RELEASE NOTES

EMC Data Domain Boost

Version 3.2.1.1-522982

EMC Data Domain Boost for Symantec

OpenStorage Release Notes
302-002-606
REV. 01
March, 2016
This document contains the release notes for the EMC Data Domain Boost (DD Boost) for
OpenStorage version 3.2.1.1-522982. The sections listed here describe the release in
detail and provide late-breaking or other information that supplements the main user
documentation.
Note

Always check the EMC Online Support site https://support.emc.com for the latest version
of this document. Any printed or CD-based version of this document may be out of date.
Your suggestions will help us continue to improve the accuracy, organization, and overall
quality of the user publications. Please send your opinions of this document to
DPAD.Doc.Feedback@emc.com.
l
l
l
l
l
l
l
l

DD Boost for OpenStorage Software........................................................................... 2

New Features Introduced after the Initial OST 3.2 Release.......................................... 2
New Features in Release 3.2.......................................................................................3
Fixed in Release 3.2.1.1-522982................................................................................4
Known Issues and Workarounds................................................................................ 4
DD Boost for Symantec OpenStorage Configuration Recommendations...................... 6
DD Boost for Symantec OpenStorage Commands....................................................... 7
DD Boost for OpenStorage Documentation................................................................. 7

RELEASE NOTES

DD Boost for OpenStorage Software

The DD Boost for OpenStorage software is a licensed option that allows a Data Domain
system to act as an OpenStorage storage server for Symantec's NetBackup and Backup
Exec products. The DD Boost for OpenStorage software includes a plug-in (referred to as
the Data Domain OST plug-in) that runs on the supported NetBackup and Backup Exec
media servers defined in the DD Boost Compatibility Guide. For specific software and
hardware configurations tested and supported by Data Domain, log in to the EMC Online
Support site https://support.emc.com to see the compatibility lists.
Note

For detailed information on installing DD Boost for OpenStorage, see the Data Domain
Boost for OpenStorage Administration Guide. For upgrade information, see the Data Domain
Boost Compatibility Guide.
Note

For information about accessing DD Boost documents on the EMC Online Support site,
see DD Boost for OpenStorage Documentation on page 7.

New Features Introduced after the Initial OST 3.2 Release

In order to respond to customer requirements on a more timely basis, EMC occasionally
delivers new features in maintenance or patch releases as needed. New features added
after the initial release of this DD Boost feature family (3.2) include:
l

High Availability (HA)

The High Availability (HA) feature lets you configure two DD9500 systems as an
Active-Standby pair, providing redundancy in the event of a system failure. HA keeps
the active and standby systems in sync, so that if the active node were to fail due to
hardware or software issues, the standby node can take over services and continue
where the failing node left off. The HA feature provides failover within 10 minutes for
most operations.

Note these special considerations for using DD Boost on HA systems:

On HA-enabled Data Domain systems, failovers of the DD server occur in less than 10
minutes. However, recovery of DD Boost applications may take longer than this,
because Boost application recovery cannot begin until the DD server failover is
complete. In addition, Boost application recovery cannot start until the application
invokes the Boost library.

DD Boost on HA systems requires that the Boost applications be using Boost HA

libraries; applications using non-HA Boost libraries do not see seamless failover.

MFR will fail over seamlessly when both the source and destination systems are HAenabled. MFR is also supported on partial HA configurations (that is, when either the
source or destination system is HA-enabled, but not both) when the failure occurs on
the HA-enabled system. For more information, see the EMC DD Boost for OpenStorage
Administration Guide.

Dynamic interface groups should not include IP addresses associated with the direct
interconnection between the active and standby Data Domain systems.

DD Boost clients must be configured to use floating IP addresses.

