Make media server back itself up

Hi,

 

Is there a way to force a media server to always back itself up, and not let another media server do it?

We've got a Netbackup 7.5 environment in development using Data Domain boxes. On servers with 50gb+ of data we install the media server rather than the clientalong with the DD Boost De-dupe at source plugin, so they write drastically reduced amounts of data directly to the Data Domain box.

So in practice we have two sorts of media server:

1) active media servers that will backup any client (according to storage lifecycle policies etc)

2) servers with large amounts of data that need to be media servers to use the DD boost de-dupe plugin and write directly to the DD box without having to go across the network to another media server first. 

 

But we've seen in some of our test runs that media servers are sometimes being backed up by other media servers?! This really surprises me as one expect that if the server IS a media server then it would strongly or exclusively favour itself as its own media server. Also, if it is being backed up by another media server does that mean the DD Boost plugin is still de-duping at source or not? Even if it is still de-duping at source (and I can't see how it can be) using another media server means an extra journey across the network that is not required. 

So I'm thinking, is there a way of forcing a media server to always back itself up? It has been suggested that we could do this with dedicated storage units, but we're expecting there to be 40+ of these type 2 large storage media servers, and that seems like a lot of unnecesary storage units.   

Thanks!

Steve Law