 What is SQL always on backup and how to configure it ?

 How to move DDB from one media server to another media server?
 How to configure proxy server?
 What is intellisnap backup and how to configure intellisnap?
 Backup and restore process of intellisnap?
 What is one way firewall and how to configure it?
 What is VSA backup how to configure it?
 Backup and restore process of VSA agent?
 What type of issues you are seeing on commvault in your infra and how to resolve them?
 What type of license available in commvault and how to configure capacity license?
 Deduplication sizing
 How deduplication works?
 What is the block size of DDB?
 What changes you saw after upgrade from V10 to V11

Backupset: A complete representation of all content the agent is responsible to protect. A backupset is a logical
container that identifies all data the agent is responsible to protect.

Subclient: Defines the actual data within the backupset that requires protection

Data protection process:

First commserver communicate with the client to initiate a data protection operation.

Then the client initiate a scan phase to identifies the data that requires protection. The scn phase then generate collect
files containing all objects requiring protection.

The Commserve the communicate to the media agent to allocate library stream resources for the job. After this the data
protection jobs run. Once completes the indexes are finalized in the index cache and backup copies of the indexes are
copied to the library.

Data protection methods:

1. Backup
2. Archive
3. Snapshot
4. Replication

Synthetic full backup:

A synthetic full backup copies objects from previous backups and consolidate them into a new synthetized full backup.
The synthetic full operation uses image files which identifies which files existed during the most recent incremental jobs.

Only the most recent version of modified file is carries over into a new synthetic full operation. New files added during
incremental backups are automatically carried to new synthetic full backup. Objects deleted prior to the most recent
incremental backup are not carried during the synthetic full backup since they do not exist in the image file.
Commserve DR backup process:

Commserve DR backup process is executed everyday at 10 AM. First the commserver metadata database (Database +
registry) is dumped to a local folder on the Commserve server. Next an export process copies the dumped folder’s
contents to a user define drive letter or network share. Finally the backup phase protects the Commserve database to
the library location configured in the Commserve DR storage policy.

1. Database and registry dumped

2. Export phase copies content of dumped folder to UNC path or drive
3. Backup phase performs backup based on DR storage policy.

Q: What is Commvault?
Commvault is a data management platform where your data can be protected using its software products. The software
is capable of taking up backups and also has a recovery management process

Q: What are the features of Commvault?

1. The commvault software is entitled to deliver access, protection and sharing of the data in a reliable and in a secure
connection.
2. It provides enhanced productivity which has secure file sync system
3. It reduces the risk of data loss with the help of backup software
4. Using this software, it can reduce the cost of protecting remote and mobile data
5. One can access the data from anywhere

Q: Let us know what are the other different ways of doing High availability?
We can do the following:
1. Clustering SQL level
2. Log shipping
3. SQL mirroring

Q: Explain what is a storage policy?

The storage policy usually depends upon the client backup and storage plans. It defines what amount of data needs to
be stored and what type of information can be stored. Further, the data stored is in a secured environment or not.  The
following are the three different types of copies that are available within the storage policy for commvault:

1. Primary snap copy

2. Primary disk copy
3. Offsite disk/tape copy

Q: What are the types of copies that are available and explain them in detail?
We have only on primary copy and to that, we will be having different types of auxiliary/ secondary types of copies. The
list of copies that are available follows:

1. Selective Copy
2. Inline Copy
3. Synchronous Copy

1. Selective Copy:

A selective copy is a process which will allow an individual to copy a specific set backups from a source copy. The source
can be one of the following, asynchronous copy or a primary copy.  A selective copy works better for tape rotation.

Inline Copy:

Within this copy phase, both the primary and secondary copies are written to a storage so that it will be available during
the backup phase. If the secondary storage doesn’t have the required space then the backup job will fail.

Synchronous copy:

Within synchronous copy process, all the data of the primary is copied over.

Q: Explain the process of moving the DDB to the new media agent?
The following is the process of moving the DDB to the new media agent:

1. Right-click on the mount path option

2. Click on share mount path option
3. Point it towards the new Media agent
4. Set the default mount path
5. Tape library configures and change the data path.

Q: What is Intei snap? Explain the process?

The inteli snap is a process where it takes a snapshot and then it resumes all the live operations.
Intellisnap backup works in line with the storage arrays so that it can provide a snapshot functionality for the backups.

Q: Explain the main use of proxy server?

The use of the proxy server is mainly to reduce the load on the production server. The backup operations generally use
the proxy servers to move the snapshot of the information to backup media.

