I am going to answer your three cases below. I have a lot of experience with
the NetBackup catalogs. All three are important when you are performing
backups, but restores are very different from backups. I use restores in two
different ways - Disaster Recovery (DR) exercises to recover the business in
case of a major failure, and simple restores, such as the lose of a simngle
media server.
Case 1: NetBackup requires all three catalogs to perform backups and media
management properly. It does not require all of the catalogs for a restore.
In order to do a restore, the Image catalog is most important. Without the
image catalog, there can be no restores. The media catalog is not used for
restores. The volume catalog is used for the restore, but the volume catalog
can be re-created by running an inventory against the robot. When I am
performing a DR exercise, I only bring with me the Image catalog.
Case 2: NetBackup wants to use the same media server (not storage unit) that
backed it up. However, there is a parameter that you can add to bp.conf (Unix)
or into the registry via the GUI (Windows) to change this behaviour. The entry
is FORCE_RESTORE_MEDIA_SERVER = <source> <destination>, where <source> is the
original media server and <destination> is the new media server. This will
cause the new media server to mount the media.
Note: Restores are done at a media server level, not storage unit level. In
the event of a DR restore, the FORCE_RESTORE_MEDIA_SERVER line points to a new
media server. That new media server does NOT have to be a valid storage unit.
In fact, for my DR exercises, I do not create any storage units.
Case 3: Media servers can be changed out rather easily. The information in
the media catalog should be retained before removing a media server, though.
That is easy to do though. For each tape on a media server, use bpmedia
-movedb to move it to another media server. That media server becomes the
owner of the media and NetBackup even updates the Image catalog to reflect the
change in media server ownership.
If I am retiring a media server, I move the media catalog from that media
server to another media server. This way, the media information (Vault related
info) is retained. If I am recovering servers for DR I am only interested in
the Image catalog. If i have a media server that crashes and is rebuilt in
place, I restore the server following my standard DR procedures, then I go to
my Catalog backups to restore the media catalog for that one media server.
Rob Thelen
Storage Management
Bank One Card Services.
-----Original Message-----
From: veritas-bu-admin AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
[mailto:veritas-bu-admin AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu]On Behalf Of Arif
Budiman
Sent: Monday, July 05, 2004 9:43 PM
To: veritas-bu AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
Subject: [Veritas-bu] NetBackup Catalogs cases
Dear colleagues,
As we know that netbackup catalogs are very important parts of netbackup
software. A good understanding is absolutly required.
Need your opinion please on these cases :
1. The netbackup catalogs are :
Image catalog (in master server) : File date image_name
media_server
Media catalog (in media server) : image_name volumeID
Volume Catalog (in master server) : volumeID robot
slot
Image_name relates image catalog and media catalog, volumeID relates
media catalog and volume catalog.
Based on this relationship, if we miss one of the catalogs we can't
do restore.
I have experience on this case. I use NBU 4.5 with 5 media servers. At 1
of the media servers, I reinstall the OS (Win2K), and also NBU. This
Media server's catalogs are not yet recovered with the catalog backup .
But if I try to restore some image tha were backed up through this media
server, I still can preview the mediaID needed for the restore process.
Even, I still can do restore suceesfully ! Whereas, based on the catalog
relationship, I should not be able to preview the mediaID needed for
restore process, because the media Catalog that contain the image is
missed, it isn't yet be recovered. I should not be able to do restore
too.
2. Does NBU, to do restore, must use same storage unit with the storage
unit used while backup process ? Can we change? For example, if we
backup a client A using storage unit STU_A, can we restore client A
using storage unit STU_B ?
3. If we can't do restore using different storage unit with the one used
while backup process, I summarize :
- we must keep all media server lives forever, in order to
restore every image has been backed up through the media server. We can
not remove a media server from NBU Management domain unless we may
possible to lose backed up data.
Regards,
Arif Budiman
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