The NetBackup Admin console failed to establish a secure connection with the host masterserver.domain.com. The request was terminated with eror code: VRTS-24630

Let’s consider the following scenario:

You have been using NetBackup Java Administration Console on your Windows PC to manage your NetBackup servers remotely without problem, until recently. The only changes were both the master server and Java Administration Console were upgraded to version 7.7.3.

Now you keep getting this error when logging in to the Java Administration Console:
The NetBackup Admin console failed to establish a secure connection with the host masterserver.domain.com
The request was terminated with eror code: VRTS-24630

On further investigation, you find that as long as your user account is part of local Administrators group of the Windows PC, you can log in without issue. The problem is your company’s Group Policy does not allow that.

This can be explained by a change in code from NetBackup 7.7.x onwards. Your user account needs to be part of the local Administrators group to be able to log in. If that is not possible, you will need to implement a workaround, which is disabling User Access Control.

This has to be done via registry and not via User Account Control Settings in Control Panel.
On the Windows PC from where the Java Administration Console is launched, launch Registry Editor (regedit) and go to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System\

Double click “EnableLUA” and set the value to 0.

Reboot your PC so the change takes effect. After that, you should be able to log in using a non-Administrator account.

[Error] V-58000-500-0003: Unable to open network share. An internal error occurred. Restarting the appliance may solve this issue.

There will be times when you need to transfer files in and out of NetBackup Appliance server, for instance, to install hotfixes, transfer log files for troubleshooting, copy script files and so on.

NetBackup Appliance CLISH has a convenient way to open network share so you can transfer files from and to your Windows PC (or Linux/UNIX if that’s what you have). The steps are mentioned in these technotes:
https://www.veritas.com/support/en_US/article.100023444
https://www.veritas.com/support/en_US/article.100010965

Recently I encountered an issue where opening Logs share returned the following error:

[Error] V-58000-500-0003: Unable to open network share. An internal error occurred. Restarting the appliance may solve this issue.

At that time, I narrowed down the issue to invalid entries in /etc/exports file.

nbu-appliance:/etc # cat exports

#default exports establish by NetBackup
#/inst/client *(ro,async,no_subtree_check)
#default export for logs
#/log *(ro,async,no_subtree_check)
#default export for incoming_patches
#/inst/patch/incoming *(all_squash,rw,sync,no_subtree_check)
#default export for incoming_plugins
#/inst/plugin/incoming *(all_squash,rw,sync,no_subtree_check)
#default export for LiveUp
#/inst/patch/client *(ro,async,no_subtree_check)
/log *(ro,async,no_subtree_check)
/inst/patch/incoming *(all_squash,rw,sync,no_subtree_check)
#default export for logforwarding
#/inst/logforwarding *(all_squash,rw,sync,no_subtree_check)

Notice the duplicate entries in bold red. After removing them and running exportfs -ra (so the /etc/exports is re-read), I was able to open the Logs share.

MSDP performance issue after upgrading to NetBackup 8.1 / Appliance 3.1

A lot of NetBackup customers would have upgraded to version 8.1 (3.1 if appliance) or later by now. One of the hottest topic in my team at the moment is how some customers encounter MSDP performance issue soon after upgrading to this version.

The stronger fingerprint algorithm in NetBackup 8.1’s MSDP is definitely good in the long run, but for those who recently upgraded from older NetBackup, the algorithm conversion from MD5 to SHA-2 can be a pain point – especially for the first few days post upgrade.

The issue may manifest in different ways: NetBackup Deduplication Engine (spoold) crashing, replication and/or duplication hanging and general slowness for MSDP-related operations.

If you think you are affected, download and install EEB 3935219 attached to technote: https://www.veritas.com/support/en_US/article.100041057

Note that if you already have EEB 3935219 installed, check the revision. The above technote contains the latest revision which is 11. Anything lower than 11 should be uninstalled and replaced by revision 11.

[9 May 2018] Update:

Some users may still notice performance issue even after data conversion has finished. If you are one of them, first, try lowering the amount of memory used by NetBackup deduplication engine (spoold) down from the default value of 75% to 50%.

Second, tune the OS kernel a little bit.

The steps are:

1. Open /msdp/data/dp1/pdvol/etc/puredisk/contentrouter.cfg file and search for MaxCacheSize. If the value is not 50%, set it to 50%. Save the file and restart NetBackup services. In theory you just need to restart spoold, but if you can afford to restart all NetBackup services, you will have a cleaner start.

2. Edit /etc/sysctl.conf file and ensure the 3 parameters below are set to the values given here (if these parameters don’t exist, just create them).

vm.overcommit_ratio = 100
kernel.numa_balancing = 0

Save the file and run sysctl -p to make the change effective.