Commvault Mediaagent WP
Commvault Mediaagent WP
This document provides an introduction to the process of deploying Commvault® Data Platform on
the Cisco UCS® S3260 Storage Server for a traditional Commvault MediaAgent architecture.
January 2018
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Contents
Introduction ........................................................................................................................................................................................4
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Introduction
This document describes at a high level the installation and configuration steps for deploying the Commvault MediaAgent server on
the Cisco UCS® S3260 Storage Server to build a data protection solution. This document does not provide a detailed step-by-step
guide, and not every task is documented. The document focuses on the steps that are relevant to the specific use case under
discussion. To complete the deployment, you should be familiar with the following:
Technology overview
This section introduces the technologies used in the solution described in this document.
● Computing: The system is based on an entirely new class of computing system that incorporates rack-mount and blade
servers using Intel® Xeon® processor CPUs. The Cisco UCS servers offer the patented Cisco® Extended Memory Technology
to support applications with large data sets and allow more virtual machines per server.
● Network: The system is integrated onto a low-latency, lossless, 10- or 40-Gbps unified network fabric. This network
foundation consolidates LANs, SANs, and high-performance computing (HPC) networks, which are separate networks today.
The unified fabric lowers costs by reducing the number of network adapters, switches, and cables, and by decreasing the
power and cooling requirements.
● Virtualization: The system unleashes the full potential of virtualization by enhancing the scalability, performance, and
operational control of virtual environments. Cisco security, policy enforcement, and diagnostic features are now extended into
virtualized environments to better support changing business and IT requirements.
● Storage access: The system provides consolidated access to both SAN storage and network-attached storage (NAS) over
the unified fabric. By unifying the storage access layer, Cisco UCS can access storage over Ethernet (with Network File
System [NFS] or Small Computer System Interface over IP [iSCSI]), Fibre Channel, and Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE).
This approach provides customers with choice for storage access and investment protection. In addition, server
administrators can pre-assign storage-access policies for system connectivity to storage resources, simplifying storage
connectivity and management for increased productivity.
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● Cisco UCS Manager provides unified, embedded management of all Cisco UCS software and hardware components
(Figure 1).
● Cisco UCS 6000 Series Fabric Interconnects are line-rate, low-latency, lossless, 10-Gbps Ethernet and FCoE interconnect
switches providing the management and communication backbone for Cisco UCS.
● Cisco UCS 5100 Series Blade Server Chassis supports up to eight blade servers and up to two fabric extenders in a six-rack
unit (6RU) enclosure.
● Cisco UCS B-Series Blade Servers increase performance, efficiency, versatility, and productivity with Intel-based blade
servers.
● Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers deliver unified computing in an industry-standard form factor to reduce total cost of
ownership (TCO) and increase agility.
● Cisco UCS S-Series Storage Servers deliver unified computing in an industry-standard form factor to address data-intensive
workloads with reduced TCO and increased agility.
● Cisco UCS adapters, with wire-once architecture, offer a range of options to converge the fabric, optimize virtualization, and
simplify management.
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Extending the capabilities of the Cisco UCS C3000 platform, the S3260 helps you achieve the highest levels of data availability. With
a dual-node capability that is based on the Intel Xeon processor E5-2600 v4 series, it offers up to 600 terabytes (TB) of local
storage in a compact 4RU form factor. All hard-disk drives (HDDs) can be asymmetrically split between the dual nodes and are
individually hot-swappable. The drives can be built in an enterprise-class Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID) redundant
design or used in pass-through mode.
This high-density rack server easily fits in a standard 32-inch-depth rack, such as the Cisco R42610 Rack.
Cisco UCS S-Series Storage Servers can be deployed as standalone servers or as part of a Cisco UCS managed environment to
take advantage of Cisco’s standards-based unified computing innovations that help reduce customers’ TCO and increase their
business agility.
