Veritas NetBackup™ Administrator's Guide, Volume I
- Section I. About NetBackup
- Section II. Configuring hosts
- Configuring Host Properties
- About the NetBackup Host Properties
- Access Control properties
- Bandwidth properties
- Busy File Settings properties
- Client Attributes properties
- Client Settings properties for UNIX clients
- Client Settings properties for Windows clients
- Data Classification properties
- Default Job Priorities properties
- Encryption properties
- Exchange properties
- Exclude Lists properties
- Fibre Transport properties
- Firewall properties
- General Server properties
- Global Attributes properties
- Logging properties
- Login Banner Configuration properties
- Media properties
- Network Settings properties
- Port Ranges properties
- Preferred Network properties
- Resilient Network properties
- Restore Failover properties
- Retention Periods properties
- Scalable Storage properties
- Servers properties
- SharePoint properties
- SLP Parameters properties
- Throttle Bandwidth properties
- Universal Settings properties
- User Account Settings properties
- Configuration options for NetBackup servers
- THROTTLE_BANDWIDTH option for NetBackup servers
- Configuration options for NetBackup clients
- IGNORE_XATTR option for NetBackup clients
- VXSS_NETWORK option for NetBackup clients
- Configuring server groups
- Configuring host credentials
- Managing media servers
- Configuring Host Properties
- Section III. Configuring storage
- Configuring disk storage
- Configuring robots and tape drives
- About configuring robots and tape drives in NetBackup
- Adding a robot to NetBackup manually
- Managing robots
- Adding a tape drive to NetBackup manually
- Adding a tape drive path
- Correlating tape drives and SCSI addresses on Windows hosts
- Correlating tape drives and device files on UNIX hosts
- Managing tape drives
- Performing device diagnostics
- Configuring tape media
- About NetBackup volume pools
- About WORM media
- About adding volumes
- Configuring media settings
- Media settings options
- Media type (new media setting)
- Media settings options
- About barcodes
- Configuring barcode rules
- Configuring media ID generation rules
- Adding volumes by using the Actions menu
- Configuring media type mappings
- Managing volumes
- About exchanging a volume
- About frozen media
- About injecting and ejecting volumes
- About rescanning and updating barcodes
- About labeling NetBackup volumes
- About moving volumes
- About recycling a volume
- Managing volume pools
- Managing volume groups
- Inventorying robots
- About showing a robot's contents
- About updating the NetBackup volume configuration
- About the vmphyinv physical inventory utility
- Configuring storage units
- About the Storage utility
- Creating a storage unit
- About storage unit settings
- Absolute pathname to directory or absolute pathname to volume setting for storage units
- Maximum concurrent jobs storage unit setting
- Staging backups
- Creating a basic disk staging storage unit
- Configuring storage unit groups
- Section IV. Configuring storage lifecycle policies (SLPs)
- Configuring storage lifecycle policies
- Storage operations
- Index From Snapshot operation in an SLP
- Snapshot operation in an SLP
- Retention types for SLP operations
- Capacity managed retention type for SLP operations
- Storage lifecycle policy options
- Using a storage lifecycle policy to create multiple copies
- Storage lifecycle policy versions
- Section V. Configuring backups
- Creating backup policies
- Planning for policies
- Policy Attributes tab
- Policy storage (policy attribute)
- Policy volume pool (policy attribute)
- Take checkpoints every __ minutes (policy attribute)
- Backup Network Drives (policy attribute)
- Cross mount points (policy attribute)
- Encryption (policy attribute)
- Collect true image restore information (policy attribute) with and without move detection
- Use Accelerator (policy attribute)
- Enable optimized backup of Windows deduplicated volumes
- Use Replication Director (policy attributes)
- Schedule Attributes tab
- Type of backup (schedule attribute)
- Frequency (schedule attribute)
- Multiple copies (schedule attribute)
- Retention (schedule attribute)
- Media multiplexing (schedule attribute)
- Start Window tab
- Include Dates tab
- How open schedules affect calendar-based and frequency-based schedules
- About the Clients tab
- Backup Selections tab
- Adding backup selections to a policy
- Verifying the Backup Selections list
- Pathname rules for UNIX client backups
- About the directives on the Backup Selections list
- ALL_LOCAL_DRIVES directive
- Files that are excluded from backups by default
- Disaster Recovery tab
- Active Directory granular backups and recovery
- Synthetic backups
- Using the multiple copy synthetic backups method
- Protecting the NetBackup catalog
- Parts of the NetBackup catalog
- Protecting the NetBackup catalog
- Archiving the catalog and restoring from the catalog archive
- Estimating catalog space requirements
- About the NetBackup relational database
- About the NetBackup relational database (NBDB) installation
- Using the NetBackup Database Administration utility on Windows
- Using the NetBackup Database Administration utility on UNIX
- Post-installation tasks
- About backup and recovery procedures
- Managing backup images
- Creating backup policies
- Section VI. Configuring replication
- About NetBackup replication
- About NetBackup Auto Image Replication
- Viewing the replication topology for Auto Image Replication
- About the storage lifecycle policies required for Auto Image Replication
- Removing or replacing replication relationships in an Auto Image Replication configuration
- About NetBackup replication
- Section VII. Monitoring and reporting
- Monitoring NetBackup activity
- About the Jobs tab
- About the Daemons tab
- About the Processes tab
- About the Drives tab
- About the jobs database
- About pending requests and actions
- Reporting in NetBackup
- Using the Logging Assistant
- Monitoring NetBackup activity
- Section VIII. Administering NetBackup
- Management topics
- Accessing a remote server
- Using the NetBackup Remote Administration Console
- Run-time configuration options for the NetBackup Administration Console
- About improving NetBackup performance
- About adjusting time zones in the NetBackup Administration console
- Alternate server restores
- About performing alternate server restores
- Managing client backups and restores
- About client-redirected restores
- Powering down and rebooting NetBackup servers
- About Granular Recovery Technology
- About configuring Services for Network File System (NFS) on Windows 2012, 2012 R2, or 2016
- About configuring Services for Network File System (NFS) on Windows 2008 and 2008 R2
UNIX raw partitions
Save a copy of the partition table before a raw partition backup is performed. Retain the copy for reference. To restore the raw partition, make sure that a device file exists. Also, the partition where the table is restored must be large enough or the results of the restore are unpredictable.
