Diff between Catalog backup & Normal backup

[Luckky_________]

Hi All,

Am little bit confusion about difference of the backups b/w Catalog & Normal backups.

Any one please share your answers for the following quetions.

1) Why we are taking the catalog backup? wat is the eact need of the catalog backup?.

2) I'm enabled multi streaming and initiated Normal backup and Catalog backup, then wat you identified in Activity monitor?. what type of differences  you can able to identify in Activity monitor b/w catalog & Normal backup?

3) On which server we are initiating Catalog backups..? I mean on Master/Media/Client server?.

Please share your answers of above quetion to clear my doubts.

Thanks & Regards,

Lucky..

[Mark_Solutions · Accepted solution]

Hi

Hope fully i can answer your questions:

1. The catalog backup is for disaster recovery of the NetBackup environment. Should your Master server die you can quickly get it back in production using the catalog backup. There is a catalog recovery wizard at the top level of the Admin Console. The DR file it produces is also important and you should keep this safe as the wizard uses it. The catalog backup takes a backup of you NetBackup configuration, all disk and tape information and all backup information.

2. To identify the catalog backup just look for the Policy name. It creates a parent job and then three other jobs that backup the various components of the catalog, its databases, catalog images etc. Multi streaming will have no effect as it follows its own process.

3. The catalog backup data is read from the Master Server so it is best to use that as the server to run the backup if it has tape drives attached but it can be done by any Media Server - it just means the data passed over the network from the Master to Media.

Hope this helps

[Andy_Welburn]

"Normal backup" backs up your clients data - used to restore your clients data. This information is stored in your catalog (image database). Create "normal backup" policies/schedules to backup clients data.

"Catalog backup" backs up the image database & NetBackup configuration etc - the catalog holds all the info of what has been backed up and where (what client data on what media etc etc). The catalog backup is used to restore this info if you need to recover your NetBackup master in the event of a disaster - otherwise you would have to import all your media. You create "catalog backup" policies/schedules to backup this data.

This is covered much better in the Admin Guides!!

[J_H_Is_gone]

Create a policy with Catalog in its name and in the policy specify that it is a catalog backup, your client is only the master server.

Best to try to schedule it in the morning after all your backups are done so you have it as current as you can,

you should be sure to pull it from the lib and store in safe place like off site.

in addition you will have it email you the DR file that you will need to re-build the NB database from the catalog tape if you do louse your server.  that email will also contain the catalog tape used that day.

NOTE: you should create a separate pool for your catalog tapes, because once a tape is used for a catalog it cannot be used for a normal backup unless you do a bplabel on it ( this is a safety feature to prevent you from overwriting a catalog by mistake - but a new catalog backup on that tape will work fine).