1. The storage array is generally accessed to create a snapshot of the information

2. The snapshot that we can capture is used to mount of the ESX servers which are designated for the snap mount.
3. The snapshot is then unmounted for further utilization.

Q: What happened in Backup copy operations in the proxy server?

During the backup copy operations the following activities are executed:

1. The snapshot of the information is mounted to the ESX server which is solely designated for the snap mount.
2. Once the snap is mounted then it is treated as a file system and the required contents are processed and read
3. The backup of the file system is performed to the Primary copy of the storage policy.
4. Once the backup copy job is finished, then the snapshot will be unmounted.

Q: What are the common/regular backup failures that one experiences most of the time?
Some of the common or more frequent backup issues that are reported as follows:
1.  Network communication issues
2. Client services might be shut down for maintenance
3. Media agent offline
4. Destination disk library full
5. Data path offline
6. VSS snapshot backup failure

Q: How can one use only a specific set of tapes for a server backup or for a list of server backups?
You can create a new scratch pool and all the required media can be moved to the scratch pool. A sub-client is attached
to a scratch pool which will be used. This process can also be done at two levels they are:

1. Storage policy level

2. Copy policy level

Q: What is Silo ( de-duplication to Tape)?

First of all the media is de-duplicated onto the disk which is configured on global-dedup storage policy. Once this process
is completed when the data is de-duplicated to the tape. Thus the name came up as de-duplication.

Q: Explain what is a hash algorithm?

The hash algorithm is an algorithm which is applied to a specific set of data where the data is read from the client
machine and a unique signature is generated which is used to execute the deduplication process.

Q: What is the default block size set for de-duplication which are enabled for storage policies?
The default block size for deduplication which is enabled for storage policies is set to 128KB

Q: What percentage of the deduplication ratio that you were able to maintain so far?
This can be a generalized answer and the ratio that you were able to maintain is as follows:

1. About 90% or more when it comes to file systems backups

2. Between 70% to 95% when it comes to the database backups

Q: Please explain how does a VMware backup works?

The VMware backups are processed in the following manner:

1. Usually, VMware snapshot backups are performed using the proxy servers.
2. Within the proxy server, we will be installing a software called Virtual server agent, i.e. (VSA)
3. So commvault actually communicated via Vcenter.
4. Where a snapshot of VM is performed and it is mounted in proxy server only.
5. From the proxy server, the snapshot image is backed up with the backup process implementation and it will be fed to
the media agent.

Q: Explain the process of configuring a cluster backup?

The following process will help an individual to configure a cluster backup:
>> First of all create a cluster group
>> Add all the client machines into it so that a synch action will be performed
>> It prompts for installation on the passive node for windows system.
>> Complete the installation
>> Then schedule a backup process for the same.
Q: What are the different types of transport modes are available in Vmware backup?
The following are different types of transport modes that are available in Vmware backup:
1. Transport Mode SAN
2. HotAdd
3. Local area network

Q: Explain what is Transport mode SAN in detail?

Within this mode:
** SAN model is actually directly connected to a storage system and it is supported.
** The virtual server agent will come into the picture which will have access to the storage system
** Once the data is read from the storage it will remain in Vmware's.
** The ESX host is only connected or coordinates the access to the LUN.

Q: Explain what is the Hotadd mode in detail?

Within this mode:
>> The Virtual server agent is installed on the VM which is actually residing on the actual ESX server.
>> The data is automatically mounted onto a proxy
>> The data that is mounted on the proxy will be accessed as a local disk later on in the process.

Check Out CommVault Tutorials

Q: Explain what is Local area network mode in detail?

1. NBD stands for Network block device
2. NBDSSL stands for Encrypted Network block device.

The data is transmitted or passed via a secure TCP/IP connection between the ESX server and the proxy computer. This is
the process where the data is passed on within NBD mode.

The above process is same and the data is transmitted via a secure TCP/IP connection between the ESX server and the
proxy computer but the data will be encrypted for NBDSSL.

Q: List out all the day-to-day activities of a backup admin?

First thing first, the backup admin will have to monitor whether all the scheduled jobs are running as per they are
designated. If not then they have to go through the jobs and understand the fault and rectify the same.

Further, they have to involve themselves with some of the health checkups:

** Have to check for Media agent so that they are not in offline mode
** Have to make sure and regularly check the free space or the remaining space that is available in the disk libraries
** Extract a backup report which is failed and analyze the same so that the rectification process can be continued.
** Check regularly for deployment, decommissions, restores requests within the reporting tool.

