Veritas NetBackup™ in Highly Available Environments Administrator's Guide

Last Published:
Product(s): NetBackup (9.0)
  1. About in this guide
    1.  
      What's in this guide
    2.  
      Documents related to NetBackup in highly available environments
  2. NetBackup protection against single points of failure
    1. Protecting against component failures
      1.  
        Network link failures
      2. Storage device connection failures
        1.  
          SAN connection failures
        2.  
          Robotic control connection failures
      3.  
        Storage device failure
      4.  
        Media availability failures
      5.  
        Master server failures
      6. Media server failures
        1.  
          Dedicated media server failures
        2.  
          Non-dedicated media servers failures
        3.  
          SAN media server failures
        4.  
          Restoring tape backups using an alternative media server
        5.  
          Restoring disk backups using an alternative media server.
      7.  
        LAN client failures
      8.  
        SAN client failures
    2.  
      Site failures
    3.  
      Protecting catalog in highly available environments
  3. About site disaster recovery with catalog backup and recovery
    1.  
      Disaster recovery packages
    2. About catalog recovery
      1.  
        About full catalog recovery
      2.  
        Performing full catalog restore
      3.  
        Making the DR environment consistent after a full catalog restore
      4.  
        About partial catalog recovery
      5.  
        Performing partial catalog restore
      6.  
        Making the DR environment consistent after a partial catalog restore
    3. About disk recovery in DR domain
      1.  
        Disk recovery in single-domain replication DR environment
      2.  
        Auto Image Replication
      3.  
        Disk recovery in cross-domain replication DR environment
  4. About site loss protection with auto image and catalog replication
    1.  
      About Auto Image Replication (AIR)
    2. About NetBackup catalog replication
      1.  
        About conditions for support of replicated NetBackup catalogs
      2.  
        About catalog synchronization
      3. About multi-site single domain replication
        1.  
          About multi-site single domain with stretched SAN
        2.  
          About multi-site single domain with optimized duplication
      4. About multi-site cross domain replication
        1.  
          About multi-site cross domain and BasicDisk storage
        2.  
          Planning a cross domain replication disaster recovery domain
      5. About full catalog replication
        1.  
          Recovering the catalog with full catalog replication
        2.  
          Making the DR environment consistent with full catalog replication
      6. About partial catalog replication
        1.  
          Preparing an environment for partial catalog replication
        2.  
          Recovering the environment with partial catalog replication
        3.  
          Making the disaster recovery environment consistent with partial catalog replication
        4.  
          Considerations for managing tapes with partial catalog replication
  5. Deploying NetBackup master servers with full catalog replication
    1.  
      About replication considerations
    2. About non-clustered NetBackup master server with catalog replication
      1. Installing and configuring non-clustered NetBackup master server with catalog replication
        1.  
          Installing and configuring the primary NetBackup master server
        2.  
          Installing and configuring secondary NetBackup master server
        3.  
          Upgrading NetBackup master server in a non-clustered replicated configuration
    3. About globally clustered NetBackup master servers with catalog replication
      1. Installing and configuring a globally clustered NetBackup master server with catalog replication
        1.  
          About clustering considerations
        2.  
          Installing and configuring primary NetBackup master server cluster
        3.  
          Installing and configuring secondary NetBackup master server cluster
      2.  
        Populating the server tables in the EMM
      3.  
        Upgrading NetBackup in clustered replication configuration
      4.  
        Failing over to secondary master server cluster
      5.  
        Testing the NetBackup master server cluster in clustered replication environment
  6. Using NetBackup to perform backups and restores in a cluster
    1. About backups and restores with NetBackup in a cluster
      1.  
        Performing user-directed backups with NetBackup in a cluster
      2. About restoring data in a cluster
        1.  
          Example: Performing a user-directed restore in a NetBackup cluster
    2.  
      About supported NetBackup application agents in a cluster
  7.  
    Index

Dedicated media server failures

Storage unit groups can be used to protect NetBackup against the failure of a single media server. Storage unit groups can also be used for load balancing across multiple media servers to ensure optimal backup and restore performance.

Table: Modes for configuring storage unit groups discusses the different modes in which you can configure the storage unit groups.

Table: Modes for configuring storage unit groups

Mode

Description

Failover

In the failover mode, the first storage unit is always used, unless the media server is down. Excess jobs are queued rather than being directed to the next storage unit. The failover mode functions similarly to what would be seen if two media servers were configured as an active or a passive cluster.

Prioritized

In the prioritized mode, the first available storage unit in the list is used. In this mode, jobs that exceed the total number the storage unit can handle, are directed to the next storage unit in the list. If the media server is down, all backups are directed to the next storage unit.

Round robin

In the round robin mode, different storage units from the list are used in a cycle for each job. If each storage unit is on a different media server, this acts as a load balancing mechanism.

Load balanced

The load balance mode only works with Flexible Disk and Media Manager storage unit types. In the load balance mode, NetBackup carries out checks on activity and resources available on each media. The check is carried out before the backup are directed to the media with the lightest load.

As a best practice, when using prioritized and failover groups to configure two storage unit groups, use two media servers, as follows:

  • Configure each media server to have a single storage unit. For example, so Node A has STU A and Node B has STU B.

  • Configure two storage unit groups with the storage units in a specific order in each one. In this example, SUG AB contains STU A, followed by STU B. SUG AB contains STU B followed by STU A.

  • Backup policies are then evenly shared between SUG AB and SUG BA.

During operation, the backup traffic is normally shared between the two nodes, but if one node fails, all backups automatically go to the other node.