The S3260 uses a modular server architecture that, using Cisco’s blade technology expertise, allows you to upgrade the computing
or network nodes in the system without the need to migrate data from one system to another. It delivers:
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● A system I/O controller (SIOC) with a Cisco UCS Virtual Interface Card (VIC) 1300 platform embedded chip supporting dual-
port 40-Gbps connectivity
High reliability, availability, and serviceability (RAS) features with tool-free server nodes, system I/O controller, easy-to-use latching
lid, and hot-swappable and hot-pluggable components.
A comprehensive data protection and management strategy offers seamless and efficient backup, archiving, storage, and recovery
of data in your enterprise from any operating system, database, and application. To protect and manage data in your environment,
the Commvault software must be distributed to systems that you want to protect. CommServe®, MediaAgent, and protected systems
constitute a CommCell® environment, and each protected system is referred to as a client (Figure 3).
The CommServe server is the command and control center of the CommCell architecture. It coordinates and runs all CommCell
operations, maintaining Microsoft SQL Server databases that contain all configuration, security, and operational history for the
CommCell environment. A CommCell environment can contain only one CommServe host. The CommServe software can be
installed in physical, virtual, and clustered environments.
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MediaAgent is the data transmission manager. It provides high-performance data movement and manages the data storage pools.
When installed on a client system, it also manages the Commvault IntelliSnap snapshot integration with the underlying storage.
A client is any system within a CommCell environment to be protected. iDataAgents are software modules that are installed on
computers to access and protect data. The backup and recovery system uses agents to interface with file systems, applications, and
databases to facilitate the protection of data on production systems. By default, a file system iDataAgent module is installed when the
Commvault software is added to a system. If the client hosts specific applications or databases, additional iDataAgents are required.
These three Commvault components combined offer the most comprehensive and flexible data protection solution on the market
today.
Figure 4 shows the snapshot creation process. Logically, it has six phases.
Disks are now common backup media, and data backup on disk generally provides faster restore operations. Disk-based storage can
be useful if you have many incremental backups and the percentage of data change is small. If the volume of data in incremental
copies is insufficient to help ensure efficient writing to tape, consider disk storage. After writing the data to disk, you can use staging
or storage lifecycle policies to copy batches of images to tape. This arrangement can produce faster backup operations and prevent
wear and tear on your tape drives.
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Consider the following factors when backing up a data set to disk or tape:
● Disks are well suited for short retention periods; tape is better suited for longer retention periods.
● Disks are well suited for staging; tape is good for long-term storage.
● Disks are better suited for low-volume incremental backups.
● Synthetic full backups are faster when incremental backup copies are stored on disk.
● Restoration from disk is usually faster than from tape.
● If client backup operations are too slow to keep the tape in motion, send the backups to disk.
● If the backups are small, send the backups to disk.
● Staging or lifecycle policies can later move the backup images to tape.
There is no “best” position in the infrastructure to install a Commvault with Cisco UCS solution. Many options are available regardless
of how big a data center is. One option is to position the solution in a central place in the physical network so that it can be accessed
from everywhere with the required bandwidth. Another option is to place the solution as close as possible to the data source.
With most data transferred from the backup client to the server and not directly from storage, and with the unique design of Cisco
UCS, the use of a Cisco UCS domain will limit the network bandwidth required for data replication between the Commvault
MediaAgent nodes. This option also allows Cisco UCS Manager to manage all Commvault MediaAgent servers in a central place.
Reference architecture
This section introduces the reference architecture for the Commvault and Cisco solution.
Overview
Commvault and Cisco worked together to establish a simplified approach to sizing hardware to work within a Commvault
environment. Building-block designs were aligned and tested with Commvault architecture deployments. This design is expandable
from single-site to multisite, hybrid cloud, and public cloud environments, and any combination. Figure 5 shows the models and
configuration needed for each size of Commvault MediaAgent. These models and configurations have been tested to provide the
necessary requirements for each size. When ordering these approved and tested configurations, you can be assured of the proper
performance.