Q: Please explain about the infrastructure that you have worked on previously?
This should be an honest reply back to the interviewer because this is a real-time question which can be answered based
on the experience available.

I worked in an infrastructure where we had

1 production comm server, 10-20 pair of media agents and have backed up around 200 servers which includes a regular
file system.

Q: What is the main product of Commvault?

They are into data protection and information management service businesses. Using their products most of the
organizations are helped out with their data and backup and recovery processes with the help of cloud infrastructure
and management.
 Q: Is commvault software is an enterprise level software?
Yes, it is an enterprise level software.

Using Commvault software is simply because it is built up from scratch and has different modules which can be used
independently based on the need.

Q: What does IRM stand for in commvault?

IRM stands for IntelliSnap recovery manager.

It describes all the recovery management concepts within the best practices.

Q: What is the main difference between a clone and a snapshot?

The clone is like a copy of everything that is available within the database. When it comes to Snapshot it is more sort of
versioning. So the backups that we take has a certain timestamp. It is similar to that of our restore points in our windows
systems. So when the system crashes we have a restore point to start with. The same way snapshots work and this is
more catering towards the data availability from a certain point-in-time.

Q: Brief few bullet points on Intellisnap technology?

Intellisnap technology:
1. This technology is developed as lightweight
2. It is a standalone solution which is used for automating snapshot management
3. It is an application-aware where multiple storage arrays can be recovered.
4. It speeds up the recovery management system
5. It helps in maintaining and archiving database snapshots

Q: Where can we access reports in commvault?

All the reports can be accessed within web console or on the clouds server sites and also available in the commcell
console.

Q: Explain what is a Commvault appliance?

The commvault appliance is nothing but an end to end solution which helps in extending the data protection aspects and
also helps in the storage capabilities using simpana platform.  The commvault appliance provides following benefits,
they are:
1. Provides a simple configuration system
2. Provides a simple management system
3. It helps you to meet your enterprise-level data protection requirements.

==========================================================

1. Question1. What Are The Features Of Commvault?

Answer :
Features:

o CommVault software delivers access, protection and sharing for e data reliably, securely
and cost effectively whether in the filed, remote site or central office.
o Enhance productivity with secure file sync and share
o Reduce Risk, minimize data leakage, improve data availability and meet compliance
requirements
o Simplify Administration with one robust solution for desktop, laptop and server data
o Lower the cost of protection remote and mobile data
o Access protected data from anywhere
2. Question2. What Are Commserve Dr Procedures?
Answer :
 Hardware Fresh: Copy DR Set to Stand by commserve and perform Restore the CS DR set to satand
by CS.
DR set can be restored in 2 ways.

o Install Commserve software and perform restore using commserve Disaster Recovery tool
GUI. And later perform Name change or
o During Commserve Installtion, Perform Dr Restore from Existing backup.
o Question3. What Is A Storage Policy?
Answer :
Storage associates the client Backup to storage Disk or Tape Library. In that copy policy is used to set
Retention.
o Question4. What Is Global Dedup Storage Policy?
Answer :
The global deduplication policy enables deduplication across multiple storage policies that uses a
common set of disk libraries and deduplication database (DDB).
o Question5. What Are The Types Of Copies And What Are They?
Answer :
There can be only one Primary Copy and Different types of AUXILARY/SECONDARY. The types of
copies are.
Selective Copy: A selective copy allows you to copy specific full backup jobs from a source copy, the
source copy can be either a primary or a synchronous copy. Selective copy facilitates better tape
rotation.
Inline copy: Here Both Primary and Secondary copy are written to storage during Backup Phase
itself. Incase if the secondary storage doesn’t have enough space then backup will fail.
Synchronous copy: In synchronous copy all data of primary is copied.
1. Question6. What Are The Other Ways Of Doing High Availability?
Answer :

o Log shipping.
o SQL Mirroring.
o Clustering at SQL Level.
2. Question7. How To Move The Ddb To The New Media Agent?
Answer :
Right-click the mount path, and then click Share Mount Path. point to new Media Agent. Set it to dafault
mount Path. If it is a Tape Library configure tape lib and change datapath.
3. Question8. What Is Intellisnap?
Answer :
It takes a snapshot, and then resumes live operations. IntelliSnap backup works in conjunction with
storage arrays to provide snapshot functionality for backup.
4. Question9. What Is The Use Of The Proxy Server?
Answer :
you can use a proxy server to reduce the load on the production server. The backup copy operation
uses the proxy to move the snap to backup media.

o The Storage array is accessed to create a snapshot.

