NetBackup Self Service - Protection Type, Best Practice

Protection Types

At the heart of NSS lies the concept of ‘Protection Types’ and ‘Protection Levels’ or ‘Backup Now Levels’.  Protection Levels are the options users see against a computer that allow them to add the computer to scheduled policies while Backup Now Levels allow users to perform immediate backups. 

 

Architecture

Every computer in NSS is assigned to:

• A single tenant – ownership of the computer by a group of users
• A single Master Server – where the NetBackup commands for that computer will be executed
• A single Protection Type – a set of Protection/Backup Now Levels displayed against a computer

Within a Protection Type, one or more Protection Levels can be defined.

Within a Protection Level, one or more NSS Policies can be defined which selection of a Protection Level will add the computer to.

Mapped to each NSS Policy is a manually created template policy on the NetBackup master server with its own set of pre-defined attributes: retention period, frequency, storage unit etc.Process

 

What type of computer is it?

Always bear in mind that a computer can only be assigned to one Protection Type so the Protection Levels that sit below it all need to contain policies that are valid for the computer to prevent failures during NSS operations.

So while we call them Protection Types, you can also think of them as computer types – i.e. what type of computer is it? 

You would not, for example, provide a Unix (Standard) policy in a Protection Level used to protect a Windows computer.

 

 

Different policy types in the same Protection Level

As NSS allows a Protection Level to add computers to multiple policies, it is possible to mix policy types within the same Protection Level.  For example, in the case of application-specific policy types.

Microsoft SQL Server will always be installed on a Windows Server.  This means, it is feasible to define NSS policies that add the computer to both MS SQL Server and Windows policies.  A Protection Level could contain policies that protect either type.

 

Tenant-specific Protection Levels

If you wish to offer different Protection Levels for each tenant, you can create tenant-specific Protection Types that their computers will be assigned to.

e.g.

VMWare_Tenant1

VMWare_Tenant2

Windows_Tenant1

Windows_Tenant2 etc

Then, when registering the computer, select the tenant and the tenant-specific Protection Type.