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The reason for this is that hardware and storage manufacturers count the capacity in different ways than the files system does. The
prefixes kilo-, mega-, giga-, and tera- are used to state powers of ten. However, in computer software, the data being handled is
typically organized based on powers of 2, so it became customary to call 2 x 10 a kilobyte, which is actually 1024 bytes, not exactly
1000 bytes.
There are prefixes to differentiate between base 10 and base 2; however, these are seldom used. In base 2 the proper terms are
kibibyte, mebibyte, gibibyte, and tebibyte. The “bi” refers to binary, and the shortened terms are KiB, MiB, GiB, and TiB.
To convert KB, MB, and GB to KiB, MiB, and GiB, see the following list:
Typically, software will display GB or TB as the storage unit, but the amount actually is Gib or TiB, so this confusion will remain unless
this approach is changed.
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Keep these values in mind as you review the Tables 1, 2, and 3 in the next section. Capacities are stated using the sizes provided by
the hardware manufacturer (base 10). Notes reference the software-based sizes (base 2).
Storage: Metadata 1 x 3200-GB PCIe and Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) storage*
● Index cache: 800 GB; deduplication database (DDB): 600 GB; and cloud copy DDB: 600 GB
Storage: Storage pool 18 x 6-TB N-SAS with RAID 60 (72 TB total with 2 hot spares*)
● 2 x 8 drives with RAID 6: Nested
● Access policy: Read-Write; read policy: Always Read Ahead
● Cache policy: Direct I/O; write policy: Write Back Good Backup Battery Unit (BBU)
● •Disk cache policy: Unchanged; stripe size: 512 KB
*When these drives are formatted, the OS will show capacities in base 2, so 480 GB will be approximately 447 GB, 3.2 TB will be approximately 2.9 TB,
and 72 TB will be approximately 65.4 TB.
**For these configurations, power supplies and power cables must be ordered separately to accommodate different power requirements in different
regions.
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Storage: Storage pool 30 x 6-TB NL-SAS with RAID 60 (144 TB total with 2 hot spares)*
● 2 x 14 drives with RAID 6: Nested
● Access policy: Read-Write; read policy: Always Read Ahead
● Cache policy: Direct I/O; write policy: Write Back Good BBU
● Disk cache policy: Unchanged; stripe size: 512 KB
*When these drives are formatted, the OS will show capacities in base 2, so 480 GB will be approximately 447 GB, 3.2 TB will be approximately 2.9 TB,
and 144 TB will be approximately 130 TB.
**For these configurations, power supplies and power cables must be ordered separately to accommodate different power requirements in different
regions.
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*When these drives are formatted, the OS will show capacities in base 2, so 480 GB will be approximately 447 GB, 6.4 TB will be approximately 5.8 TB,
and 234 TB will be approximately 212 TB.
**For these configurations, power supplies and power cables must be ordered separately to accommodate different power requirements in different
regions.
Please use the Cisco UCS S3260 installation guide to complete the initial configuration (IP addresses, passwords, software versions,
etc.). This document assumes that the S3260 is accessible through the Cisco Integrated Management Controller (IMC) or Cisco UCS
Manager over the network.
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2. Check the condition of the system and the components required for the deployment on the Chassis > Summary page.
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6. The virtual network interface card (vNIC) tab summarizes the existing host Ethernet interfaces, including the maximum
transmission unit (MTU) size, the uplink port used, and VLAN information. As a best practice, you should create at least one
vNIC per uplink port or one vNIC per VLAN ID.
7. You should use MTU 9000 for the backup network if possible and on all participating devices in the network (clients, switches,
and servers).
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8. The virtual host bus adapter (vHBA) tab summarizes the existing host Fibre Channel Interfaces, including the worldwide port
name (WWPN) and worldwide node name (WWNN) and information about whether the vHBA is used to boot the system. As a
best practice, you should create at least one vHBA per uplink port or one vHBA per VSAN ID. Fibre Channel connectivity is
used mainly for backup to Fibre Channel tape or for LAN-free backup directly from SAN storage.
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10. The Memory tab of the Inventory pane presents memory details.
