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Physical Media agent Configuration

  • 8 March 2022
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We are Planning to deploy new CommCell console/COMM vault environment with Physical media agent (Cisco ucs240 M5) . 

This is the standalone media agent and will be directly connected to core switch instead of FI. 

Just want to know best practices for media server configuration and its network requirements.(IP ad VLAN). 

Can all things can be configured using the CIMC console on the servers etc. 

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Best answer by jgeorges 10 March 2022, 04:12

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@Garima , thanks for the post!

Regarding CIMC, I don’t know that you can open a connection to the server (i.e. open Windows or Linux) so I do not believe you can run the installation itself from CIMC, though I’m certainly no expert!

Regarding the network config, what exactly are you looking to find out?  Do you have specific concerns or questions?  Best practices is pretty broad and depends on your environment and goals.

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Hi @Garima 
 

Unless im mistaken, CIMC is just console access to the Server essentially giving you the same access as if you were physically standing infront of it with a keyboard, mouse and monitor?

If yes, than you can do everything from CIMC and won’t need any RDP or Putty access to the OS directly.

 

From network requirements, its fairly flexible and theres no hard or fast rule, however a few things to consider are;

  • splitting up your Data and Production network
    • This is to prevent saturation of your Production Network
    • This also helps to limit performance impact to your Data Network (data network being the network between the storage and the Media Agent).
  • You may also consider VLANing the networks your Media Agents are on to split traffic for inter-MediaAgent communication.
    • This will help to manage Aux Copy and Deduplication traffic on the network and prevent your ‘Admin’ tasks performed within Commvault from impacting any production network.

If i were deploying an MA I’d aim to have 4 VLANs (3 depending on how storage is being presented):

  • VLAN1 for Production Network Comms
    • This is used for any regular activities the MA’s may be required for, GP Updates, wsus updates etc.
  • VLAN2 for Backup Network
    • This is used for clients to communicate with MAs
  • VLAN3 for Inter MA comms
    • Literally just for MAs to talk to each other. This becomes more important when the MA’s are all part of the same Deduplication Database as latency can severly impact DDB Performance.
  • VLAN4 for storage network.
    • This is relevant if the storage is presented via IP, if its locally attached SAN storage or local disk, this is obviously not a requirement.

Cheers,
Jase

EDIT: I should note, there are people on here that do design and deployment for a living and likely performed hundreds of these in the past, so they may have more insight into how this is best planned out!