Netbackup Hot Catalog Backups

[michael_brown_3]

Hi,

In my new job I was given the task of upgrading Netbackup 6.5.6 to 7.1 on our Windows 2003 Server. The upgrade was straight forward and successful but I would like some clarity on Catalog Backups. On v7.1 the Cold Offline backups are no longer supported so I had to create a Hot Backup using the Wizard. In the Robotic Library we insert two 400GB tapes for the Catalog backups and five 400GB tapes for the normal backups. I found that I had to expire  (bpexpdate) and relabel (bplabel) the 2 catalog backup tapes, used by the previous 6.5 Cold Catalog Backups, and move them in the Catalog Volume Pool as the new Hot Catalog Backup job failed with an error stating that these tapes couldn't be used for Catalog backups because they had Netbackup data on them.

The Hot Catalog Backup now runs successfully but it seems to be using both tapes (the backup size in approx 300MB) in the one job. The Catalog Tapes are left in the Robotic Library for the whole week while the normal backup tapes are swapped over on a daily basis. Not sure why we insert two tapes but one of the guys here seemed to think the the old Cold Catalog backup would use one tape on Monday, the other Tuesday and back to the first tape on Wednesday........... Could anyone explain why both the catalog tapes are being used for the same Catalog backup job and not just one tape?

thanks for any info.

[Andy_Welburn · Accepted solution]

creates several child jobs, two of which will write to tape.

If resources are available, drives & media, then you will find that two tapes do get used each night.

To get round this, set up a new Storage Unit to be used by your Catalog Backup policy only. Set this STU to have "max concurrent write drives" to 1 (one) & you'll find that only one tape gets used each night from now on.

***EDIT***

About catalog backup parent and child jobs on Windows
http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=HOWTO34800

From which the following would be written to tape:

A child job backs up files in a single stream - config & d/b files
A second child job begins the image catalog backup - all images of all your client backups i.e. the main part of the catalog backup.

***EDIT #2***

"Not sure why we insert two tapes but one of the guys here seemed to think the the old Cold Catalog backup would use one tape on Monday, the other Tuesday and back to the first tape on Wednesday."

That's another area where the Hot Catalog backup is different - it will append to a tape until full & then use the next available.

[Mark_Solutions]

Hi

If the old cold catalog tapes are still causing you problems then you can expire then and then label them (from the command line) to overwrite their header.

By rights a catalog tape should accompany your backup tapes if they are sent off site so you may actually need more than just 2 for a tape rotation.

Dont forget that the .DR file is also very important so make sure a copy of this is kept safe - e-mail configuration in the Catalog Policy is probably the best way to do this.

[michael_brown_3]

Thanks for both replies - makes more sense now.