Veritas NetBackup 8.

0 Blueprint
Catalog
Backup and Recovery Technical Education Services
Attention
Disclaimer

ATTENTION
This forward-looking indication of plans for products is preliminary and all future release
dates are tentative and are subject to change.
Any future release of the product or planned modifications to product capability, functionality
or feature are subject to ongoing evaluation by Veritas, and may or may not be implemented
and should not be considered firm commitments by Veritas, and should not be relied upon in
making purchasing decisions.

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Important Notice
Diagrams containing objects representing 3rd-party platforms and applications

This NetBackup Blueprint presentation includes example diagrams that contain objects that
represent applications and platforms from other companies such as Microsoft and VMware.
These diagrams may or may not match or resemble actual implementations found in end
user environments. Any likeness or similarity to actual end user environments is completely
by coincidence.
The goal of the diagrams included in this blueprint presentation is not to recommend specific
ways in which to implement applications and platforms from other companies such as
Microsoft and VMware; the purpose of these diagrams is to illustrate NetBackup best
practices only.
For guidelines and best practices on installing and configuring applications and platforms
from other companies, please refer to best practice documentation and other resources
provided by those companies.

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NetBackup Blueprints
How to use

NetBackup Blueprints are designed to illustrate key customer data protection challenges
and to demonstrate how NetBackup solves them.
Each Blueprint consists of:
• Pain points - current challenges a customer faces
• Whiteboards/example diagrams – illustrations of the NetBackup solution
• Configuration walkthrough – step-by-step configuration guide of the NetBackup
solution
• Best practices - NetBackup best practices to avoid common pitfalls
Use Blueprints to present NetBackup best practice implementation examples.

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Contents

1 Fundamentals

2 Catalog Backup

3 Catalog Recovery

4 Best Practices

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Fundamentals
What Is It?

• In the broadest sense, the NetBackup Catalog refers to all

NetBackup configuration and metadata.
• It resides on master server.
• It is the internal database containing information about:
– NetBackup configuration and settings
– the backups that have been performed
– the files backed up and the media they were stored on

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It Manages…

Image
Metadata

Licensing Backup
Data policies

Catalog

Error Client
Logs Database

Backup
Content

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Components
Image
Database

NetBackup File Image NetBackup

Configuration Metadata Header Database
Files (NBDB)

Class DARS_DATA
Client DARS_INDEX

Config DBM_DATA
Failure _history EMM_DATA
Images EMM_INDEX

Jobs media JOBD_DATA

Ss NBAZDB
Snapshot NBDB

Vault SEARCH_DATA
SEARCH_INDEX
VXDBMS.conf
Windows:
Windows:install_path\NetBackup\db Windows: install_path\NetBackupDB
Unix:/usr/openv/netbackup/db Unix:/usr/openv/db

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Components: Configuration Files

• The NetBackup configuration files include policies, schedules, job logs,

and other files used by NetBackup.
• These are sometimes referred to as flat files because they are not stored
in a relational database, and are stored in simple files on the file system of
the NetBackup master server.
• The directories for the configuration files are located at
– /usr/openv/netbackup/db (UNIX) or
– install_path\NetBackup\db (Windows).

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Components: The NBDB

• The NetBackup relational database (NBDB) is created during the

installation of the Master server.
• It is a relational database that uses Sybase SQL Anywhere
• It stores data for several NetBackup services, including media and device
data, backup image headers, authentication and authorization.
• Because the first service to use the relational database was the
Enterprise Media Manager in earlier releases of NetBackup, the database
is sometimes referred to as the EMM database.

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Components: The Image Database

• A critical NetBackup component is the image database, which stores

backup image metadata.
• These files contain information about backups that have been performed.
• Although its name implies that it is a database, the image database is
actually stored partially in flat files located on the master server disk, and
partially in the NBDB.

