NetBackup Catalog Archiving..!!

[Shyam_Prasad]

Champs,

We are planning to do an archive of the NetBackup catalog, ~5.6TB to SAN disk mounted on my Master.

My Master Server is on Solaris with the latest patch and the NetBackup version is 7.0.1.

and we are planning to initiate the archive process in 5days time interval with retaining the 3months images for all the clients, keeping our restore plans in mind.

and here goes my questions !!

Is it recommonded to archieve the whole(i mean max.) catalog ?

Would there be any challenges faced when we receive a request from end-user to restore data for previous years ? other then just unarchiving the catalog, as i'm fine with that ;)

and as our paln is to archieve every 5days ? is it actually required to archive it every 5days ? -  after archiving the images for all clients for the 1st time !

and every document I've come across so far states the same thing:

"Catalog archiving operations must be performed when NetBackup is in an inactive state (no jobs are running)."

but in our environment We have backups that run through out the day from our apps. Any suggestions on this.

Thanks in advance for all your suggestions.

~Shyam

[Andy_Welburn]

I'll start with the last first & see if I can comment about the others later!

"Catalog archiving operations must be performed when NetBackup is in an inactive state (no jobs are running)." - I had this "discussion" earlier this year, see what you think:

https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/forums/netbackup-654-catalog-archive-question

In my experience, most restores are generally requested after a short period from the time of the actual backup. Therefore, if I've read it correctly, keeping at least 3 months unarchived catalogs would seem a good idea. Personally, keeping a rolling 3 months every 5 days seems a little much, but then I suppose it depends upon your environment & business requirements - maybe a weekly "job" is less likely to be forgotten than a monthly one say?

Is this essentially a time & space saving exercise?

Do you compress your catalog via the GUI? If not you could look at that option first & see how much saving you make, then move on to the archiving.

[Shyam_Prasad]

Good to know this and also it makes sense for me.

Here's the reponse from Symantec Engineer:

"Yes you can do this. Think of it this way, your taking everything from 06 back and archiving it. Any new backups running are from 11, they will not conflict in any way. Your not trying to archive backups from today so your good to go."

Yeah...even i also feel the same that rolling the archive process every 5days seems little for me also...i have recommended it as a montly. but willl let post you the update on this.

No..i haven't tired compressing the catalog via the GUI...i usually use the below command. Could you pls share how can i perform the same from the GUI.

bpcatlist -client all -before Jan 1 2009 | bpcatarc | bpcatrm

Thanks many,

Shyam

[Andy_Welburn]

Catalog archiving: copies to media & then removes catalog image .f files from online catalog. Requires catalog restore before client images can be restored. (But then you already know this!)

Catalog compression: set within the Global Attributes tab of the Masteer Server properties. From the Admin Guide:

"Control image-catalog compression by setting the Global Attributes property, Compress Catalog Interval. Use this property to specify how old the backup information must be before it is compressed. Specify the number of days to defer compression information, thus users who restore files from recent backups are unaffected. By default, Compress Catalog Interval is set to 0 and image compression is not enabled."

The client image files remain witin the catalog but are compressed depending on the value set for the Compress Catalog Interval. Any restore requests involving those images would result in them being uncompressed before they are actually restored.

If you do decide to go down the latter route (even as a test) I would suggest doing it as a gradual process (i.e. a month or two at a time) otherwise your regular Image Cleanup process, which actually does the compression amongst other things, will take an inordinate amount of time to complete the first time after changing the Compress Catalog Interval.

Covered more completely in the Admin Guide.

[Shyam_Prasad]

Thanks for your advise !! :)