Netbackup Catalog Backup - faster?

[cglaser]

Does anyone know any cool tricks to make the netbackup catalog backup go faster?
Any clean ups through cron that could be done be decrease the ammount of data that it backs up without getting rid of the important stuff?
Lately it has been taking FOREVER and I want to decrease the window of which nothing else can run...
thanks,
Chris

 

[sgoldsmith]

A split catalogue backup can "selectively" backup the images of servers that are needed for DR purposes - this would speed things up.

The concept of the split catalogue backup is that a "standard" netbackup class backs up the /usr/openv/netbackup/db/images/* or /usr/openv/netbackup/db/images/"servername/s". This backs up the images for all these servers.
Then a "proper" Netbackup catalogue backup gets initated and backs up the Netbackup info + the image of the server that performed the backup above.

Selectively backing up servers will decrease the time of the "overall" catalogue backup.
Also this method means that the "actual" catalogue backup time is hugely decreased (because it just backs up NB info and the one servers images!!).

On a recovery you but back the NB info and server that performed the images backup - then you can restore the images as per a standard restore. Again decreasing the recovery time for a DR client; as you don't have to restore all server images just to restore 1 server!

For info on how to perform a split catalogue backup see the NB Admin Guide page 160.

PS This is also the only way to backup a complete catalogue that is bigger in data size than 1 tape.

Simon Goldsmith
Storage Engineer