Hi folks. Last week I had to assist with restoring a Windows 2008 host for one of our clients. I had been backing it up using NBU 7.5.0.6 with BMR enabled using a client hostname they provided, assuming that was the only hostname for the client. Turns out it wasn't, and the Windows 2008 host was actually configured like this:
NIC1 = IP1 = HOST1
NIC2 = IP2 = HOST2
NIC2 += IP3 = HOST3
NIC2 += IP4 = HOST4
...and so on, eight addresses in total. All were registered in DNS, and all were addresses in the same LAN. The client name I was given turned out be HOST4. When it came time to restore this host using BMR using boot media, a client admin handled the client while I monitored the master server. When we got firewalls out of the way and disabled NetBackup's client restrictions by touching /usr/openv/netbackup/db/altnames/No.Restrictions on the master server, we managed to get the client to boot and restore files but it always failed when it came time to restore System State. The master server saw the client connect as HOST1 every time, never HOST4. Finally we gave up on BMR, the client admin installed Win2008 + NBU 7.5.0.6 client from scratch, and we did a conventional restore of files and System State.
If this had been my host, I would have done the networking differently. Even the client would have done so, but they had inherited this host from a third party fairly recently and hadn't had time to rebuild it. Nevertheless, they and I would like to know how to deal with this sort of thing in the future. The BMR Admin Guide says that BMR supports multiple NICs, but it doesn't provide any guidelines about how best to backup and restore a host over different NICs. My own guess is that we should use the hostname and IP address associated with the primary NIC whenever possible. But is there something I could have done to salvage BMR for this client? What networking recommendations can I pass along to ensure the best chance of BMR succeeding with multihomed clients?
Thanks in advance,
Joe