Commvault Data Protection Consultant

West 4th Strategy•New York, NY

1d•$60 - $85•Onsite

About The Position

We need an experienced Commvault Data Protection Consultant at the New York City Department of Social Services (DSS). DSS enhances the quality of life for all New Yorkers by providing temporary assistance to eligible individuals and families with social service and economic needs, supported by IT Services (ITS) which operates the critical technology infrastructure behind the agency’s programs. DSS is currently executing a large-scale Data Center Co-location and Migration Project to consolidate multiple data centers into a new facility at 11 MetroTech in Brooklyn, replacing end-of-life infrastructure and mitigating risk of service disruption to agency operations. In this role, you will lead the full migration of enterprise backup operations from NetBackup to Commvault across 3,000+ backup clients spanning Windows, Linux, AIX, Solaris, and VMware environments, execute tape library migration from legacy LTO media to cloud-compatible storage targets, and provide hands-on onboarding and training for support and engineering teams assuming operational control post-cutover. This is a full-time opportunity. We can offer a competitive salary and a comprehensive benefits package.

Requirements

4+ years of experience in enterprise backup and storage management.
4+ years of experience in Monitor backup operations for both NetBackup and Commvault environments.
4+ years of experience in Collaborate with internal IT teams and vendors to ensure successful integration of backup infrastructure with production systems.
4+ years in Provide documentation, standard operating procedures (SOPs), and training for internal teams. Communicate progress, risks, and milestones to stakeholders and leadership.
4+ years in Hands-on experience with MSDP, media servers, tape libraries, and backup monitoring platforms like Helios.
2+ years in cloud backup solutions and enterprise storage tiering.

Responsibilities

Remove all existing NetBackup software from backup clients, including binaries, services, and legacy configuration files. Ensure that uninstallation scripts run successfully and cleanly on each asset. Capture uninstallation logs for internal review. Validate system state post-removal.
Identify, catalog, and prepare all host systems for Commvault deployment. Organize systems by OS, location, business criticality, and backup type. Preconfigure DNS entries, firewall rules, routing, and name resolution dependencies to ensure Commvault infrastructure components (CommServe, Media Agents, Index Servers) can establish secure connectivity with each client node. Validate that time synchronization, storage mounts, and network segmentation are correctly applied per zone.
Push Commvault v11.28+ client software to all 3000+ backup clients. For Windows systems, leverage SCCM or PowerShell; for Linux/Unix, use shell scripts or Ansible; for Solaris and AIX, utilize OS-native install tools (SMIT, pkgadd, etc.). Confirm installation logs are captured and parsed. Check for port 8400/8403 reachability and CommServe handshake. Enable verbose logging during installation to aid in troubleshooting. Confirm that the Commvault Client services start successfully and remain active.
Register each client with the CommServe and assign it to appropriate client groups. Perform detailed communication validation: run cvping, test TLS handshakes, validate firewall traversal and load balancing via Media Agent routing. Establish backup sets, sub clients, and assign clients to plans that match their data classification (e.g., File System, DB2, VMware, Oracle, NDMP, Exchange). Use IP-level tracing and proxy rule checks to ensure full route availability across data center segments.
Translate and recreate all NetBackup policies in Commvault. For each policy, replicate full/incremental/differential frequency, retention periods, deduplication enablement, and encryption parameters. Ensure storage tiering matches agency archival requirements and compliance policy (e.g., short-term local, long-term cloud).
Retrieve deduplicated backup images from NetBackup MSDP/AdvancedDisk. Rehydrate images to disk where needed. Use Commvault Auxiliary Copy jobs or newly defined synthetic full backups to ingest recovered data into Commvault. Verify data integrity post-ingestion using checksum validation and cross-reference with NetBackup catalog.
Schedule new backup windows in Commvault and enable backup operations for each client. Confirm successful job execution before fully stopping NetBackup backups. For critical systems, configure temporary shadow backup overlap (both systems) to ensure zero data loss.
Remove all NetBackup jobs, backup policies, client entries, storage unit definitions, and deduplication volumes from NetBackup after Commvault validation. Perform NetBackup catalog cleanup and unregister clients from OpsCenter and Master Server. Ensure clients no longer initiate NetBackup daemons.
Enable hands-on onboarding for support and engineering teams. This includes navigation of Commvault Command Center, subclient handling, job monitoring, job and SLA dashboards, restore workflow validation, and policy tuning. Teams will assume full operational control post-handover.
Review and validate master inventory of all NetBackup-managed offsite tapes (LTO-3 through LTO-9). Reconcile barcode and catalog records to physical records to identify any missing or misclassified volumes. Ensure all metadata is correctly aligned with on-tape image details.
Coordinate offsite tape recalls from Iron Mountain or equivalent provider. Establish a rotation plan for safe handling and physical transport of tape sets. Include scheduled delivery windows, handling instructions, and chain-of-custody logs for all shipments.
Upon receipt of each shipment, insert tapes into SL8500 drives to verify mechanical integrity and readability. Scan barcodes, test mount operations, and validate media labeling against expected NetBackup catalog entries.
Restore required backup images from legacy LTO tapes to temporary disk storage. Prioritize data sets based on age, legal retention value, and agency workload relevance. Use standard NetBackup recovery tools with mount and recover jobs for image extraction.
After image extraction, ingest restored data into Commvault using appropriate backup import methods. Apply retention tagging and classification metadata to align with Commvault policies. Label contents for future archival, compliance, or legal access.
Transfer selected long-term retention data from staging disk into S3-compatible storage targets using Commvault Cloud Library. Targets include AWS S3, Glacier, Deep Archive, or NetApp StorageGRID, depending on policy classification.
Apply compliance-level security controls such as WORM (Write Once Read Many), immutability, encryption-at-rest, and legal hold were mandated by policy. Ensure that all regulatory controls applicable to legacy tape workflows are preserved in Commvault.
Decommission legacy NetBackup tape infrastructure after data has been secured. This includes powering down unused tape drives, applying scratch policies to recyclable media, degaussing or destroying expired media, and offboarding the tape robots from operations.
Record all operations tied to tape media recovery and import processes, including rehydration logs, client job status, image verification checks, and Commvault asset ingestion results. Correlate these records by tape generation and original backup source.
Perform a final system-wide integrity verification in Commvault CommCell. Confirm full job coverage across new disk and cloud retention tiers, validate alert channels, ensure SLA job success rates meet thresholds, and that operational reporting meets agency audit expectations.