Opening Additional Ports

You can increase data transfer speed during backup and restore operations by opening additional ports, which sends data through multiple parallel direct pipeline connections.

Use this procedure to set additional ports to be used by the Commvault software on client and MediaAgent computers.

Note

If you have already configured additional open ports at the client level for a large number of clients, and want to delete or change the port range for each client within a client group, see Changing or Deleting Additional Ports at the Client Level.

Before You Begin

Review the following considerations, requirements, and recommendations.

General Considerations

Review the following considerations:

Connections made through additional ports are not tunnel-encrypted. For details on encrypting pipeline connections to maintain security, see Data Encryption - Overview.
When opening additional ports in a firewall setup, it is necessary to also specify those additional ports on both the computer receiving the incoming connection, and the third-party firewall device.
When proxies are used, the computers do not communicate directly with each other. Additional ports might not provide additional benefits.

Firewall Requirements

If you are configuring firewall connections, you must set the ports on the client and MediaAgent computers as follows:

For one-way firewall connections from the client to the MediaAgent, set the additional ports on the MediaAgent.
For one-way firewall connections from the MediaAgent to the client, set the additional ports on the client.
For two-way firewall connections, set the additional ports on both the clients and MediaAgents.

Other Requirements

For NDMP backups, a range of ports must be open. For more information, see Configuring a Firewall Between a File Server and MediaAgent.

Recommendations for Optimizing Backup Operations

If you want to optimize backup operations on MediaAgents and clients, review the following recommendations:

If the Optimize for concurrent LAN backups option is enabled:
- For MediaAgents, open an incoming port for the Commvault Communications (CVD) service. The default port for CVD is port 8400.
  Notes
  - Opening a port to CVD sets up a direct pipeline for moving backup data, bypassing the firewall tunnel.
  - This optimization technique should not be used if the Bind all Services to open ports only option is selected.
  - If you open a port to CVD, throttling will not work.
- For clients, no action is required.
If the Optimize for concurrent LAN backups option is disabled:
- For MediaAgents, no action is required.
- For clients that back up data to MediaAgents, open additional incoming ports.
  Notes
  - On Windows clients, only the first additional port is used to establish multiple connections.
  - On UNIX clients, the number of open ports should correspond to the number of simultaneously running restore streams.

Recommendations for Optimizing Restore Operations

If you want to optimize restore operations on MediaAgents and clients, review the following recommendations:

If the Optimize for concurrent LAN backups option is enabled, use the same recommendations provided for backup operations.
If the Optimize for concurrent LAN backups option is disabled:
- For MediaAgents, if you perform multi-stream restores, open additional ports.
  Notes
  - On Windows MediaAgents, only the first additional port is used to establish multiple connections.
  - On UNIX MediaAgents, the number of open ports should correspond to the number of simultaneously running restore streams.
- For clients, no action is required.

Recommendations for Improving Performance

To improve the performance of auxiliary copy operations, use the recommendations described in "Recommendations for Optimizing Backup Operations", above. Make sure that the ports are opened between two MediaAgents.
To improve the performance of replication operations, open additional incoming ports on ContinuousDataReplicator computers.
For MediaAgents performing IntelliSnap operations with the Data Replicator storage array, open additional ports to increase the backup performance.

Procedure

From the CommCell Browser, expand Client Computers, right-click the client or client group, and then click Properties.

The Client Computer Properties dialog box appears.
Click Network.

The Network Properties dialog box appears.
On the Network Route Configuration tab, select the Configure Network Route Settings check box, and then click Advanced.
Click OK to acknowledge the warning and continue.
On the Incoming Ports tab, in the Additional open ports area, specify the range of ports using the From and To boxes.

The ports must be within the range of 1024 to 65000. The ports you define cannot be used by other applications.
Click Add and then click OK.
Push the network configuration on the client or MediaAgent.