is it best practic to Duplicate the Catalog

[Zahid_Haseeb]

1.)  is it best practic to Duplicate the Catalog via right click and click on duplicate from the list when we take the catalog list
2.) i have 2 drives in my Tape library and they both busy much of times so i was not able to make 1 additional copy of few backup policies jobs bcuz the policy need 2 drives one for primary copy and 2nd for a additional copy. so what i do i just makes a single/primary copy and when my tape drives get free i make a duplicate from the primary copy and send the duplicated copy to the DR site. my question is that this is a good practic to send the duplicated copy to the DR site or i have to add additional drives and make additional copy of while the policy runs 

[Reagan]

1.  I  backup the catalog daily to tape using hot catalog backups.  I don't understand the need to duplicate the catalog backup, just send the original catalog backup off-site.  
2.  Sounds like more tape drives are needed to free up the tape drives.  Writing multiple copies to tape will cause your backups to run longer due to multiple writes.  The backup window is usually tight, so the main goal is to first get the backups done and then perform the duplications, which do not affect the network.  Copy 1 is the primary copy, which is the original backup.  Copy 2 will be the duplicated copy.  Ideally copy 2 will have a longer retention period assigned to it since it will be sent off-site.  By default, NetBackup will try to restore from Copy 1, so it is a good idea to send copy 2 off-site.  When the images on copy 1 expire, copy 2 becomes copy 1.



 

[Srikanth_Gubbal]

 1. general best practise is to take 2 copies @ a time, basic need for catalog backup is to help us in case of master server down, if your master got crashed, will you wait until the catalog tape shipped back from offsite? obviously no..  so when you perform catalog backup, move one copy to the network drive and other copy to the tape,  why network drive? if your master server alone is down, you can build back using the locally available copy, in case of site DR(which is rare) you can get from offsite tape.. or else you simply you can duplicate the tape. 
2. more drives mean more cost.. think but it is very ok and common practise to send a duplicate copy to DR site.

[Zahid_Haseeb]

Thanks all for your kind replies 

Reagan
1.) i take the catalog backups on tape multiple times in a day  if i send the primary tape to the off-site then how Netbackup write the catalog backup on tape. i actually make a duplicated tape from the primary tape and send that tape to the DR site. but i have noticed which is what unfortunately i am not able to restore the catalog from the duplicated backup. it might be the bug of Netbackup. So i stop duplication of Catalog backup for the off-site because there is no benifit to make the duplicate of Catalog backup


Reagan and Srikanth

1st scenerio:-

At my primary site i have an online Hot Catalog policy which is taking the backup on tape cartrige. This backup of Catalog is the primary copy. i also have configured multiple copy of this Online Hot Catalog backup which is taking the backup on Disk Storage Unit (DSU) as a second copy. The DSU is on a hard disk drive who's drive letter is ''L''.

i also have another Veritas Netbackup Server with same configuration at my DR site. i tried to restore my Online Hot Catalog backup from the Tape Cartrige (from Recover the Catalog wizard). After supply the DR file, the wizard is saying me the ''L'' drive is missing(as i said that ''L'' drive on primary site has a second copy of Online Hot Catalog backup)

1.) Why its asking me to supply the ''L'' Drive? although i want to restore/recover my Online Hot Catalog from the tape

Resolved:-
i resolved it , actually i removed the entries of L drive from the DR file and the Recovery of catalog was successfull but this all exercize successful when i do this from the primary copy.

How do i removed the lines see the below picture, the lines which i removed are highlighted with blue:-


2nd scenrerio:-
if the scenerio is that the primary copy is SAN and second copy is tape cartrige and i tried to restore the catalog from the 2nd copy which is tape cartrige and even i removed the the entries of 1st copy from the DR file it keeps asking me the L drive which is actually the DSU which keeps the primary copy of Catalog backup(of course i converted the secondary copy promoted as the Primary copy)

Not Resolved:-

Error in Activity Monitor

10/23/2009 1:01:29 PM - begin Restore

10/23/2009 1:01:32 PM - restoring image veritas-netbkup_1256209540

10/23/2009 1:01:32 PM - requesting resource Fibre Transport

10/23/2009 1:01:32 PM - Warning nbjm(pid=2092) NBU status: 800, EMM status: Fibre Transport resources are not available 

10/23/2009 1:01:32 PM - Warning nbjm(pid=2092) NBU status: 800, EMM status: Fibre Transport resources are not available 

10/23/2009 1:01:35 PM - connecting

10/23/2009 1:01:39 PM - connected; connect time: 00:00:04

10/23/2009 1:01:39 PM - started process bptm (4264)

10/23/2009 1:01:39 PM - Critical bptm(pid=4264) sts_get_lsu_prop_byname on LSU L:\Catalog failed: 2060013 no more entries   

10/23/2009 1:01:39 PM - Critical bptm(pid=4264) Invalid storage device: L:\Catalog no more entries     

10/23/2009 1:01:39 PM - Critical bptm(pid=4264) failure to open disk at path L:\Catalog: plug-in reports error 2060013 

10/23/2009 1:01:44 PM - restored image veritas-netbkup_1256209540 - (media open error(83)); restore time 00:00:12

10/23/2009 1:01:45 PM - end Restore; elapsed time: 00:00:16

the restore failed to recover the requested files(5)

10/23/2009 1:01:49 PM - Error bpbrm(pid=4904) client restore EXIT STATUS 83: media open error     
 


Conclusion

i think Netbackup is only able to restore the Catalog backup from the primary copy which is also/should be the 1st copy

Reagan and Srikanth ever you guys restored the Catalog from the 2nd copy? or from duplicated copy of catalog

[Reagan]

My thinking is that duplicating the catalog is one more step that could possibly go wrong when trying to recover the catalog, so I just backup the catalog using one copy.  A catalog backup doesn't take too long, so you could schedule two catalog backup jobs during the day.  Whatever works for you, stick to it. 

[Zahid_Haseeb · Accepted solution]

Now i have created two policies and assign each tape to each policy and taking the backup of Catalog individually. I am keeping one tape at my primary site and sending second tape to my DR site.....

After more working what i have come to know that the duplicated tape is not working in restoring/recovering the Catalog but we can restore the SQl DB and flat files backups from the duplicated backup tapes.

i think this is the bug of Netbackup 6.5 that we cant restore the Catalog backup from a Tape which is the duplicated tape of Catalog and also we cant recover the Catalog from a second copy of Catalog