NetBackup™ in Highly Available Environments Administrator's Guide

To recover the environment with partial catalog replication

1. Run the nbgetconfig command and save the output. This output can be used after the catalog recovery to recover the host-specific information that is overwritten during the catalog recovery.

   For example:

   ./nbgetconfig > sample.txt

2. Ensure that replication is stopped between the main and the alternate sites.

   Replication stops if the main primary server is unavailable or if the replication link is disabled.

3. Mount the replicated volume to the appropriate mount point on the alternate primary server.
4. Use the command nbdb_admin - vxdbms_nb_staging <directory> on the target (disaster recovery) primary server to point the staging area for the database to the location on the replicated storage.
5. Recover the image header information without recovering the entire NetBackup database, perform the following steps:

   • Step a - Back up the target database. Run the following command.

     nbdb_backup -online directory

     Make sure that you do not specify the staging folder as the output directory. (The staging folder contains the schema data and configuration data for the NetBackup database from the catalog backup. Image .f and configuration files are recovered to their final destinations.)

   • Step b - Recover the NetBackup database from the staging directory.

     nbdb_restore -recover -staging

   • Step c - Export the image header data that you want to import from the backup.

     For example, the following command exports export all image header data. The data is exported to the netbackup/db.export directory.

     cat_export -all

   • Step d- Recover the NetBackup database with the following command.

     nbdb_restore -recover directory

     Make sure that you specify the same directory as in step a.

   • Step e- Run the cat_import command to import the image header data that you extracted in step c.

     cat_import -all -replace_destination -delete_source

     The command does the following:

     • Imports all of the image header data in the netbackup/db.export directory.

     • Replaces any image header data that was exported that already exists in the target database.

     • Removes the image header data that resides in the netbackup/db.export directory.

   • Step f- If you recovered the catalog from a disk device, you may have to fix the disk media ID references. Run the following command:

     nbcatsync -sync_dr_file DR file path -dryrun

     Replace DR file path with the path to the catalog DR file.

   • Step g - If the result of the dry run is satisfactory, run the following command:

     nbcatsync -sync_dr_file DR file path

6. Run the command cat_import - all to import the exported metadata into the active database.
7. Recover the host settings that you backed up in step 1. Run the following command.

   ./nbsetconfig sample.txt

8. Start NetBackup on the secondary primary server.
9. If the backup policies are replicated, deactivate all backup policies to prevent backups from starting automatically. Use one of the following methods:

   • The NetBackup web UI.

   • Run the command bppllist <policy> -set -inactive.

10. Ensure that the appropriate FAILOVER_RESTORE_MEDIA_SERVER settings are defined to direct restore operations through the media servers at the alternate site.
11. To restore the backups from tapes, you must add the tapes to the disaster recovery primary server's catalog. Place the tapes in a tape library and run an inventory of the library. To prevent the tapes from being accidentally overwritten the disaster recovery primary server should have a barcode rule that adds the tapes to a volume pool. The volume pool must not use the global scratch pool and no backup policies should use this pool. Ideally the tapes should also be physically write locked.
12. For disk-based backups, the storage servers and disk pools must be added to the disaster recovery primary server by running the disk storage server wizard.

    Once the disk storage is present, run the following command to reconcile the disk media IDs:

    nbcatsync - backupid <catalog backup ID> -prune_catalog

    The value <catalog backup ID> is the backup ID of the most recent catalog backup and can be found in the catalog backup's disaster recovery file. After the tapes have been added and the disk media IDs have been reconciled it is possible to start restore operations.