We currently have an old (v11.20) setup with the Commserve at a central location, and multiple mediaagents with local iSCSI SAN at remote sites.
As we’re about to do a major overhaul since both SW and HW support are expiring this year, there is a wishlist item that I haven’t so far figured out if CommVault can provide:
If a remote site goes offline, we want local personell there to be able to perform restores. We would still like to gather all backups at the central location(s) though, and have centralized overview and control when everything is running normally…
So the question is: Can this be done? I’ve tried browsing docs and whitepapers etc. but haven’t found anything that seemed relevant - can you have server tiers with (limited) local autonomy but still have central management and control?
Please also note that our whole environment is very much closed off to the outside world, so any form of cloud service etc. is a hard no.
"Multi-tier" setup/restore at offline remote site?
+1Best answer by Erase4ndReuseMedia
I think the closest you will get is the Global Repository Cell (GRC) feature.
Each remote site would host its own dedicated CommCell environment (PodCell), and your central CommCell environment (Global Repository Cell) could be used to collect metadata from your PodCells on a scheduled basis, which would allow you to monitor historic jobs, perform recovery operations, limited configuration tasks, etc.
In the event that a site becomes isolated, your local personnel are able to perform designated tasks.
You don’t get complete centralised management, but Command Center comes with options for managing Multi-CommCell Environments. Alternatively, you can just spawn multiple CommCell Console instances.
It doesn’t tick all the boxes, but gets close.
+13I think the closest you will get is the Global Repository Cell (GRC) feature.
Each remote site would host its own dedicated CommCell environment (PodCell), and your central CommCell environment (Global Repository Cell) could be used to collect metadata from your PodCells on a scheduled basis, which would allow you to monitor historic jobs, perform recovery operations, limited configuration tasks, etc.
In the event that a site becomes isolated, your local personnel are able to perform designated tasks.
You don’t get complete centralised management, but Command Center comes with options for managing Multi-CommCell Environments. Alternatively, you can just spawn multiple CommCell Console instances.
It doesn’t tick all the boxes, but gets close.
+1Thanks,
It looks like GRC ticks some of the boxes, including being able to do remote restores by having an extra MA in each PodCell. The lack of central job control is a real minus though.
After skimming through some of the documentation I also not clear on whether there is a “proper” way to create aux copies at the central location - would each PodCell have to have a MA at the central loaction? Would it be possible to replicate outside of CommVault, and having a central MA mounting the replica using the same path as the PodCell primaries?
I’ll have to do a bit more reading, but so far it looks like it would add significant complexity.
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