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Components: The Image Headers

• Image Headers contain information about the backup itself – client, STU’s,
hosts, policy, etc.
• Every image has a single Image Header.
• Prior to the 7.5 release, image headers were stored as flat files. These
have now been migrated to the NetBackup Database (NBDB)

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Components: The dot f Files

• Dot F Files (or Files File) contain information about the files and attributes
that were backed up in an image.
• These are stored as flat files in binary format. They can be viewed in
ASCII format using the cat_convert utility.
• Dot f files comprise a large portion of the image catalog.

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The Hot Catalog Backup

• Hot Catalog Backups allow you to backup the entire NetBackup Catalog
for disaster recovery purposes.
• It is called ‘hot’ because it allows you to backup the catalog while jobs
are running. This was introduced in NetBackup 6.0 Prior to that, catalog
backups could only be taken when NBU was not running.
• It backs up the entire database, image and configuration files.

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Catalog Backup
Catalog Backup Process

1. A child job copies the NBDB database files to

/usr/openv/db/staging (UNIX) or
install_path\NetBackupDB\staging (Windows).
2. A second child job starts, which backs up the files from the staging
directory or folder to the storage unit specified in the catalog backup
policy. This job backs up the files in a single stream.
3. A third child job starts, which backs up the NetBackup configuration files
which includes part of the images database, policies, configuration, and
other catalogs on the master server.

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Walkthrough: Configuring Catalog Backup (1)

Click ‘NetBackup
Management’
and select
‘Configure the
Catalog Backup’

This Wizard helps

you configure the
catalog backup.

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Walkthrough: Configuring Catalog Backup (2)

Enter a unique policy name.

Notice that NBU-Catalog is
automatically selected as the
policy type.

Select a policy from the list of

existing catalog backup policies.
Or create a new policy and click
next.

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Walkthrough: Configuring Catalog Backup (3)

Select the backup

type(s). and click next.
User Backup does not
apply for NBU-Catalog
policies.

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Walkthrough: Configuring Catalog Backup (4)
• A frequency-based
schedule ensures
that the catalog Select the backup
backup has an schedule. By
opportunity to run default, a
in busy frequency-based
schedule is
environments
selected.
where backup jobs
are running.
• Catalog backups
can be scheduled After each
to run concurrently backup session
with other backup refers to a period
types on the when no regular
master server. backup policy is
running.

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Walkthrough: Configuring Catalog Backup (5)

The DR (disaster
recovery)file contains
information about
when the catalog
backup was
performed, which
Configure the media server
location for DR file. performed the
backup, where the
data is located
(Media ID or disk
path), and step by
step instruction on
how to recover the
catalogs.

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Walkthrough: Configuring Catalog Backup (6)

The disaster recovery

email and the
accompanying
attachment that is sent
contain the following
important items for a
successful catalog
recovery:
It is recommended to ■ A list of the media that
email the DR file. contains the catalog
backup
■ A list of critical
policies.
■ Instructions for
recovering the catalog
■ The image file as an
attachment.

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Walkthrough: Configuring Catalog Backup (7)

DR tab is
added in the
policy.

Critical policies are the policies that

should be recovered before backups
from other policies are recovered. for
more information ,refer to :
http://www.veritas.com/docs/000124691

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Walkthrough: Monitoring the Catalog Backup

• 269 :Parent backup job

• 270:First child job which performs staging of NBDB
• 271:Second child job which backs up the NBDB
• 272:Third child job which backs up Configuration files
Parent job is not marked as successfully completed until all the child jobs
are completed successfully.

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Configuring Catalog Backup In Clustered Master
To configure an online, hot catalog backup in a cluster,
1. Follow the instructions for creating online catalog backups as
described earlier.
2. Create a policy to back up the following directory on each node in the
cluster.
• Win:install_path\netbackup\var
• Unix/linux:/usr/openv/var

– Note: An online catalog backup does not back up information on the inactive nodes.