11. The S3260 SIOC is connected as the PCIe device and shown on the PCI Adapters tab along with the NVMe drives on the
server node and the I/O expansion module.
12. The vNICs tab of the Server Inventory pane shows the vNICs.
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13. Click eth0 under vNICs in the left panel and set the following parameters to improve performance of Windows specific adapter
with 40Gb NICs:
a. Transmit Queues: 8
c. Receive Queues: 8
e. Completion Queues: 16
f. Interrupts: 32
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16. If the S3260 is equipped with an I/O expander board for installing PCIe cards or additional NVMe devices, the details are
shown on the IO Expander tab.
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17. Choose Storage. The storage configuration is the most important part of the Cisco UCS S3260 configuration for Commvault
MediaAgent server.
18. The Storage pane shows the NVMe details, RAID controller information, physical drive and virtual drive information, and RAID
settings.
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1. Choose Chassis. The RAID controller will see only the physical drives that are zoned for it in the Chassis area.
2. In the Chassis area, choose Inventory > Dynamic Storage. On this screen, click the Zoning tab.
3. Select all the drives and click Assign to Server 2.
4. Click Save Changes.
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5. Give the system some time to complete the zoning process. Power on the server node so that the physical disk devices are
discovered by the RAID controller before you start creating virtual drive groups and virtual drives in the Storage area.
6. In the status column, the drives should be listed as Unconfigured Good. if they aren’t, select the drive and then click Set State
as Unconfigured Good at the upper right.
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7. Now configure the hot spare drives. This configuration has three (based on the Extra Large configuration). Select Drive 1. Then
click Make Global Hot Spare at the top. Do the same thing for Drive 2 and Drive 3.
Note: Drive slots 1,2 and 3 or 46,47 and 48 can be used to create hot spares, the drives in other remaining slots should be used to
create the Raid 60 Disk Group.
8. In the Virtual Drive Info pane, no virtual drives should be listed. Remove any virtual drives that appear in this initial
configuration.
1. On the Controller Info page, click Create Virtual Drive from Unused Physical Drives.
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2. For the operating system, you must create a RAID 1 configuration on the two SSDs on the back of the chassis.
b. Select physical drives 201 and 202 and add them to the drive group (click >>).
c. For the name, enter Raid1_Boot. (Any other name you want can be used to identify the drive.)
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6. Confirm that you want to make the Boot virtual drive the boot drive.
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7. Return to the Controller Info tab to create the additional virtual drive groups and virtual drives. The following configuration for
the disk library is for MediaAgent Extra Large configuration, which uses 48 SAS drives.
8. Click Create Virtual Drive from Unused Physical Drives.
9. Select 60 as the RAID level.
10. Select physical drives 4 through 19 and add them to the drive group (click >>).
11. Repeat the addition of physical drives by selecting 20 through 35 and then adding the drives to the drive group (click >>).
12. Repeat the addition of physical drives by selecting 36 through 51 and then adding the drives to the drive group (click >>).
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13. Provide the following values and complete the virtual drive creation.
a. Enter DiskLibRaid60 as the name. (You can use any other name you want to identify the drive.)
f. Use the size populated automatically or change the size to the maximum available space.
15. Be aware that the disk group initialization process is ongoing in the background for several hours, and full performance is
available only after the initialization process finishes.
16. Now you need to initialize the drives. Select a drive and click Initialize in the menu at the top of the screen. Then select Fast
Initialize in the next window. Do this for all drives.
17. To see the initialization progress, click the virtual drive in the left column (for example, VD-0).
18. The server is now ready to load the OS.
Note: The number and sizes of drives dictates the virtual drive configuration. The values are based on the suggested MediaAgent
configuration detailed earlier in this document.
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1. Log on to Cisco UCS Manager as the admin user or as another user with administrative rights.
2. On the Equipment tab, identify the Cisco UCS S3260 chassis and verify the condition of the system and the components
required for the deployment.
