NetBackup™ in Highly Available Environments Administrator's Guide
- About in this guide
- NetBackup protection against single points of failure
- About site disaster recovery with catalog backup and recovery
- About site loss protection with auto image and catalog replication
- About Auto Image Replication (AIR)
- About NetBackup catalog replication
- Deploying NetBackup primary servers with full catalog replication
- About replication considerations
- About non-clustered NetBackup primary server with catalog replication
- About globally clustered NetBackup primary servers with catalog replication
- Installing and configuring a globally clustered NetBackup primary server with catalog replication
- Populating the server tables in the NetBackup database
- Upgrading NetBackup in a clustered replication configuration
- Failing over to an alternate primary server cluster
- Testing the NetBackup primary server cluster in clustered replication environment
- Using NetBackup to perform backups and restores in a cluster
About catalog recovery
A major problem that users encounter during site disaster recovery is that the disaster recovery (DR) site is not a mirror image of the production site. To perform DR operations you need a copy of the NetBackup catalog from the production primary server. NetBackup catalog backups are primarily intended for recovering from catalog storage or primary server failure rather than site loss. The default scenario is that NetBackup restores the complete catalog including the NetBackup database. Primary servers use the catalog information to direct backups and restores, query the media servers, and establish the status of the backup devices. In a DR environment which does not contain these media servers, the performance of the primary server can be affected. Also, the ability to carry out restore operations can be affected, as polling operations fail to connect and time out.
Note:
In a cluster setup, if you use external CA-signed certificates for host communication, ensure that the virtual name and the cluster nodes have the same certificate authority (CA) usage. For example, if a node uses only external CA-signed certificates, ensure that the virtual name also uses external CA-signed certificates. If there is a mismatch in the CA usage of the virtual name and cluster nodes, catalog backup and catalog recovery may fail.
Use the following approaches to recover the NetBackup environment at a DR site where the arrangement of media servers and clients is different from the main production site. Both approaches have advantages and disadvantages.
In the full catalog recovery approach the whole catalog is recovered and then unwanted configuration elements can be removed or disabled.
In the partial catalog recovery the NetBackup database is not restored.
The most appropriate method for recovery can be determined by the nature of the DR facility and how similar it is to the production facility.
When creating your disaster recovery plan, ensure that it is in line with the approaches discussed in the following sections:
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