How To Default Data Domain Storage Over Avamar Local Storage

If not setup correctly in the beginning, Avamar will default to it’s own storage as primary over attached storage like a Data Domain. The issue is that as the Avamar storage is used, Avamar will keep metadata of stored backups, even if you move this storage to an attached storage. You could remove all locally stored backup data, but the Avamar storage will still look like it is full because it will retain this metadata. So if you go as far as filling up Avamar local storage you will be seeing red in the alerts section for a while.

This happened to me and I had to put in a Service Request (SR) to had support “crunch” the metadata to a smaller footprint to get the red storage alerts to go away. To default Avamar to only use the attached storage we need to follow these simple steps.

We will need to open a putty session into the Avamar and elevate to root privilege with the “su -” command and entering the root password.

admin@avamar:~/>: su -
Password: 
root@avamar:~/#:

Know let’s change directory by using the “cd /usr/local/avamar/var/mc/server_data/prefs/” command

root@avamar:~/#: cd /usr/local/avamar/var/mc/server_data/prefs/
root@avamar:/usr/local/avamar/var/mc/server_data/prefs/#:

We need to validate that the mcserver.xml is locate here so we know we are in the correct spot by using the “ls mcserver.xml” command.

root@avamar:/usr/local/avamar/var/mc/server_data/prefs/#: ls mcserver.xml
mcserver.xml
root@avamar:/usr/local/avamar/var/mc/server_data/prefs/#:

Now we can use vim to edit the mcserver.xml file by using the “vi mcserver.xml” command.

WARNING: This file is important to the working of Avamar. Editing these next steps is easy and will only default Avamar’s backups to the Data Domain storage. If you feel uncomfortable about doing this process contact Dell support and have them do it. If while editing in vim you feel like you made a mistake and need to start over, simply hit the Esc button on your keyboard and type “:q!” (without the quotes) and you will be returned to the previous screen.

root@wcbr-avm-main:/usr/local/avamar/var/mc/server_data/prefs/#: vi mcserver.xml 

We will need to find the section dd_only_mode. To do this we type the backwards slash key “/” to bring up the search feature and then type “/dd_only_mode” you will see this at the bottom on the screen and press enter.

              <entry key="ddr_cert_subject_org_unit" value="BRS Division" />
              <entry key="secure_dd_feature_on" value="true" />
/dd_only_mode

You will see that your cursor has jumped to the section we are looking for highlighted in bold letters below.

          <node name="datadomain">
            <map>
              <entry key="ddr_max_streams_for_cp_backup_max" value="6" />
              <entry key="ddr_ssh_preferred_cipher_avamar_to_dd" value="aes128-ctr,aes192-ctr,aes256-ctr" />
              <entry key="ddrJobCapacityFactor" value="1" />
              <entry key="ddr_rest_supported_protocols" value="TLSv1.2" />
              <entry key="ddr_rest_trust_all_certs" value="true" />
              <entry key="ddr_cert_subject_country" value="US" />
              <entry key="percent_of_ddr_streams_for_cp_backup" value="4" />
              <entry key="ddr_poller_interval_sec" value="1800" />
              <entry key="ps_max_indexes" value="255" />
              <entry key="ddr_snmp_get_table_max_rows" value="20" />
              <entry key="ddr_snmp_get_table_timeout_sec" value="50" />
              <entry key="ddr_ssh_preferred_cipher_dd_to_avamar" value="aes128-ctr,aes192-ctr,aes256-ctr" />
              <entry key="checkPointBackupTrigger" value="CP_HFSCHECK_START" />
              <entry key="dd_only_mode" value="DATASET" />
              <entry key="ddr_cert_subject_state" value="California" />

As you can see the dd_only_mode value is set to DATASET. We will need to edit this by typing “i” for insert, moving the cursor to the DATASET section and backspacing and then typing in it’s place the word ALL.

              <entry key="checkPointBackupTrigger" value="CP_HFSCHECK_START" />
              <entry key="dd_only_mode" value="ALL" />
              <entry key="ddr_cert_subject_state" value="California" />

Now you need hit the Esc button to exit the insert mode, then type “:wq” to write the changes and quit vim.

That’s it your Avamar will now default backup to the Data Domain and will not be allowed to store locally on the Avamar local storage.

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