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3. Verify the SIOC Information. Only one SIOC is required. The second SIOC is optional and is used for better high availability or
greater throughput.
4. The General tab provides an overview of the SIOC and Ethernet ports, including the uplink status and port speeds. The
operating speed can be 10 Gbps, 4 x 10 Gbps, or 40 Gbps. You should use 40 Gbps whenever possible.
5. The Servers area shows the details of the server node, including information about the CPU, memory, PCIe cards, and local
storage.
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6. In a standalone configuration, the SIOC includes predefined vNICs and vHBAs. In a configuration managed by Cisco UCS,
however, nothing is defined. This definition is part of the service profile configuration. If PCIe cards for networking or Fibre
Channel are installed, the information is listed on the NICs and HBAs tabs.
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7. To complete the storage configuration discussed earlier in this document, you need to identify the physical disks available for
the operating system installation. The Cisco UCS S3260 chassis comes with four disk slots on the rear side, with disk numbers
201 through 204. Identify and note the disks that are available. In the example here, the available disks are 201 and 202.
8. On the server node, Storage Enclosure 3 represents the disk slots on the back of the chassis, used for the operating system
disks. Storage Enclosure 4 represents the NVMe slot on the server node, and Storage Enclosure 5 represents the two NVMe
slots on the I/O expander board (if one is connected). Those storage enclosures are dedicated to the specific server.
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9. The Storage Enclosures area under Chassis, not under Servers, represents the top-loaded disk slots of the Cisco UCS S3260
chassis.
10. The Disks tab of Storage Enclosure 1 shows all the details about the top-loaded drives.
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Create a profile
The next task is to specify a chassis profile for the Cisco UCS S3260 to define the disk zoning for the top-loaded drives (Storage
Enclosure 1) within the chassis. Without a chassis profile, servers have no access to the top-loaded drives.
The Cisco UCS Manager configuration for the MediaAgent server is specific to the use case, so you can optionally define a new
suborganization for Commvault to keep all configurations dedicated to this use case.
Note: If a suborganization is created, all the tasks described below which are usually performed under root organization have to be
performed under the suborganization created.
1. In the Chassis area, choose one of the root options, and choose Sub-Organizations. Right-click and choose Create
Organization.
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2. Enter an obvious name, such as Commvault , enter a description, and click OK.
For a configuration with 48 disk drives for the disk library, use the following set of steps.
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The disk zoning policy allocates disk slots between server nodes in the chassis. To create a disk zoning policy, perform the following
steps:
1. In Cisco UCS Manager, click Chassis in the navigation pane and choose Policies from the Chassis pull-down options.
2. Right-click Disk Zoning Policies and choose Create Disk Zoning Policy.
3. Provide an appropriate name for the disk zoning policy and leave Preserve Config unselected.
4. Click Add in the Disk Zoning Information section to set the disk slot associations for the chassis.
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5. For this deployment, the S3260 is using one node, so in the Add Slots to Policy dialog box, do the following:
a. Click the Dedicated option for Ownership.
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1. In Cisco UCS Manager, click Chassis in the navigation pane and choose Policies from the Chassis pull-down options.
2. Right-click Chassis Firmware Packages and choose Create Chassis Firmware Package.
3. Give the chassis firmware package an appropriate name (such as UCS-3260 ), select the 3.2(1d)C chassis package, and
leave Local Disk as the only option selected under Excluded Components.
1. In Cisco UCS Manager, click Chassis in the navigation pane and choose Chassis Profile Templates from the Chassis pull-down
options.
2. Right-click and choose Create Chassis Profile Template.
3. Provide a name for the chassis profile template and set it to the Updating Template type.
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5. Set the chassis firmware package to the UCS-3260 package created previously.
6. Select the CVLT-MA-Zoning disk zoning policy that was previously created.
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1. In Cisco UCS Manager, click Chassis in the navigation pane and choose Chassis Profile Templates from the Chassis pull-down
options.
