Understanding Netbackup 5220 appliances Catalog/Machanics.

[NavGee]

The base unit assigns 930GB for catalog what is this for? staging area etc. We have implemented advanced disk pool for catalog backups currently I do not  have a physical tape library attched to the infrastructure just yet.  The reasoning behind this I only carry out only full backups via accelerator the catalog will grow therefore to backup a large catalog quickly via using a advanced disk pool which has better read/write performance. Any suggestions of taking another copy of the catalog as we start migrating clients into the new appliance domain asap. Can I do cross site catalog backup for further protection in the mean time? I also configured AIR replication.  All testing is complete now just bring on VMware then start full blown migration.

Regards

[Mark_Solutions · Accepted solution]

The catalog area is used on a Master Server appliance to store the netBackup Catalog data (the /usr/openv/netbackup/db folder in effect)

It is set to 900Gb to give it ample size to grow up to that size as any larger is not reccomended by Symantec.

AIR replication of the catalog I believe is still unsupported as far as i know so it is best not to do it using AIR to be honest

The best way to get an actual catalog backup is to connect a fibre tape library to the appliance and do your catalog backups to that - you can still write it to the advanced disk pool if you wish and then duplicate it to tape afterwards

You can backup the catalog to a SLP and allow it to replicate using AIR but you would still need it written to tape at some point in order to bring it back to the original site - and somehow you need to put it back together and make it work as there would be no valid DR file for that replicated copy and the images may not even be writtent in the usual catalog backup order over there - or even to the same tape - all gets very messy

My advice is keep catalog backups on tape for now unless you can setup a UNC disk storage unit and write it to that

Hope this helps

[John_Meaders]

What I have done for a customer in a "tapeless" setting and 2x NBU 5230s (one master/media and one a media) is to back the catalog up to the media server (unit) and also have the DR file stored over there (via an NFS share from the media server mounted to the master server).

To set up the shares I opened the plugins share on the media server and mounted that on the master.

[TomerG]

Regarding Mark's comment of "AIR replication of the catalog I believe is still unsupported as far as i know so it is best not to do it using AIR to be honest", I'm not sure why that's the case. 

For example, from http://www.symantec.com/docs/HOWTO88954: "For catalog backup images, NetBackup supports Auto Image Replication only between the same release levels of NetBackup."

I understand that replicating the catalog to another site means that:

1. You can not simply use that for recovery as is, but would first have to duplicate the image to a tape or other storage area you can bring back to the original master server.
2. You would not have a valid DR file, however you can basically create one as needed from the newly duplicated image: http://www.symantec.com/docs/HOWTO56301

Not as trivial as doing a master restore form a DR file and tape, but I would think having an extra copy at a remote site isn't a bad idea, and I don't see where it's "unsupported".