o The snapshot is mounted on the ESX server designated for the snap mount.
o The snapshot is unmounted.
o During the Backup Copy operations:
o The snapshot is mounted to the ESX server designated for the snap mount.
o The mounted snapshot is treated like file system and the required contents are read.
o The file system backup is performed to Primary Copy of the storage policy.
o When the backup copy job is finished, the snapshot is unmounted.
5. Question10. What Are Your Day To Day Activities As Backup Admin?
Answer :
It begins with monitoring the current jobs running in Job controller, Make sure that No job should be in
pending & Waiting state without a valid Reason. Also check for suspended and queued Jobs. check if
any of the job has got delay reasons, Also check for the Jobs which are running for more than 24
hours. Below are some of the health check tasks.

o check for Media agent,  Tape Library(Including Tape Drives) / Disk Library status make
sure that none of them are offline.
o Check for the Free space available for Disk Libraries, Index Cache and DDB Paths
(Preferable schedule a customized Report for these activites)
o Daily activities
o Extract a backup Report for Failed, Completed with Errors, completed Warnings and Killed
jobs (check and act accordingly). 
o You may check for Deployment, Decommission, Restores etc if any in ticketing tool.
6. Question11. Can You Tell Me About Your Infrastructure ?
Answer :
You need to briefly describe about your backup infrastructure and daily activities, for example
We have n(1) Prod commserve m(1) DR/Standy Commserve and n(10-20) pair of Media Aegents and
we backup around n(2000) servers which includes Regular file system, Databases like (SQL, Oracle,
Exchnage, SAP Oracle, DB2, SAP DB2 etc...). This also includes VMWare snapshot backups
(VADP/VCB) / intelli snap. Include all the backups which you perform on daily basis. For Storage we
have HUS 150 or HNAS with a total capacity of N(TB)
7. Question12. What Are The Common/regular Backup Failures ?
Answer :
Some of the common or frequent backup issues are:

o Network Communication issue

o Client services might be down
o Media agent Offline
o Destination Disk Library ful
o Data Path offline
o VSS snapshot backup failure
8. Question13. How To Use Only Specific Set Of Tapes For A Server Backup Or For A List
Of Server Backup?
Answer :
Create a new scratch pool and move the required media to new scratch pool and you can set at
subclient which scratch pool to be used. you can also do this at storage policy, copy policy level.
9. Question14. What Is Difference Between Synthetic Full & Full Backup & Dash Full?
Answer :
Synthetic full backup consolidates all the incremental backups since last full and appends to make it a
full backup. Here the server (Client machine and network utilzation is aslo very low compared to
 regular full ). Whereas Full backup is a complete full backup taken from server. And Dash full performs
copies the unique blocks of the de-duplicated data and updates the DDB and index files to make it a
full backup.
10. Question15. What Is Silo (de-duplication To Tape)?
Answer :
De-duplicated data is copied to tape after the primary de-duplication on Disk this is configured on
global-dedup Storage policy.
11. Question16. What Is Hash Algorithm?
Answer :
Hash algorithm is applied on block of data after it is read from client machine and a unique signature is
generated which is used to perform De-duplication.
12. Question17. What Is The Default Block Size Set For De-duplication Enabled Storage
Policies?
Answer :
128 KB
13. Question18. What % Of De-dup Ratio Were You Able To Maintain.?
Answer :
For File system backups its above 90% and Database backups 70% - 95%
14. Question19. Explain How Vmware Backups Works ?
Answer :
Vmware snapshots backups are performed using Proxy server. On proxy server VSA (Virtual Server
Agent) software is installed. Commvault communicates via Vcenter. Where a snapshot of VM is
performed and it is mounted in Proxy server. From proxy the snapshot image is backedup to media
agent.
15. Question20. What Are Different Types Of Transport Modes In Vmware Backup And
Their Usage?
Answer :
Transport modes is used to determine which method to be used to mount the snapshot in proxy.

o Transport Mode SAN (storage area network) - SAN mode is supported for directly
connected storage. The VSA should have access to the datastore LUNs that provide
storage for VM disks. Data is read directly from the storage where VM resides. without
going through the ESX host or transferring data over the local area network (LAN). The
ESX host is contacted only to coordinate access to the LUN.
o HotAdd In HotAdd mode, the Virtual Server Agent is installed on a VM residing on an
ESX Server.  In HotAdd mode, the data volumes containing the VMs to be backed up are
automatically mounted to the proxy, so they can be accessed by the proxy as a local disk. 
o Local Area Network (NBD and NBDSSL)  NBD (network block device) & NBDSSL
(encrypted NBD) transmit data over the TCP/IP connection between the ESX server and
the proxy computer.