2. Right-click the newly created chassis profile template and choose the Create Chassis Profiles from Template option.
3. Specify a naming prefix, the name suffix starting number, and the number of instances of chassis profiles to be created from
the template. Match the Number of Instances field value to the number of MediaAgent servers that need to be deployed.
1. In Cisco UCS Manager, click Chassis in the navigation pane and choose Chassis Profiles from the Chassis pull-down options.
2. Right-click one of the newly created chassis profiles and choose Change Chassis Profile Association.
3. Choose “Select existing Chassis” from the Chassis Assignment pull-down menu and select the appropriate chassis ID to use.
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For S3260 M3 server nodes, a controller definition of the embedded RAID controller or platform controller hub (PCH) used by the
rear panel SSD of the S3260 is created in the storage profile, instead of a local LUN disk group policy for those SSDs.
Each of these disk group polices will create local LUNs for the S3260 server nodes, using available disks of specific types or through
manual slot specification.
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1. In Cisco UCS Manager, click Storage in the navigation pane and choose Storage Policies from the Storage pull-down options.
2. Right-click and choose Create Disk Group Policy.
3. Do the following:
a. Enter an appropriate name (Boot_SSD_rear1).
4. Click OK.
5. Click Add again and enter 202 as the slot number.
6. Do the following:
e. Set Stripe Size to 64 KB.
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You will create a RAID 60 group as part of this procedure with three RAID 6 spans of 16 drives each and three hot spares.
Note: The below procedure manually selects the drives to be part of the disk group,optionally the drives can be automatically
selected by checking the Disk Group Configuration (Automatic) option with the following parameters: Number of drives as 48 and
Number of Global Hot Spares as 3. All the other parameters are identical with either options.
1. In Cisco UCS Manager, click Storage in the navigation pane and choose Storage Policies from the Storage pull-down options.
2. Right-click and choose Create Disk Group Policy.
3. Provide an appropriate name (S3260-Disk-Lib).
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6. Click Add and leave the slot number set to 1. Set Role to Global Hot Spare.
7. Repeat the preceding procedure to add two more global hot spares, providing the slot numbers as 2 and 3 respectively.
8. Click Add again and enter the slot number as 4. Set Role to Normal and Span ID to 1.
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9. Repeat the preceding procedure to add 15 more drives to the first RAID 6 set or Span 1.
10. Repeat the preceding procedure to add drives to two more spans that will be part of the RAID 60 set. Enter the span number
as 2 for the next 16 drives and the span number as 3 for another 16 drives.
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1. In Cisco UCS Manager, click Storage in the navigation pane and choose Storage Profiles from the Storage pull-down options.
2. Right-click and choose Create Storage Profile.
3. Provide a name for the storage profile (S3260-MediaAgent ).
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4. Select Add on the Local LUNs tab to add a LUN that will be created from the Boot_SSD_rear1 disk group policy.
5. Provide the following in the Create Local LUN dialog box:
a. For Name, enter Boot_SSD.
e. Choose the Boot_SSD_rear1 disk group policy from the Select Disk Group Configuration pull-down menu
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j. Choose the S3260-Disk-Lib disk group policy from the Select Disk Group Configuration pull-down menu.
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1. In Cisco UCS Manager, click Server in the Servers pane and choose Pools from the Server pull-down options.
2. Right-click Server Pools and choose Create Server Pool.
3. Enter an appropriate name for the server pool (S3260-MediaAgent) and click Next.
4. The S3260 servers are acknowledged in this environment as Chassis 2 and Chassis 3, so select these numbers, or select the
appropriate chassis numbers in your environment if they differ. Then click the >> button between the Servers list and the
Pooled Servers list.
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1. In Cisco UCS Manager, click Server in the navigation pane and choose Policies from the Server pull-down options.
2. Right-click Boot Policies under root and choose Create Boot Policy.
3. Provide a name for the policy (Boot_SSD) and add a remote CD/DVD (used for KVM virtual media [vMedia] booting) under
Local Devices.
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4. Click Add Local LUN to reference the Boot_SSD LUN created by the Boot_SSD_rear1 disk group policy.
