Veritas NetBackup™ in Highly Available Environments Administrator's Guide

Last Published:
Product(s): NetBackup (8.3.0.1, 8.3, 8.2)
Platform: Linux,UNIX,Windows
  1. NetBackup protection against single points of failure
    1. About protecting against component failures
      1.  
        About protecting against network link failures
      2. About protecting against storage device connection failures
        1.  
          About protecting against SAN connection failures
        2.  
          About protecting against robotic control connection failures
      3.  
        About protecting against storage device failure
      4.  
        About protecting against media availability failures
      5.  
        About protecting against master server failures
      6. About protecting against media server failures
        1.  
          About protecting against dedicated media server failures
        2.  
          About protecting against non-dedicated media servers failures
        3.  
          About protecting against SAN media server failures
        4.  
          Restoring tape backups using an alternative media server
        5.  
          Restoring disk backups using an alternative media server.
      7.  
        About protecting against LAN client failures
      8.  
        About protecting against SAN client failures
    2.  
      About protecting against site failures
    3.  
      About protecting catalog in highly available environments
  2. About site disaster recovery with catalog backup and recovery
    1.  
      Disaster recovery packages
    2. About catalog recovery
      1.  
        About full catalog recovery
      2.  
        Performing full catalog restore
      3.  
        Making the DR environment consistent after a full catalog restore
      4.  
        About partial catalog recovery
      5.  
        Performing partial catalog restore
      6.  
        Making the DR environment consistent after a partial catalog restore
    3. About disk recovery in DR domain
      1.  
        Disk recovery in single-domain replication DR environment
      2.  
        Auto Image Replication
      3.  
        Disk recovery in cross-domain replication DR environment
  3. About site loss protection with auto image and catalog replication
    1.  
      About Auto Image Replication (AIR)
    2. About NetBackup catalog replication
      1.  
        About conditions for support of replicated NetBackup catalogs
      2.  
        About catalog synchronization
      3. About multi-site single domain replication
        1.  
          About multi-site single domain with stretched SAN
        2.  
          About multi-site single domain with optimized duplication
      4. About multi-site cross domain replication
        1.  
          About multi-site cross domain and BasicDisk storage
        2.  
          Planning a cross domain replication disaster recovery domain
      5. About full catalog replication
        1.  
          Recovering the catalog with full catalog replication
        2.  
          Making the DR environment consistent with full catalog replication
      6. About partial catalog replication
        1.  
          Preparing an environment for partial catalog replication
        2.  
          Recovering the environment with partial catalog replication
        3.  
          Making the disaster recovery environment consistent with partial catalog replication
        4.  
          Considerations for managing tapes with partial catalog replication
  4. Deploying NetBackup master servers with full catalog replication
    1.  
      About replication considerations
  5. Using NetBackup to perform backups and restores in a cluster
    1. About backups and restores with NetBackup in a cluster
      1.  
        Performing user-directed backups with NetBackup in a cluster
      2. About restoring data in a cluster
        1.  
          Example: Performing a user-directed restore in a NetBackup cluster
    2. About supported NetBackup application agents in a cluster
      1.  
        About backing up database files in a cluster
      2.  
        About user backups
      3.  
        About NetBackup client in a cluster

About protecting against media availability failures

In tape-based backup solutions, failures can occur if no suitable tape media is available for use by a backup job. With NetBackup, risk of such failures can be reduced through global scratch pools and media sharing.

Table: NetBackup protection against media availability failures discusses the methods of protection against media availability failures.

Table: NetBackup protection against media availability failures

Protection method

Description

Global scratch pools

For all the backup jobs and duplication jobs that are written to tapes, use the tapes that are in a specific media pool with the same retention criteria as the backed up data. If no suitable tapes are available, the backup fails.

A global scratch pool is a NetBackup media pool that holds unassigned tapes that can be automatically re-assigned to a specific media pool on demand. For instance, a backup or a duplication job runs and no suitable tapes are available in the media pool specified by the job. Then an unassigned tape is transferred from the global scratch pool to the specified media pool and is used for the backup job. When this tape expires, it is automatically returned to the global scratch pool for re-use.

Using a global scratch pool ensures that all unassigned tapes are available for use by any backup job, irrespective of the media pool specified by the job.

Media sharing

Media sharing allows multiple media servers to use partially full tapes until they are full. It ensures the most efficient use of tape. Only one media server at a time can write to a tape. When that tape is not in use, a different media server that requires a tape from that media pool can use it.

To enable media sharing, set the Volume Pool properties to use the Maximum number of partially full media property. This property restricts the number of partially full tapes in a media pool. Until all tapes are full, empty tapes cannot be assigned to the pool. Until one tape is full, another empty tape cannot be assigned to the pool.