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Protecting MSDP Catalog
• In previous versions of NetBackup, there was no protection of MSDP
catalog. Now, there are 2 levels of protection are offered:
• Online protection by shadow copies
oThe NetBackup Deduplication Manager automatically creates a shadow copy of the
catalog daily.
• Offline protection via Policy and drcontrol utility
oThe NetBackup Deduplication Catalog Policy Administration and Catalog Disaster
Recovery utility the (drcontrol utility) configures a backup policy for the MSDP catalog.
oIt also includes other important MSDP configuration information.
oRefer to Deduplication guide or to MSDP Blueprint for more details.

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Catalog Recovery
Recovery Options
Several options to recover the catalog exist as follows:

Recovery Option Description

Recover the entire Veritas recommends that you recover the entire catalog.
catalog Doing so helps ensure consistency among the various parts
of the catalog. This method is most useful for recovering a
catalog to the same environment from which it was backed
up.
Recover the This type of restore also restores the NetBackup relational
catalog image database (NBDB) to the staging directory so that it is
files and available for further processing if required.
configuration files
Recover the Recover the relational database if it is corrupt or lost but the
relational catalog image files exist and are valid..
database files

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Recovering The Entire Catalog (1)

Select ‘Recover the

catalogs’ option
which starts the
Catalog Recovery
wizard

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Recovering The Entire Catalog (2)
Specify the path to DR file and click Next. If DR file
is missing, refer to following technote:
http://www.veritas.com/docs/000064623

Click Next after locating

the required media.

Once the DR file is

located correctly, click
Next to continue.

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Recovering The Entire Catalog (3)

Recover entire catalog

option is selected here.
The job priority is set to
highest. You cannot
cancel the restore job in
the middle.

If you recover from incremental backup, the NetBackup relational database files identified by the DR file are restored. All catalog backup
image files back to the last full catalog backup are automatically included in an incremental catalog backup. Therefore, only catalog
images and configuration files that changed since the last full backup are restored. You can then use the Backup, Archive, and Restore
user interface to restore all backup images.
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Recovering The Entire Catalog (4)

Recovery is completed
successfully. You need
to restart the NetBackup
services.

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Recovering The Entire Catalog – Using bprecover
The bprecover -
wizard command is
an alternative to
using the NetBackup
Administration
Console wizard

Full path for

the DR file is
provided
here.

Refer to following Technote for more information on this:

http://www.veritas.com/docs/000025949
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Recovering Partial Catalog Using GUI (1)

For partial catalog

recovery, select
the second option
as shown.

Select ‘Recover the

catalogs’ option
which starts the
Catalog Recovery
wizard

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Recovering Partial Catalog Using GUI (2)

Recovery is
completed
successfully. You
need to restart the
NetBackup services.

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Recovering Partial Catalog Using bprecover

Partial catalog
recovery can be
initiated by answering
to this question and
additionally answering
whether or not to
include policy data.

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Recovering NBDB
You can recover the NetBackup relational databases independently of an
entire catalog backup.
–If the NBDB database is available and the SQL Anywhere server is running, the only
steps that need to be followed includes those that replace the existing database with
the copy from the catalog backup:
1. Make the media available
2. Run the bprecover -r -nbdb command
Refer to following Technotes which discuss some more scenarios involved
during the recovery of NBDB
• Recover from a backup
http://www.veritas.com/docs/000109687
• Recover from the staging directory
http://www.veritas.com/docs/000109970
• Recovering the NetBackup catalog when NBAC is configured
http://www.veritas.com/docs/000109785

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More Recovery Scenarios

• How to recover the NetBackup catalog from a non-primary copy of the

catalog backup
http://www.veritas.com/docs/000005721
• NetBackup catalog recovery without importing tapes
http://www.veritas.com/docs/000026322
• About NetBackup catalog recovery from disk devices
http://www.veritas.com/docs/000068549
• How to recover NetBackup Catalog from an MSDP pool
http://www.veritas.com/docs/000014614
• Performing partial catalog restore
http://www.veritas.com/docs/000073754