EMC Data Domain Boost 3.2.1.1-522982 RELEASE NOTES

EMC Data Domain Boost for Symantec OpenStorage Release Notes

New Features in Release 3.2

DD Boost-over-Fibre Channel for Solaris
Support for Solaris as a client operating system for the DD Boost-over-Fibre Channel
(DFC) feature. DFC supports clients running Solaris 10 and 11 on SPARC and x86
hardware.
l

Requires the DD Boost SDK 3.2 plug-in.

SPARC and x86 platforms are supported.

SPARC T4 or higher required, and M-Class servers are not supported.

Consult the EMC Data Domain DD Boost Compatibility Guide for compatible backup
applications, FC HBAs and switches supported in DD OS 5.7 (available Q4 2015).

Dynamic Interface Groups Support for Managed File Replication and Network Address
Translation
The Dynamic Interface Groups (DIG) policy engine has been updated to support
clients on subnets that reside behind network address translation (NAT) gateways.
This innovation allows the Data Domain system to decipher DD Boost client IP and
DDR IP addresses modified by NAT, which allows these client groups to take
advantage of features such as load balancing and failover. The enhancement applies
in these situations:
l

IPv4 or IPv6.

Includes all SDK versions (v3.0, v3.1 & v3.2) that support DD OS 5.7.

Available to all DD Boost ecosystem partners that support DD OS 5.7.

Dynamic Interface Groups are now available for DD Boost managed file replication
(MFR). Dynamic interface groups with MFR provide greater replication performance
via link aggregation and better resiliency through link failover with these features:
l
l

Support for replication over extended LANs or WANs.

Support for all MFR replication topologies (one-to-one, one-to-many, many-toone, bi-directional, and the like).

NAT translation support between source and target Data Domain systems.

Support for IPv4 or IPv6, VLANs and alias IPs

Available to all DD Boost ecosystem partners that support MFR and DD OS 5.7.

See the EMC Data Domain Boost for OpenStorage Administration Guide, the EMC Data
Domain Operating System Command Reference Guide, and the EMC Data Domain
Operating System Administration Guide for details.
DD Boost Hard Stream Limits per Storage Unit
Users now have the ability to set hard stream limits per MTree or storage unit.
l

Supported configurations include the following:

n

DD Boost SDK 3.1 with DD OS 5.6

DD Boost SDK 3.1 or 3.2 with DD OS 5.7

Hard stream limits are configured and enforced at the storage unit or MTree
level.

New Features in Release 3.2

RELEASE NOTES

Notification and enforcement are achieved by using a proprietary client counting

technique (patent pending) in DD OS.

The DD Boost client notifies the application if it has exceeded the limit.

Enables auto-throttling for backup and restore for EMC Avamar.

Available to all DD Boost ecosystem partners that support the configurations

listed above.

Import-to-Client Feature
The import-to client option is applicable when the AIR filecopy feature has been
configured to run, and it lets you specify a single NetBackup media server client to
receive AIR filecopy events from the target Data Domain system.

Fixed in Release 3.2.1.1-522982

The following important fixes and changes were made in DD Boost for Symantec
OpenStorage Version 3.2.1.1-522982.
Table 1 DD Boost 3.2.1.1-522982: Fixed

Bug #

Description

146540

This release fixes the issue in which the user's system would experience a file
system panic during a DD Boost backup when the client attempts to correct certain
fanout errors.

152811

After a DDOS 5.5.x.x and 5.4.2.x upgrade, the Data Domain system is hard-coded to
use an NFS_FILECOPY_TIMEOUT of 43200 (12 hours) for NetBackup Auto Image
Replication (NBU AIR). Even if the NFS_FILECOPY_TIMEOUT is set to a value larger
than 43200, the setting will not be honored and will default back to 12 hours. For
some environments, a 12-hour timeout may be insufficient, and a longer timeout
will be required. Refer to KB article 18302 for additional information for this
workaround.

Known Issues and Workarounds

General Issues
l

While running a full system accelerator backup with forced rescan and change journal
options, NetBackup may fail with error 27 (child process killed by signal). This is a
known problem (ETrack 34211834). There is an EEB for 7.5.0.7 and 7.6.0.2. It will be
fixed in 7.6.0.3.

