Veritas NetBackup™ in Highly Available Environments Administrator's Guide

Last Published:
Product(s): NetBackup (8.1.1, 8.1)
  1. NetBackup protection against single points of failure
    1. About protecting against component failures
      1.  
        About protecting against network link failures
      2. About protecting against storage device connection failures
        1.  
          About protecting against SAN connection failures
        2.  
          About protecting against robotic control connection failures
      3.  
        About protecting against storage device failure
      4.  
        About protecting against media availability failures
      5.  
        About protecting against master server failures
      6. About protecting against media server failures
        1.  
          About protecting against dedicated media server failures
        2.  
          About protecting against non-dedicated media servers failures
        3.  
          About protecting against SAN media server failures
        4.  
          Restoring tape backups using an alternative media server
        5.  
          Restoring disk backups using an alternative media server.
      7.  
        About protecting against LAN client failures
      8.  
        About protecting against SAN client failures
    2.  
      About protecting against site failures
    3.  
      About protecting catalog in highly available environments
  2. 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
  3. 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
  4. Deploying NetBackup master servers with full catalog replication
    1.  
      About replication considerations
  5. 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
      1.  
        About backing up database files in a cluster
      2.  
        About user backups
      3.  
        About NetBackup client in a cluster

About protecting against robotic control connection failures

In tape-based backup environments, the robotic control connections can be single points of failure. The inability to send instructions to the tape library prevents backup and restore operations, even if the tape drives are available.

Some tape libraries, such as Sun STK ACSLS or Quantum ATM, use a dedicated control software that runs on a server that is independent of the library. Such control servers can be clustered. The media servers send requests to the control server, which handles the movement of tapes between slots and drives in the library.

Other tape libraries depend on a direct device connection from the NetBackup master server for control instructions to the library. If this device connection is lost, the tape library cannot be used. SAN-attached tape libraries support multiple connections to the robotic control for redundancy. You can configure these connections to provide protection against server failure. For example, you can configure one path to each node of a clustered master server. You must ensure that the paths are not active at the same time. If both paths are active, conflicting instructions can be issued, which could result in backup failure or data loss.