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Archiving Catalog (1)

• Customers may need to maintain their backups for many years for
reasons such as government regulations and auditing purposes.
• Archiving catalog images allows you to save space on the master server
and manage older backup images which you won’t need to recover from
anytime soon.
• Catalog archiving allows you to backup dot-f files of older images and
remove them from the master server.
• The headers for the images remain in the database. So the images are
still visible in the catalog. Whenever you want to restore from those
images, they will need to be un-archived first.
• Archiving older images mean catalog backups have to backup much
lesser data.

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Archiving Catalog (2)
• Catalog archiving requires you to configure a policy called as catarc for
performing the archival.
• You can only have one archiving policy. For more details, refer to
http://www.veritas.com/docs/000028588
• Images can be archived with these CLIs:
– bpcatlist | bpcatarc | bpcatrm
• Images can be un-archived using:
– bpcatlist | bpcatres
• These commands reside in following directories:
o /usr/openv/netbackup/bin/admincmd
o /<install path>\Veritas\NetBackup\bin\admincmd
For more information on using bpcatlist please refer: http://www.veritas.com/docs/000028580

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Archiving Catalog (3)

Use bpcatlist to
determine what
image files will
be archived.

This indicates that

catalog archiving
has not been
previously run

These are the

image files which
can be archived.

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Archiving Catalog (4)

This command will

archive all the
images created
before Jul 05 2015
for all clients.

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Archiving Catalog (5)

This command will

restore all the
catalog archive files
prior to May 25
2014 for all clients.

• To restore the catalog archive, you must first use the

bpcatlist command to list the files that need to be restored.
• Once bpcatlist displays the proper files to restore, then the
bpcatres can be run to restore the actual files.

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Verifying Consistency – NBCC

• NetBackup consistency check utility (NBCC) is a command line utility

used to analyze the integrity of portions of the NetBackup configuration,
catalog and database information.
• It queries the EMM database to obtain the primary host name, associated
host names, and server attributes for host name normalization.
• It does through examination of the NetBackup configuration, identifies
cluster, application cluster and servers.
• It gathers the database and catalog information

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Verifying Consistency – NBCC

• It analyzes the consistency of the gathered configuration and database

and catalog information.
• It creates a packaged bundle for Veritas technical support to review.
• It resides in the following location:
Unix:/usr/openv/netbackup/bin/support/NBCC
Windows:install_path\NetBackup\bin\support\NBCC.exe
• By default, it displays its progress numerically to standard output. The
name of the output file is nbcc-info.txt
• See the troubleshooting guide for more details.

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Consistency Check Repair Utility – NBCCR (1)

• The NetBackup consistency check repair (NBCCR) utility is a command

line tool that processes database-catalog repair actions.
• Veritas technical support analyzes the data that is collected by the NBCC
utility and site-specific configuration information.
• This analysis may result in the generation of a suggested repair actions
(SRA) file.
• Before NBCCR is run, Veritas technical support interacts with the
customer to determine which repairs are needed.
• Undesirable repair actions are deleted or commented out of the SRA file.

A complete description of NBCCR is in the NetBackup Commands Reference Guide.

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Consistency Check Repair Utility – NBCCR (2)

• Each line of the SRA file contains one repair action that is paired with an
associated parameter.
• NBCCR resides in the following location:
o Unix:/usr/openv/netbackup/bin/support/NBCCR
o Windows:install_path\NetBackup\bin\support\NBCCR.exe
• NBCCR accepts one input file, creates two output files, and uses one
temporary file.

A complete description of NBCCR is in the NetBackup Commands Reference Guide.