High Availability

At large stream counts, HA systems using DD Boost experience degraded write

performance.

If a failover occurs in a NetBackup environment using DD Boost-over-Fibre Channel,

the job will need to be run again.

Backup jobs run from AIX clients to HA systems via Fibre Channel do not survive an
HA failover. AIX clients work the same way on an HA pair as they do on a single-node
systemthe AIX device driver does not recognize changes to the fiber environment
once loaded into memory. To have the AIX client recognize the new server, run these
two AIX-specific commands on the client:

EMC Data Domain Boost 3.2.1.1-522982 RELEASE NOTES

EMC Data Domain Boost for Symantec OpenStorage Release Notes

# rmdev -Rdl DDdfc

# cfmgr
Solaris 10
On a Sparc T4-1 running Solaris 10, a problem has been reported with a plug-in failure
while using distributed segment processing. The problem is caused by the intermittent
failure of Solaris to load a required pkcs11 module. The Solaris system log will show
messages as follows:
...[ID 169204 user.error]libpkcs11:
/usr/lib/security/64/pkcs11_softtoken_extra.so
signature verification failed. See cryptoadm(1M).
Skipping this plug-in.
...[ID 925218 user.error]
libpkcs11: /usr/lib/security/64/pkcs11_kernel.so signature
verification failed.
See cryptoadm(1M). Skipping this plug-in.
Note

This issue is resolved by Oracle patch 150531-01 for Oracle Solaris on SPARC (32-bit).
Starting with the DD Boost 3.0 plug-ins, a plug-in code change is being made to avoid the
crash by reverting to a much lower performance software only method. The system log
will still show the messages as above and the backup performance will be seriously (2x)
degraded in performance.
Known Workarounds:
1. Disable distributed segment processing for Sparc.
2. An upgrade to Solaris 11 may correct the problem.
Note

DSP is enabled by default on Solaris SPARC T5 clients running on Solaris 11 (with SRU2
or later) or Solaris 11.1 or later.
NetBackup
l

NetBackup 7.x accelerator requires an external types file to enable accelerator. The
external types file requires a Data Domain specific entry to enable accelerator on a
Data Domain system.
The resolution for this issue is to apply the updated external types file available from
Symantec:

UNIX/Linux: http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH203427

Windows: http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH203428

In versions of NetBackup prior to 7.5.0.4, jobs may fail with a message such as:

11/07/2012 11:58:35 - Critical bptm (pid=9739) A portion of data to be included

from a previous backup (backupid = ostqa-linux2_1351870224, offset = 661288960,
length = 36352) has incorrect checksum (calculated checksum from backup image
faf2aff1392269d36db7dbcc211f3d97b3f526ed, expected checksum
2345ea1603b4cb4ae2c29e5f6a9353e7832faee6)

The workaround for this issue is to upgrade to 7.5.0.4 or later.

l

Automatic Image Replication (AIR) jobs may fail in the case where the target Data
Domain system has insufficient inbound opt-dupe streams. NetBackup starts the AIR
process for each file of an image set in parallel. The plug-in has no control or visibility
into how many. In the case where the source Data Domain system has insufficient
outbound opt-dupe streams, the plug-in is able to retry each file as resources become
Known Issues and Workarounds

RELEASE NOTES

available. However, in the case that the target Data Domain system has insufficient
inbound opt-dupe streams, the opt-dupe job fails with no retry. This problem can
happen in two general cases:
n

In the case of one source Data Domain system to one target Data Domain
system, the target opt-dupe target stream count is less than the source optdupe source stream count. This can happen when a large Data Domain system
(DD890, for example) is the source, and a small Data Domain system (DD640, for
example) is the target.

In the case of two or more source Data Domain systems to one target Data
Domain system, the target opt-dupe target stream count is less than the sum of
all source opt-dupe source stream counts. This can happen in the case of
multiple Data Domain systems (three DD670s, for example) opt-duping to a single
Data Domain system (DD670, for example).