NBDSSL is similar to NBD mode, but data transfer between the proxy computer and the ESX server is
encrypted.

1) WHAT are YOUR DAY TO DAY ACTIVITIES AS BACKUP ADMIN

A)  It begins with monitoring the current jobs running in Job controller, Make sure that No job should be in pending &
Waiting state without a valid Reason. Also check for suspended and queued Jobs. check if any of the job has got delay
reasons, Also check for the Jobs which are running for more than 24 hours. Below are some of the health check tasks.

 check for Media agent,  Tape Library(Including Tape Drives) / Disk Library status make sure that none of them
are offline.

 Check for the Free space available for Disk Libraries, Index Cache and DDB Paths (Preferable schedule a
customized Report for these activites)

Daily activities

 Extract a backup Report for Failed, Completed with Errors, completed Warnings and Killed jobs (check and act
accordingly). 

 You may check for Deployment, Decommission, Restores etc if any in ticketing tool.

2) Can you tell me about your Infrastructure ?

A) You need to briefly describe about your backup infrastructure and daily activities, for example

We have n(1) Prod commserve m(1) DR/Standy Commserve and n(10-20) pair of Media Aegents and we backup around
n(2000) servers which includes Regular file system, Databases like (SQL, Oracle, Exchnage, SAP Oracle, DB2, SAP DB2
etc...). This also includes VMWare snapshot backups (VADP/VCB) / intelli snap. Include all the backups which you
perform on daily basis. For Storage we have HUS 150 or HNAS with a total capacity of N(TB)

3) What are the Common/Regular backup failures ?

A) Some of the common or frequent backup issues are

Network Communication issue

Client services might be down

Media agent Offline

Destination Disk Library ful

Data Path offline

VSS snapshot backup failure

4) How to use only specific set of tapes for a server backup or for a list of server backup?

A) Create a new scratch pool and move the required media to new scratch pool and you can set at subclient which
scratch pool to be used. you can also do this at storage policy, copy policy level.

5) What is difference between synthetic Full & Full Backup & Dash Full

A) Synthetic full backup consolidates all the incremental backups since last full and appends to make it a full backup.
Here the server (Client machine and network utilzation is aslo very low compared to regular full ). Whereas Full backup is
a complete full backup taken from server. And Dash full performs copies the unique blocks of the de-duplicated data and
updates the DDB and index files to make it a full backup.
6) What is Silo (De-duplication to tape).

A) De-duplicated data is copied to tape after the primary de-duplication on Disk this is configured on global-dedup
Storage policy.

7) What is Hash Algorithm

A) Hash algorithm is applied on block of data after it is read from client machine and a unique signature is generated
which is used to perform De-duplication.

8) What is the default block size set for de-duplication enabled storage policies

A) 128 KB

9) What % of De-dup ratio were you able to maintain.

A) For File system backups its above 90% and Database backups 70% - 95%

10) Explain how VMware Backups works ?

A) Vmware snapshots backups are performed using Proxy server. On proxy server VSA (Virtual Server Agent) software is
installed. Commvault communicates via Vcenter. Where a snapshot of VM is performed and it is mounted in Proxy
server. From proxy the snapshot image is backedup to media agent.

11) What are different types of transport modes in VMware backup and their usage.

A) Transport modes is used to determine which method to be used to mount the snapshot in proxy.

Transport Mode SAN (storage area network) - SAN mode is supported for directly connected storage. The VSA should
have access to the datastore LUNs that provide storage for VM disks. Data is read directly from the storage where VM
resides. without going through the ESX host or transferring data over the local area network (LAN). The ESX host is
contacted only to coordinate access to the LUN.

HotAdd In HotAdd mode, the Virtual Server Agent is installed on a VM residing on an ESX Server. In HotAdd mode, the
data volumes containing the VMs to be backed up are automatically mounted to the proxy, so they can be accessed by
the proxy as a local disk.

Local Area Network (NBD and NBDSSL) NBD (network block device) & NBDSSL (encrypted NBD) transmit data over the
TCP/IP connection between the ESX server and the proxy computer.

NBDSSL is similar to NBD mode, but data transfer between the proxy computer and the ESX server is encrypted.

12) How you configure a Cluster backup.

A) Create a cluster group and add the client machines in it and perform a sync, For windows during Commvault client
software instaltion. It prompts for installtion on passive node(for windows). Perform installation and schedule backup.