We’ve stored our NBU on SAN attached storage since inception.

 

So long as you’re doing catalog/database backups any failure whether on internal drives or on SAN drives can be recovered from.  

 

Since we also have our tape drives accesses via SAN from the master and multiple media servers it seems there would be a risk to backups if the SAN failed completely.

 

Having a complete SAN failure is something I’ve not seen in over 3 ½ years here or at various other jobs where we had SAN.  I suspect your issue at the previous job was more due to poor design of the infrastructure than to any inherent risk of using SAN vs. Internal storage.

 

Even if it IS on internal storage you do risk the server itself melting down and with RAID 5 loss of two drives at the same time (rare but HAS been seen by me in that same 3 ½ year period) would lose your catalogs/database just like losing the SAN would.   Additionally with a SAN you can (and should) have multiple paths to the data meaning loss of a single controller doesn’t blow you out of the water whereas internal RAID 5 is almost always on a single controller.

 

Finally in most environments where SANs are in place the raison d’etre for the SAN was not the backup solution but rather large disk storage needs for running environments.   In the unlikely event of a full SAN failure I suspect the main issue would be your loss of those environments rather than the backup solution though of course losing the backup solution means you’re delayed in trying to bring up the rest of the environments.   However, here again valid catalog/database backups occurring on a regular basis is the way around this – not eliminating the SAN.   

 

You might want to have a look at NBU Disaster Recovery planning guidelines for more details as it sounds as if your prior employer was ill prepared for such a loss.

 

 

All,
Just a general query on the best practice for the location of the NetBackup catalog (Its DB, images, ect).

When you install NBU on a Server, the location can be accepted as the "default" or you can customise the installation and choose an alternative location (ie: Spare drive on local server, SAN attached drive, ect).

Presently, I have NetBackup and the catalog installed locally, on RAID5 set, hot swappable.

My question is this: Is there a best practice for the location of the Catalog? For example, SAN attached disk? I sort of feel uncomfortable with this for several reasons:

1) If you lose SAN connectivity (due to a major disaster or failure) the catalog has gone
2) NetBackup and the OS relies on that disk being available constantly

Being stored locally, means the Server and its application (including the catalog) goes with it, and does not rely on an extra layer of hardware for the catalog to be available.

I think my concerns come from a previous environment where the catalog was stored on a SAN,  and was totally destroyed and unrecoverable, which meant a complete import of hundreds of tapes.

If anyone has any feedback on this, would like to hear the pro's and con's to storage off the physical server itself. I have always had the catalog locally stored.

Thanks, Simon