The workaround is to plan the number of AIR jobs.

To plan the number of AIR jobs, you must know the number of total files for an AIR
backup/opt-dupe. AIR backup will create three meta files for each backup path in a
policy plus any number of file fragments for the data. The number of file fragments
can be determined by dividing the size of each backup selection path by the
NetBackup storage unit fragment size.
Example:
The Netbackup policy backup selection lists five 1GB directories and the storage unit
maximum fragment size is 500GB. This will generate five files for each of the five
directories listed in the policy backup selection, totaling 25 files AIR will need to optdup: 3 meta files + 2 data file fragments (1GB /500GB) = 5 files x 5 backup selections
= 25 total files.
In the above example, you need a minimum of 25 streams available on the
destination Data Domain system to ensure the duplication is successful.
l

If AIR imports begin failing after upgrade, destroy the association then re-create it.

For NetBackup customers using the AIR feature with a large number of policies
associated with a single LSU, a feature is available that may improve performance.
For more information, contact EMC Online Support at https://support.emc.com.

Backup Exec
l

Backup Exec can only initiate managed file replication from a Single Node Data
Domain system. It cannot initiate managed file replication from an Extended
Retention Data Domain system due to a problem with fast-copy making the phantom
file.

DD Boost Stream History

In case the data is missing for a certain timestamp, all the counter values will be filled
automatically by the system with 0 or with the counter value of the previous timestamp.

DD Boost for Symantec OpenStorage Configuration

Recommendations
l

NetBackup accelerator activation requires:

n

An enterprise NetBackup license with the Accelerator feature. This license is

obtained from Symantec.

An updated external_types file from Symantec. Please see: http://

www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH55064 for

EMC Data Domain Boost 3.2.1.1-522982 RELEASE NOTES

EMC Data Domain Boost for Symantec OpenStorage Release Notes

details. EMC Data Domain will be enabled in the latest external_types file
upon the completion of our qualification with the Symantec HCL.

DD Boost for Symantec OpenStorage Commands

On the Data Domain system, enter the command help ddboost for a list and
description of all Boost for Symantec OpenStorage commands. Also see the Data Domain
Boost for OpenStorage Administration Guide for information about the DD Boost for
Symantec OpenStorage commands.

DD Boost for OpenStorage Documentation

Documentation for DD Boost for OpenStorage is available on the EMC Online Support site
https://support.emc.com.
To view documentation:
Procedure
1. Connect to the EMC Online Support site https://support.emc.com.
2. If you are a registered user, log in and skip to the next step. Otherwise, perform the
following:
a. Select Register Here.
b. Follow the online registration steps, filling in all required fields.
c. Once your registration is processed, you will receive an email confirmation.
3. Click the Support by Product option.
4. Enter Data Domain Boost - Open Storage in the Find a Product field.
5. On the next screen, select Documentation.
6. On the right side of the screen, all documents are displayed that fit the criteria. A
menu on the left side of the screen automatically populates with various categories of
the displayed documents, for example, Release Notes, Manual and Guides, and so on.

DD Boost for Symantec OpenStorage Commands

RELEASE NOTES

Copyright 2016 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Published in the USA.
Published March, 2016
EMC believes the information in this publication is accurate as of its publication date. The information is subject to change without
notice.
The information in this publication is provided as is. EMC Corporation makes no representations or warranties of any kind with
respect to the information in this publication, and specifically disclaims implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a
particular purpose. Use, copying, and distribution of any EMC software described in this publication requires an applicable software
license.
EMC, EMC, and the EMC logo are registered trademarks or trademarks of EMC Corporation in the United States and other countries.
All other trademarks used herein are the property of their respective owners.
For the most up-to-date regulatory document for your product line, go to EMC Online Support (https://support.emc.com).
8

EMC Data Domain Boost 3.2.1.1-522982 RELEASE NOTES