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Image Import

• NetBackup can import the backups that have expired, the backups from
another NetBackup server
• Import happens in two phases:
o Phase I
– Import process creates a list of expired images from which to select to import in Phase
II. It regenerates image headers and imports them into the database. No import actually
happens in Phase I. If an image has only undergone Phase I import, it is removed
during the next cleanup.
o Phase II
– The dot-f files are regenerated and moved into the catalog

For more information please refer http://www.veritas.com/docs/000029918

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Compression (1)
• Compressing the image catalog accomplishes the following objectives:
– Reduces greatly the disk space that is consumed.
– Reduces the media that is required to back up the catalog.

• Before NetBackup 7.6, NetBackup used the compress command on the server
(UNIX) to perform compression after each backup session.
• Post NetBackup 7.6 onward uses a built-in compression method to compress the
image catalog.
• The operation occurs while NetBackup expires backups and before it runs the
session_notify script and the backup of the NetBackup catalogs.
• The time to perform compression depends on the server speed and the number
and size of the files being compressed. Files are compressed serially, and
temporary working space is required in the same partition. Compression method is
based on zlib- faster and better ratios
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Compression (2)

Use this property

to specify how old
the backup
information must
be before it is
compressed.

To uncompress the catalog, refer to following article:

http://www.veritas.com/docs/000112103
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Migration
• It is possible to move the NetBackup catalog from one master to another
master server running on the same "primary" platform (i.e. from a
Windows server to another Windows server or from a UNIX or Linux
server to another UNIX or Linux server) using a simple catalog backup
and recovery operation as described in
http://www.veritas.com/docs/000041076 and
http://www.veritas.com/docs/000041077
• Note, a migration of this sort must be a part of a conscious, planned, and
permanent transition, and should not be part of a disaster recovery
process or any part of a disaster recovery plan.
• Contact a NetBackup Sales Representative for assistance in engaging a
certified Veritas consultant or Consulting Partner.

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Best Practices
Best Practices: Catalog Tuning
• /usr/openv/netbackup/MAX_FILES_PER_ADD – affects all backups,
default is 5,000 (Can be used to tune problems with backing up file
systems with many files and also file adds into catalog exceeding bpbrm
timeout)
• /usr/openv/netbackup/FBU_MAX_FILES_PER_ADD – affects
FlashBackup, default is 95,000
• /usr/openv/netbackup/CAT_BU_MAX_FILES_PER_ADD – affects catalog
backups, default is maximum allowed 100,000
• Refer to following technote for further details
http://www.veritas.com/docs/000076426

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Best Practices: MSDP Catalog
• Do not use the Media Server Deduplication Pool as the destination for the
catalog backups.
• Large catalogs should be sent to fast disk mounted on the Master or a
Media Server. Such backups can take time to back up even as
Incremental due to the high number of changes. For sizing
recommendations, please refer to
http://www.veritas.com/docs/000076287
• Use a storage unit that is attached to a NetBackup host other than the
MSDP storage server.
• Use a separate MSDP catalog backup policy for each MSDP storage
server.

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Best Practices: Top Support Technotes
• Recommendation for sizing the catalog
http://www.veritas.com/docs/000076312
• How to calculate the size of your NetBackup image database
http://www.veritas.com/docs/000076287
• How to calculate the size of the NetBackup relational database
http://www.veritas.com/docs/000076275
• Best practice for NetBackup catalog layout
http://www.veritas.com/docs/000010232
• About catalog policy schedules
http://www.veritas.com/docs/000044220

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Best Practices: Top Support Technotes
• Concurrently running catalog backups with other backups
http://www.veritas.com/docs/000112598
• Veritas NetBackup (tm) Catalog Replication: Conditional Support
Statement
http://www.veritas.com/docs/000033063
• How to migrate the NetBackup catalog information from one platform to
another (UNIX to Windows or vice versa), rename a Master Server,
cluster an existing Master Server, or merge multiple NetBackup
domains.
http://www.veritas.com/docs/000026956
• NetBackup 8.0 Administrator’s guide, volume I
http://www.veritas.com/docs/000115725

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Thank you!
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