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

Protecting catalog in highly available environments

The NetBackup catalog contains information about both existing backups and the backup policy, including what gets backed up when and to where and how long the backup is kept for. As such the catalog is a single point of failure and needs to be protected. Using the RAID storage provides some protection against storage failure. Replication can also protect against storage failure and site loss. Regular backups of the catalog can protect against corruption and accidental data loss.

See Table: NetBackup catalog protection in highly available environments. discusses the various methods for protecting NetBackup catalogs.

Table: NetBackup catalog protection in highly available environments

Protection Method

Description

Catalog backups

The catalog backup protects the NetBackup catalog on the master server against both hardware failure and data corruption and catalog backups should be made on a regular basis, ideally at least daily. The catalog backup is policy-based so it has all of the scheduling flexibility of a regular backup policy. As the policy allows for incremental backups, catalog backup times for large catalogs can be significantly reduced. However it should be noted that recovery from incremental backups can take longer due to the need to restore.

Catalog backups written to tape use media from the Catalog Backup volume pool only.

For more information, refer to the NetBackup Administrator's Guide, Volume I.

Catalog replication

Catalog replication is the process of creating and managing duplicate versions of a catalog database. Catalog replication copies a database and synchronizes a set of replicas so that the changes that are made to one replica are reflected in all the others.

Replicating the catalog to a standby master server at the disaster recovery or secondary site ensures rapid catalog recovery at the disaster recovery site. Continuous replication ensures that the catalog is as up to date as the replication link allows.

Note:

Replication does not protect against catalog corruption or accidentally deleting or expiring images. You must make regular scheduled catalog backups.

See About catalog recovery.

More Information

About NetBackup catalog replication