Veritas Netbackup 6.5.3 Catalog Expired Issue.

[net2imran]

Hi,

We have Veritas Netbackup 6.5.3 server which is connected to our HP Tape library.

And now we are facing one issue that we noticed that the old catalogs are not appearing in veritas backup server.

After checking we discoved that the catalog is expired. The Retension Period was 1 Year (Level 8).

Now I am not able to restore the data from the old backup (more than 1 year old) and all old backups our very critical to our business.

Please guide us how I can restore the data from the expired catalog thats not displaying in veritas backup server.

waiting for ur reply ...

Regards.

Imran Shaikh.

[Marianne]

Your only hope to restore is if you are able to identify the tapes that were used for the backups in question and the tapes were not overwritten in the meantime.

NetBackup does not have the information anymore as media info is also cleared along with the images, deassigned and made available to be overwritten.

If you know the media-id's, use the steps in this TN to import: http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH43584

Maybe have another look at business requirements and change your retention levels accordingly. Do not let limited availability of media dictate retentions - tapes should be purchased to match business requirements.

[net2imran]

Thanks Marianne for the help and now the problem is solved !

I imported the catalog from the tape and recovered the data from the old tape.

Now I changed the current backup retension maximum period to Infinity (Level 24). Also I want to store the catalog forever..

Is there any way to keep the catalog same like NTbackup in Windows.

Now for our current backup policy, I confiured the CatalogBackup so that it will take full catalog backup every week to specified tape with retension period Infinity (Level 24).

[Marianne · Accepted solution]

Sorry - I don't know NTbackup.

Do you have enough disk space on the master and enough tapes to keep EVERYTHING forever? You will have to constantly supply new tapes as they can never be recycled...

Please note that levels 9 - 24 are all Infinity.

The reason for that is to give you the ability to customize retention levels (e.g. 5 year, 7 year, etc...)

The recommendation is to keep level 9 for Infinity and use the other levels (10 - 24) for customized levels.

See Retention Periods properties section in NBU Admin Guide I.

[net2imran]

Thanks for the response and docs...

Yes we have enough tapes and disk space (160GB Free Space) for catalog backup.

Current I configured Catalog Cold backup to a tape (Ultrium4 1.6 TB) with retension level 24 and all catalog is backing up weekly full basis.

I want to know exactly infinity level 24 means how many years ( I m thiniking 15 Years), please correct me.

we are keeping these data forever due to the criticality of the data.