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Best practices for DR, keeping catalog backup offsite

Charles_Morra1
Level 3
I've set up NetBackup 5.1 to automatically do a catalog backup whenever a backup session completes. During this setup, I've dedicated two specific media and the catalog backups alternate between these two.

I'd like to remove one tape at least once a month and send to offsite storage along with the rest of the tapes. However, since the catalog backup is using two specific media, I forsee that catalog backups will no longer function. I suppose I could reconfigure the catalog backup to another media manually once a month, but I want to make this as administration free as possible within reason.

I don't particularly want to copy the catalog backup over the network to a network share, I don't have a suitable fileserver at any DR site.

Also, I've been thinking of keeping a seperate pool for the master server's own backup, apart from the catalog backup. I suppose it's useful to have the entire NetBackup installation on a specific media so I can in the event of a disaster first reload the catalog, then reload all specific configurations in NetBackup.

I'd like to hear your ideas about best practices to protect the master server and keeping an offsite copy of the catalog backup.
1 REPLY 1

Stumpr2
Level 6
Yes, what you are thinking about catalogs is being done by many users. It is imperative to have a catalog tape sent offsite along with the data tapes. Otherwise you would have to do imports on each tape and that would take a prohibitively long time. If you have the vaulting option then it is very easy to set up a vault policy to create a catalog tape.

If you don't have the vault option then you can script the creation of a catalog tape from the command lines. This can be done for UNIX or Windows. Here is a technote describing the procedure.

How to configure and backup NetBackup catalogs from command line.
http://seer.support.veritas.com/docs/239811.htm

Yes, you should backup the master server. You also can backup the images part of the catalog as two separate backups. On the normal catalog, backup just the master's image directory. Also create a regular backup of the remaining folders in the image db using the master server as the media server. Once the master has been rebuilt from the catalog tape then you can do a simple restore of the other clients image directories. I also do a separate regular policy backup to the master server of all of the media server catalog folders that are suppose to be included in the catalog on a daily basis. These steps shortens the amount of time needed daily for creating daily catalog tapes. This procedure is outlined in the sysadmin guide.

Please include in the catalog backup the bp.conf, vm.conf and the /usr/openv/var directoryMessage was edited by:
Bob Stump