1. In Cisco UCS Manager, click Server in the navigation pane and choose Policies from the Server pull-down options.
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j. Receive Queues: 8
l. Completion Queues: 16
m. Interrupts: 32
To create a vNIC template for use by MediaAgent, perform the following steps:
1. In Cisco UCS Manager, click LAN in the navigation pane and choose Policies from the Network pull-down options.
2. Right-click vNIC Templates under the root organization and choose Create vNIC Template.
3. Provide a name for the vNIC template and set the following options:
a. Fabric ID: Enable Failover
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4. Scroll down to the second half of the window and select these additional options:
d. MAC Pool: MAC_Pool_A
Note: An existing predefined MAC pool and Network Control Policy has been used in this set up. Create a MAC pool and Network
Controk Policy with CDP Enabled if you have a new installation of the Cisco UCS domain.
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1. In Cisco UCS Manager, click Servers in the navigation pane and choose Service Profile Templates from the Server pull-down
options.
2. Right-click root and choose Create Service Profile Template to open the Create Service Profile Template wizard.
3. Enter an appropriate name (S3260-MediaAgent) for the service profile template.
4. Select the Updating Template option.
5. Under UUID, select UUID_Pool as the UUID pool.
Note: An existing predefined UUID pool has been used in this set up. Create a UUID pool if you have a new installation of the Cisco
UCS domain.
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6. Click Next.
7. You move to the Storage Provisioning section. Click the Storage Profile Policy tab in the Storage Provisioning section and
select the storage profile you previously created (S3260-MediaAgent).
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8. Click Next.
9. You move to the Networking section, where you configure the network. Keep the default setting for Dynamic vNIC Connection
Policy.
10. Select the Expert option to configure the LAN connectivity.
11. Click Add to add the vNIC.
12. Click Use vNIC Template in the Create vNIC window that appears.
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13. Add an appropriate name for the vNIC to create (vNIC-IB-Mgmt ), select vNIC_IB-Mgmt_AB for the vNIC template and
choose the Windows-40G policy from the Adapter Policy pull-down menu.
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Note: Existing SAN policy has been used in this setup, create a new SAN connectivity policy or select no vHBAs if SAN connectivity
is not required
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28. You move to the Server Assignment section. In the Pool Assignment list, select S3260-MediaAgent.
29. Leave Firmware Management at the bottom of the page as is because you will use the defaults from the Host Firmware list.
30. Click Next.
31. You move to the Operational Policies section. In the BIOS Policy list, select VM-Host-Infra.
32. Expand Power Control Policy Configuration and select No-Power-Cap in the Power Control Policy list.
Note: Existing BIOS and Power Control policies hav been used in this setup. Create new BIOS and Power Controk policies and select
them if you are configuring a new Cisco UCS domain installation.
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1. Connect to the Cisco UCS 6332-16UP Fabric Interconnect in Cisco UCS Manager and click the Servers tab in the navigation
pane.
2. Choose Service Profile Templates > root > Service Template S3260-MediaAgent.
3. Right-click S3260-MediaAgent and choose Create Service Profiles from Template.
4. Enter S3260-MediaAgent-0 as the service profile prefix.
5. Leave 1 set as the name suffix starting number.
6. Set 1 as the number of instances.
7. Click OK to create the service profiles.
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To begin the installation, open a Cisco UCS Manager KVM console from the General tab of the associated service profile of the first
server to be installed. Then perform the following steps:
Note: For a standalone installation of the S3260, launch the KVM console from the IMC GUI.
1. Click Virtual Media and choose Activate Virtual Devices from the pull-down menu.
2. Click Virtual Media again and choose Map CD/DVD from the pull-down menu.
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3. Click Browse in the Virtual Media pop-up window and locate and select the OS installation ISO image in the pop-up window that
appears. Click Open.
4. Click Reset if the system has progressed past the boot selection menu before the Windows ISO image is mapped through
KVM vMedia.
