Master / Media Serer on virtual machine

Virtual master server :

The NetBackup master server is supported within a virtual machine, under the limitations described in the “General guidelines for support.” Refer to the following NetBackup Operating System compatibility document for a list of supported NetBackup 7.x master server platforms:

http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH76648

Virtual media server

The NetBackup media server is supported within a virtual machine, under the limitations described in the “General guidelines for support.”

The following storage units are supported within a virtual machine:

■ Media Server Deduplication Pool (MSDP)

For MSDP requirements, see the NetBackup Deduplication Guide and the following deduplication tech note:

http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH77575 .. This is where the sizing information is mentioned

Hardware Compatibility List:

http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH76495

For a list of supported NetBackup 7.x media server platforms, see the NetBackup 7 Operating System Compatibility List:

http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH76648

Reference : Support for NetBackup 7.x in virtual environments

http://clientui-kb.symantec.com/resources/sites/BUSINESS/content/live/TECHNICAL_SOLUTION/127000/TECH127089/en_US/NetBackup-7x-in-virtual-environments_March_04_2015_update.pdf

How are you going to backup the catalog ?

Presume to disk - is this going to be duplicated, if not, you will only have one copy of the backup on disk, which has no protection against disk corruption.

I would really really really not recommend backing the catalog up to MSDP.

I would recommend even less, running the catalog backup to MSDP and only having one copy.

Are these disks local ?  If so, you have no offsite protection, for the catalog backups, or the client backups.

I have seen customers lose massive amounts of backups through only having one MSDP copy and  then suffering  disk failure /filesystem corruption.

I'd sort out your 'DR plan' before worring about anything else, the best performing backup system in the world is no good if you lose all the data, or big chunks of it though hardware/ filesystem issues and have no protection against this.

There are also good advice in the following document:

Symantec NetBackup Backup Planning and Performance Tuning Guide Release 7.5 and Release 7.6

http://www.symantec.com/docs/DOC7449