault WebUI default settings Configuring NetVault to use a specific VSS provider Configuring default settings using Txtconfig
Diagnostic tracing Managing diagnostic data Using the deviceconfig utility NetVault processes Environment variables Network ports used by NetVault Troubleshooting
Common errors Safe Mode in NetVault

Virtual Tape Libraries

This section includes the following topics:

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About Virtual Tape Library
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Virtual Tape Library considerations
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Creating and adding a Virtual Tape Library
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Re-adding a previously created VTL

About Virtual Tape Library

Virtual Tape Libraries (VTLs) emulate tape libraries on disk. VTLs are included in NetVault as a licensable option.

With VTLs, you have the flexibility to perform quick backups to disks, and during off-peak hours migrate or duplicate the backups to physical devices for off-site storage. The Media Manager does not distinguish between virtual and physical tapes. Therefore, you can use the same process to set up backup policies, including retirement period and rotation schemes.

VTLs are represented as directories on the disk. Each VTL contains three directories: drives, slots, and media. These directories contain numbered subdirectories. The virtual drives reside as files in the drives subdirectories. These files contain links to the media files. The virtual tapes reside as media files in the media directory. When a virtual tape is moved between slot and drive, the media file itself stays in the media directory, while the drives and slots files are modified to emulate the moving of the media.

A VTL can handle any number of concurrent NetVault Client backups. As with a physical library, the number of drives contained in the VTL dictate how many simultaneous operations can be performed. The number of slots should be the same as or more than the number of configured drives. Different operating systems may impose maximum file-size limits, which can affect the maximum VTL media size.

 
* 
NOTE: VTLs are independent of file systems (for example, NTFS, UFS, ext3, and others) and disk systems (for example, IDE, SCSI, iSCSI, and others), but VTLs do not support file systems residing on removable drives.

Direct-to-cloud support

Beginning with release 12.3, NetVault supports StarWind Virtual Tape Library (StarWind VTL), which converts physical drives into virtual tapes to emulate tape hardware. It supports standard uplink protocols, including SMB3, NFSv4.1, iSCSI, and works with most virtual environments.

StarWind VTL is available on Microsoft Azure Marketplace, on AWS Marketplace, and as on-premises appliance

NetVault supports public and private cloud object storage replication with StarWind VTL through any of the following storage service providers:

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Amazon S3 and Amazon Glacier
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Amazon S3 Compatible
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BlackBlaze B2 Cloud Storage
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Microsoft Azure Cloud Storage
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Wasabi Cloud Storage

Virtual Tape Library considerations

Before creating and adding a VTL, review the following information:

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Before creating a VTL, NetVault performs a disk space check to ensure that the target disk has sufficient space to accommodate the new VTL.
On normal file systems you can use the disk space check feature to avoid errors during VTL creation. When creating a VTL on a third-party deduplication appliance or compressed file system, you should disable this feature. For more information, see Configuring default settings for Disk Devices Plug‑in.
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During disk space checks the free space required on the disk is calculated as follows:
Number of Slots * Media Capacity + <x>
Here <x> is the additional disk space considered for the following requirements:
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Disk space required to create the directory structure for VTL. The requirement varies for different file systems.
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Disk space required by other applications running on the system.
By default, the additional space requirement is set to 20MB. To change this setting, see Configuring default settings for Disk Devices Plug‑in.
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If the target disk does not have sufficient space to accommodate the specified VTL, the device emulation process is terminated and a message is displayed.
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