NetBackup Brothers and Sisters,
I just want to share something I experienced in the hope it helps someone else. I run 5220's to a DataDomain with another set of 5220's and DataDomain in a DR datacenter. My backups use SLP with backup to DD_A and duplication to DD_B. Once I get to 7.6.0.2 I will re-configure my environment to use Auto Image Replication. My configuration works fine other than I have to manually do a Phase I/Phase II import in DR to do restores. We are preparing for a DR exercise so I did the imports on the full and as many incrementals I could to "get ahead of the ball". Phase II of the full backups alone took 25 hours.
So I have everything imported ahead of time, and I'm feeling good. The night before the exercise I go to the DR side to triple check and ALL the images I imported are GONE. I mean GONE! What the hell....... So after much head banging and confusing Symantec, this is what I did wrong. All my production backups have a 6 week retention which is retention level 20. Turns out the images I imported had a 2 day retention and Image cleanup did what it is supposed to do and cleaned them up then DataDomain came along and did his cleanup. Remember on production it is retention level 20 - 6 weeks. On the DR master server, level 20 was set to 1 day. Imports carry over the retention level not the retention time so NetBackup did nothing wrong, it was all me.
I implore all of you using any type of replication to another site to ensure that your retention levels are an identical MATCH if you run separate master servers like I do. I hope this helps spare someone the headaches I went through. All was not lost, I just had to select "duplicate" on the prod side then run another phase I/phase II import.
