NetWorker Backups

We are running Legato NetWorker 7.4.4.

This is a service run for Central ICT Systems. Excess Capacity has been made available to departments at the cost of consumables only.

Requirements for clients

The following is the minimum requirement for a client to be backed-up by the ITS backup system.

In addition, we require a University R/C to which all charges will be billed. Charges are computed and billed monthly as follows:

Description Cost
Licences Client $20.00 per client
Microsoft Exchange BSM $90.00 per Exchange Server
Tape space Full dumps $0.08 per Gigabyte
Incremental dumps $0.02 per Gigabyte
Offsite copies $0.0133 per Gigabyte

A full dump is done once per month, with incremental dumps on all other days. A copy of these is taken offsite. The full dumps are kept for 12 months, the incremental dumps for 3 months and the offsite copies for 2 months.  Other arrangements can be made on request.

Backups are run after 7pm each night.  Copies of most of the backups are made and taken to a second location off campus.  The copies are made during the day after the backup was run, and taken to the distant location on the following business day.

We use client side compression if available, so these volumes are the compressed volume delivered by the client.

To request that your departmental server be backed up please fill in the request form.

Installation Notes

What to install?

The networker client needs to be installed on the machine. The other components of the distributions are not needed, although the man pages are useful. The service needs to be started. Many of the installation kits do not start the service.

Firewall rules

Networker backups are a client-server service running over TCP/IP. It is important that any client firewall allows the traffic between the University NetWorker server infrstructure and the client. The requirements follow.

Direction Protocol Source IP Addresses Source TCP Ports Destination IP Addresses Destination TCP Ports Flags
Server -> Client TCP nsrhost.ucc.usyd.edu.au (129.78.64.126) any client 7937 to 9938  

If your firewall requires rules for outbound traffic, or for traffic that is the response to inbound connections, then you will need the following as well.

Direction Protocol Source IP Addresses Source TCP Ports Destination IP Addresses Destination TCP Ports Flags
Server -> Client TCP nsrhost.ucc.usyd.edu.au (129.78.64.126) 7937 to 9938 client any Established
storage nodes (172.19.200.0/24)
Client -> Server TCP client any nsrhost.ucc.usyd.edu.au (129.78.64.126) any  
storage nodes (172.19.200.0/24)

On linux with iptables, the following will usually be used. The first rule just allows all traffic in for connections opened by the host, so in many cases will already be on your system.

/sbin/iptables -A INPUT -m state --state RELATED,ESTABLISHED -j ACCEPT 
/sbin/iptables -A INPUT -s 129.78.64.126 -p tcp -m tcp --dport 7937:9938 -j ACCEPT 

Hostname

Networker is very sensitive about the host name. It is most important that the client software gets the correct name for itself. If it does not, you will get errors about a "server" misconfiguration, but this is really a client misconfiguration.

On Linux, you must have the fully qualified name as the first entry in the list of names belonging to the ip address in /etc/hosts. e.g.

129.78.xx.yy  host.dept.usyd.edu.au host

Recoveries

Recoveries are done on the client host. Use the command recover -s nsrhost.ucc.usyd.edu.au. This tool is interactive and has many subcommands. It allows you to browse and select files from the backup-index to be recovered.

help
Provides help for the tool.
ls
list files in the backup
add
add one or more files to the set to be recovered
relocate
Change the destination to which the files will be recovered
changetime
Change the time from which the files will be recovered
recover
Start the recover

Occasionally, you may need to recover data more than 3 months old. If the index has been removed, you will need to contact backsupsmaster@mail.usyd.edu.au and ask for the index to be recovered to cover the date you require.