Seems overly complex.
In the event of serious failure, ie: rebuilding the master from scratch
whether here or there, the process with a catalog tape offsite seems
simpler.
Have the vendor deliver the tapes if you've lost your site. Meanwhile...
Rebuild the OS on the Server
Install Netbackup
Either from your NFS/SRDF/etc disk copy or from the catalog tape, recover
the catalog.
You're done.
Importing tapes, especially as many as we have offsite, is extreme. If
you're just importing the tapes in order to have enough info to recover the
catalog image, then you've still got to do the extra tracking to know which
tapes contain the catalog image.
Twice a day I automatically backup my catalog, once to an NFS disk on
another server, the second time to a local tape (I'm considering using two
different NFS mounts and not using the onsite tape at all). With every
offsite cycle, I eject all the tapes to be offsited that day and then cut a
new catalog tape, using the method below, and send that with the set. When
the set of tapes is returned two weeks later, the catalog tape comes back
for reuse. The report that tracks the tapes that are sent offsite marks the
catalog tape number specially to make it easy to identify.
If we lose the catalog and/or server, the NFS or tape copy is sufficient to
restore the local catalog. If we lose the site to a meteor, then the
on-tape offsite catalog contains the tracking info for the several hundred
tapes that are offsite.
Yes, the vault product has a nice way of making a catalog tape. If you look
closely at the tracking file, though, it's largely what I've described
below. Two versions ago, vault was just a pile of scripts, one version ago
it was kind-of shoe-horned into the GUI. The latest version has a better
GUI integration but if you peek under its skirts, it's still a pile of
scripts.
-M
-----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 King,
Cheryl
Sent: Wednesday, October 05, 2005 3:15 PM
To: veritas-bu AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
Subject: RE: [Veritas-bu] Catalog backup question
I'm with Wayne on this one. I haven't seen an easy way to do it. Every
method of backing up the catalog and sending offsite is too manual.
I think backing up the catalog to disk and then letting the regular
server backup put it to tape works. If you lost everything, you'd
rebuild your Master server at an alternate location. Have the offsite
vendor bring back the latest tapes, import them and restore the /catalog
directory. Then recover the catalog.
If you didn't loose everything, you recover the catalog from the disk.
What am I missing?
-----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
Mark.Donaldson AT cexp DOT com
Sent: Wednesday, October 05, 2005 1:48 PM
To: cballowe AT gmail DOT com; Mark.Donaldson AT cexp DOT com
Cc: WBedour AT lear DOT com; veritas-bu AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
Subject: RE: [Veritas-bu] Catalog backup question
If you've got a newer catalog on disk, why restore the older catalog
from a tape image?
-----Original Message-----
From: Charles Ballowe [mailto:cballowe AT gmail DOT com]
Sent: Wednesday, October 05, 2005 1:38 PM
To: Mark.Donaldson AT cexp DOT com
Cc: WBedour AT lear DOT com; veritas-bu AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] Catalog backup question
The Vault option gives you lots of flexibility for catalog backups
offsite.
If you're doing your catalog to disk, and at some point backing up that
file to tape as part of your normal tape backups - you're covered for
everything - as long as you can get to one of your disk copies ...
i.e. recover from the disk catalog backup, restore the old catalog
backup from tape, recover the older catalog version from the disk.
In theory - every piece of valid media should be in your most recent
catalog backup - should never need multiple versions.
-Charlie
On 10/5/05, Mark.Donaldson AT cexp DOT com <Mark.Donaldson AT cexp DOT com>
wrote:
>
> The skipping past the headers thing works but only if you're doing
non-multiplexed backups. Mux'd backups can't be done this way.
There's the whole "where is the file" thing that has to be considered
there, too.
>
> Considering the ease of the bpsyncinfo method, why not do it that
way?
>
> For offsites, I cut special catalog backups.
>
> Select a scratch tape
> tpreq to mount the tape
> bpbackupdb to backup the catalogs to the tape tpunmount to umount the
> tape change the volume group, return dates, etc. & eject
>
> -Mark
>
> -----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 BeDour,
Wayne
> Sent: Wednesday, October 05, 2005 12:43 PM
> To: veritas-bu AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
>
> Subject: RE: [Veritas-bu] Catalog backup question
>
>
>
>
>
> Here was my original thinking on this. Because our catalog backup
to
tape was taking too long we went to disk. The disk backup is also
copied
to another offsite datacenter via srdf. This only gives me a backup
catalog for 24 hours and I don't feel real comfortable with that.
Numerous posts state that a NetBackup tape can be restored via tar
after
bypassing the headers. Isn't it possible to copy the tape via tar
back
down to my catalog disk backup area then restore the catalog from
there?
My personal opinion is that NetBackup doesn't make backing up and
keeping
offsite copies of their catalog very easy or timely. Bottom line is
I'm
just trying to add a little more insurance to the catalog backups but
don't want to waste the resources if this isn't necessary.
>
> Opinions or ideas how others are doing this are appreciated.
Thanks in
advance.
>
>
>
>
> Wayne BeDour
>
> IT Unix System Administrator
>
> PH: 313-240-3374 FAX: 313-240-3065
>
> Internet: wbedour AT lear DOT com
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Mark.Donaldson AT cexp DOT com [mailto:Mark.Donaldson AT cexp DOT
> com]
> Sent: Tuesday, October 04, 2005 7:02 PM
> To: BeDour, Wayne; veritas-bu AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
> Subject: RE: [Veritas-bu] Catalog backup question
>
>
>
>
> If you backup your catalog via an NB policy then you'll have to
install
NB & the catalog in order to restore the catalog. Very circular.
The
bysyncinfo method uses a simple tar to tape so that Netbackup is not
required to be installed in order to read the tape.
>
>
>
>
>
> So, in short, "yes" you can back it up but "no" it's not usable to
restore Netbackup.
>
>
>
>
>
> -M
>
>
> -----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 BeDour,
Wayne
> Sent: Monday, October 03, 2005 11:20 AM
> To: veritas-bu AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
> Subject: [Veritas-bu] Catalog backup question
>
> Our environment is:
>
> Netbackup Enterprise 5.1
>
> Master Server on HP-UX 11i
>
> Media Server on HP-UX 11i
>
> SureStore 20/700 Library (LTO-1)
>
>
>
> We are currently backing up our catalog to disk. If I also back
this
catalog disk image to tape via a normal NetBackup policy can I use
this
for my offsite catalog backup? Or do I have to run "bpsynacinfo
-doBackup" and point it to tape to have a valid catalog backup on
tape?
>
>
>
> Wayne BeDour
>
> IT Unix System Administrator
>
> PH: 313-240-3374 FAX: 313-240-3065
>
> Internet: wbedour AT lear DOT com
>
>
>
>
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