NetVault 13.0.3 - Administration Guide for Managed Service Providers

About EMC Data Domain Systems

EMC Data Domain Systems provide disk-based storage with inline deduplication capabilities that reduce storage requirements by 10 to 30 times.

NetVault provides seamless integration with Data Domain systems through the EMC DD Boost software, allowing you to minimize your backup window and perform optimized disk-based backups while reducing your storage and network bandwidth requirements.


	NOTE: The NetVault Starter Edition does not support DD Boost.

DD Boost components

The DD Boost software includes two components:

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DD Boost Library: This component runs on the NetVault Server, and provides the interface to communicate with the DD Boost Server running on the Data Domain system.

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DD Boost Server: This component runs on the Data Domain systems.

DD Boost features

DD Boost offers the following features:

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Distributed segment processing: DD Boost offloads parts of the deduplication process to the backup client or server, enabling the client or server to send only unique data segments to the Data Domain system.

Distributed segment processing offers the following advantages:

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It increases the aggregate backup throughput of the storage system and reduces the amount of data transferred over the network.

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It decreases processor utilization on the backup server because sending data over the network is more CPU‑intensive than the distributed deduplication process.

Without this feature, the DD Boost Library sends all data (unique or redundant) to a Data Domain system for deduplication processing.

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Advanced load balancing and link failover: This feature lets you combine multiple Ethernet links into a group, and register a single interface with the backup application. The Data Domain system automatically balances the load for backup and restore jobs on multiple interfaces, and routes the jobs to the available interfaces if one of the interfaces in the group goes down.

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File replication: File-level replication enables transfer of deduplicated data directly between two or more DD Boost-enabled Data Domain systems, and thus reduces WAN bandwidth requirement by up to 99 percent. The Data Domain systems create and transfer the duplicate copies without using any resources on the backup server.

Replication requires optional DD Boost Replicator license. The license must be installed on all participating Data Domain systems.

If the source and target Data Domain systems are running different versions of the Data Domain OS, then for replication to be successful, the target system must be running the higher version of the OS.

Data Domain System prerequisites

Before adding a Data Domain system to a NetVault Server, verify that the following requirements are met:

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Install DD Boost license on the Data Domain System: To use a Data Domain system for backups and restores, install the required DD Boost license and enable DD Boost on the Data Domain systems.

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Create a DD Boost user account: On the Data Domain system, create a DD Boost user account that can be used to log on to the device for backups and restores.

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Configure the required DD Boost features: On the Data Domain system, configure the features that you want to use. For more information about enabling and configuring DD Boost features, see the DD Boost section in the DD OS Administration Guide.

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Open the required firewall ports: To perform DD Boost backups and replication across a firewall, open the following ports on the Data Domain system:

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TCP 2049 (NFS)

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TCP 2051 (Replication)

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TCP 111 (NFS portmapper)

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TCP xxx (select a random port for NFS mounted)

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Install Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 SP1 Redistributable Package on Windows: Install the Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 SP1 Redistributable Package on Windows-based NetVault Server. This requirement applies to all supported Windows platforms. The DD Boost library fails to load if you do not install this package on Windows.

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Configure network time-outs: Backup and restore jobs often take a long time to complete. Although the DD Boost Library can recover from temporary network interruptions, the operating system on the data protection application system might terminate a job prematurely if the data protection application time-outs are set too low. To avoid this, Data Domain recommends setting time-outs to at least 30 minutes (1800 seconds).

Adding a Data Domain System

To use a Data Domain system for backups and restores, you must first add the device to the NetVault Server. You can use the configuration wizard to add and configure this device.

To add a Data Domain system to the NetVault Server:

In the Navigation pane, click Guided Configuration, and then on the NetVault Configuration Wizard page, click Add Storage Devices.

— or —

In the Navigation pane, click Manage Devices, and then click Add Device.

On the Add Storage Devices page, select the Data Domain Boost Device option, and click Next.

On the Add EMC DDBoost Storage page, provide the following details.

Figure 10. Add EMC DDBoost Storage page

Table 34. Add Data Domain system
Option	Description
Network name/IP address	Type the Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN) or IP address of the Data Domain system. If the server is unable to resolve the host name, it fails to add the device.
Username	Specify a DD Boost user account that can be used to log on to the device for backups and restores. Verify that the user account is created on the Data Domain system before you add the device to the NetVault Server.
Password	Type the password for the user account.
Container	Type the name of the container. If the specified container does not exist on the Data Domain system, NetVault automatically creates it when you add the device to the server. You can configure multiple containers on a single Data Domain system. Each Data Domain system added to NetVault represents a container.
Block size	Type or select the block size for data transfers. The block size is specified in KiB. The default block size is 128 KiB.
Stream Limit	The default value for this setting is 32 streams. This setting applies to all NetVault Servers to which the container is added. If the number of data streams exceeds the defined limit for the container, the Media Manager reports an error (“Device has too many streams”). You can set the soft stream limit to any value between 1 and 256. If the container is added to more than one NetVault Server, set the same soft stream limit on all servers.
Force Add	If the device is already added to another NetVault Server with the same name, select the Force Add check box. This option can be useful if you have performed a disaster recovery to rebuild the NetVault Server.

Click Next to add the device.

After the device is successfully added and initialized, a message is displayed.


	NOTE: When you add a Data Domain system, NetVault creates several metadata files on the device. Each NetVault Server (to which you add the Data Domain system) creates is its own set of metadata files. NetVault writes the data transfer statistics for Data Domain Systems to the stats.stnz file. The nvstatsmngr process uses this file and requires that it is regularly updated. However, frequent updates can have a significant performance impact on the system. By default, NetVault updates the file after every 5 seconds or 10 blocks of data transfer. You can change this default setting from the Change Settings page. For more information, see Configuring transfer update settings for foreign RAS devices.