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Luckky_________'s avatar
Luckky_________
Level 4
13 years ago

Diff between Catalog backup & Normal backup

Hi All,   Am little bit confusion about difference of the backups b/w Catalog & Normal backups.   Any one please share your answers for the following quetions. 1) Why we are taking the cata...
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  • Mark_Solutions's avatar
    Mark_Solutions
    13 years ago

    Hi

    Hope fully i can answer your questions:

    1. The catalog backup is for disaster recovery of the NetBackup environment. Should your Master server die you can quickly get it back in production using the catalog backup. There is a catalog recovery wizard at the top level of the Admin Console. The DR file it produces is also important and you should keep this safe as the wizard uses it. The catalog backup takes a backup of you NetBackup configuration, all disk and tape information and all backup information.

    2. To identify the catalog backup just look for the Policy name. It creates a parent job and then three other jobs that backup the various components of the catalog, its databases, catalog images etc. Multi streaming will have no effect as it follows its own process.

    3. The catalog backup data is read from the Master Server so it is best to use that as the server to run the backup if it has tape drives attached but it can be done by any Media Server - it just means the data passed over the network from the Master to Media.

    Hope this helps

J_H_Is_gone's avatar
J_H_Is_gone
Level 6
13 years ago

Create a policy with Catalog in its name and in the policy specify that it is a catalog backup, your client is only the master server.

Best to try to schedule it in the morning after all your backups are done so you have it as current as you can,

you should be sure to pull it from the lib and store in safe place like off site.

in addition you will have it email you the DR file that you will need to re-build the NB database from the catalog tape if you do louse your server.  that email will also contain the catalog tape used that day.

NOTE: you should create a separate pool for your catalog tapes, because once a tape is used for a catalog it cannot be used for a normal backup unless you do a bplabel on it ( this is a safety feature to prevent you from overwriting a catalog by mistake - but a new catalog backup on that tape will work fine).