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

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.