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5. The boot order will initiate the OS installation automatically. Click Next at the OS installation start screen.
6. Proceed with the installation, entering a valid Windows license key and selecting the mode (GUI mode is used in this example.)
7. Accept the license and select “Custom: Install Windows only (advanced).”
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8. When the installation destination screen appears, no suitable drives for the S3260 will be displayed. Download the Windows
driver ISO image from software.cisco.com at
https://software.cisco.com/portal/pub/download/portal/select.html?&mdfid=286281356&flowid=71443&softwareid=2838531
58.
9. Unmap the Windows OS installation ISO image as vMedia.
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15. Drill further down within the storage directory to LSI > Cisco_Storage_12G_SAS_RAID_controller > W2K12R2 > x64 and click
OK.
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17. Select the drive on which you want to install the Windows OS and reopen the Virtual Media pull-down menu to unmap the
Cisco Windows drivers ISO image.
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18. Click Yes to confirm the unmapping of the ISO image and reopen the Virtual Media pull-down menu to remap the Windows OS
installation ISO image.
19. Click Next to begin the installation while the appropriate boot drive is being selected.
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21. Unmap the Windows OS installation ISO image after the installation is complete.
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24. Reopen the Virtual Media pull-down menu and go through the steps to remap the Cisco UCS drivers for Windows ISO image.
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25. Open Device Manager and find the unidentified Ethernet controller device under Other Devices. Right-click and choose
Update Driver Software.
26. Select “Browse my computer for driver software” in the pop-up window that appears.
27. Click Browse in the Update Driver Software – Ethernet Controller window and drill down from the mapped CD drive to >
Network > Cisco > VIC > W2K12R2 > x64 and click OK.
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29. Update the Fibre Channel drivers if SAN connectivity is needed for the MediaAgent server.
30. Click Close. With Device Manager still open, scroll down within Other Devices and find an entry for the first Fibre Channel
controller. Right-click and choose Update Driver Software.
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31. Repeating this process for the Ethernet controller. select “Browse my computer for driver software.”
32. Select Browse and drill down from the mapped CD drive to > Storage > Cisco > VIC > W2K12R2 > x64 and click OK.
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35. Repeat these steps for the second Fibre Channel controller.
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38. Click Next at the Welcome window, click accept to get past the End-User License Agreement (EULA), and click Install.
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1. From the CommCell Console ribbon, on the Tools tab, click Add/Remove Software. Then choose Install Software from the
drop-down menu.
3. On the “Select the computer’s operating system” page, select the OS and click Next.
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4. On the “Select how to discover the computers for installing the software” page, click Next.
5. On the “Enter the host names of the computers” page, enter the host names or IP addresses of any Cisco servers that will
host the MediaAgent role. Then click Next.
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6. On the Enter Account Information page, enter credentials for a user with local administrator or root privileges on the server and
click Next.
7. On the Select Package(s) to Install page, select the MediaAgent package and click Next.
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8. On the “Enter Recommended Settings for the selected Software” page, select the appropriate client group and storage policy
if applicable. Then click Next.
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10. On the Optional Settings page, select the “Index cache to this folder” checkbox and enter I:\indexcache (or the appropriate
drive letter or mount point) in the index cache path field. Then click Next.
11. On the Network Route Configuration page, click Next (if no configuration is required).
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12. On the Please Select When To Run The Job page, click Next.
13. On the Summary page, click Finish. An install software job will be initiated. Monitor this job in the job controller window.
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After the MediaAgent software is installed, you need to create the storage pool. This process will configure the disk library and create
a storage policy so that clients can back up their data. More than one storage pool may be required depending on the design. For
the drive dedicated for the disk library, format the drive with an OS block size of 64 KB.
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1. Log on to AdminConsole.
2. In the left pane, expand Storage, select Storage pools, and select Disk/Cloud.
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3. Give the storage pool a name and select MediaAgent and the path for the disk library. Then click Next.
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4. Select the same MediaAgent again and select the path for the DDB. Click Add Partition and then click Finish.
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