Consider the following items when creating UNIX raw partition backups.
File changes during the backup | Use raw partition backups only if you can ensure that the files have not changed in any way during the backup. Or, in the case of a database, if you can restore the database to a consistent state by using transaction log files. |
Backup archives | Do not perform backup archives of raw partitions on any client. An archive backs up the raw partition, then deletes the device file that is associated with the raw partition. The file system does not recover the space that the raw partition uses. |
File systems | Before backing up file systems as raw partitions, unmount the file system. Unmounting the file system allows buffered changes to be written to the disk. Also, it prevents the possibility of any changes in the file system during the backup. Use the bpstart_notify and the bpend_notify scripts to unmount and remount the backed-up file systems. |
Mount points | policy attribute has no effect on raw partitions. If the root partition is backed up as a raw partition and contains mount points to other systems, the file systems are not backed up. The other file systems are not backed up, even with selected. policy attribute. NFS file systems that are mounted in a raw partition are not backed up. Nor can you back up raw partitions from other computers by using NFS mounts to access the raw partitions. The devices are not accessible on other computers through NFS. |
Disk volume managers | Specify the logical partition names for any disks that disk volume managers manage. (For example, Veritas Volume Manager (VxVM). |
For clients in a FlashBackup policy, refer to the NetBackup Snapshot Client Administrator's Guide for the differences between Standard and FlashBackup policies. | |
Windows Server Failover Clustering (WSFC) environment | The use of FlashBackup in aWindows Server Failover Clustering (WSFC) environment is supported, with the following limitation: Raw partition restores can only be performed when the disk being restored is placed in extended maintenance mode or removed from the WSFC resource group. Note: Early versions of WSFC do not allow extended maintenance mode functionality. If the cluster does not support placing disks in extended maintenance mode, it is still possible to perform raw restores to an alternate, non-shared disk. |
If there are no file systems to back up and the disks are used in raw mode, back up the disk partitions as raw partitions. For example, databases are sometimes used in raw mode. Use bpstart_notify and bpend_notify scripts to provide the necessary pre-processing and post-processing of databases when they are backed up as raw partitions.
You can also perform a raw partition backup of a disk partition that is used for file systems. A disadvantage of this method is that you must restore the entire partition to recover a single file (unless FlashBackup is in use). To avoid overwriting the entire partition, use the redirected restore feature to restore the raw partition to another raw partition of the same size. Then, copy individual files to the original file system.
Raw partition backups are also useful for backing up entire disks. Since the file system overhead is bypassed, a raw partition backup is usually faster. The size of the raw partition backup is the size of the entire disk, regardless of whether the entire disk is used.
To specify a UNIX raw partition in the policy backup selection list, enter the full path name of the device file.
For example, on a Solaris system, enter:
/devices/sbus@1,f8000000/esp@0,800000/sd@2,0:1h
Note:
Do not specify wildcards (such as /dev/rsd*) in pathnames for raw partition backups. Doing so can prevent the successful restore of entire devices if there is overlap between the memory partitions for different device files.
You can include raw partitions in the same backup selection list as other backups. For example:
/home /usr /etc /devices/sbus@1,f8000000/esp@0,800000/sd@2,0:1h
Note:
NetBackup does not distinguish between full and incremental backups when it backs up a raw partition. The entire partition is backed up in both cases.
Raw partition backups occur only if the absolute pathname in the backup selection list is a block or character special device file. You can specify either block or character special device files. Character special device files are often faster because character devices avoid the use of the buffer cache for accessed disk data. Test both a block and character special device file to ensure the optimum backup speed for your platform.
Ensure that you specify the actual block-device or character-device files. Sometimes these are links to the actual device files. If a link is specified, only the link is backed up. If the device files are reached while backing up /dev, NetBackup backs up only the inode files for the device, not the device itself.
To perform a raw partition backup, select Full backup for the Type of Backup from the Schedules tab. Any other backup type does not work for backing up raw partitions.