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Five musts for NetBackup restores


Rick Cook
09.19.2006
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What you will learn from this tip: Five tips for successful NetBackup restores.

NetBackup, like any other backup software, must be properly configured and managed to ensure that missing data can be recovered as needed. Here are five things you can do to help produce successful recoveries.

  • Verify your backups
    The single most important thing you can do to ensure a successful restore is to make sure the backup works properly.

    You can configure NetBackup to verify your backups when you create them. This will take additional time, but the extra security is generally worth it. Alternatively, you can perform test restores on a sample of your backup media to make sure the information is being saved correctly and can be restored as needed. Ideally, you should perform both of these procedures.

  • Use automated backup duplication to protect critical media
    Backups are critical, but some backups are more critical than others. There are some things you absolutely cannot afford to lose. To make sure you have a successful restore, use NetBackup's automated backup duplication feature to protect against loss or damage to these critical media by making multiple copies of them. Store those copies in widely separated locations.

  • Make sure recycled tapes are properly unassigned
    Netbackup protects critical tapes, such as

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    those holding catalogs. However, there comes a time when you may need to reuse the tape. In order to do that, they must be unassigned before they are recycled. Be sure you have followed the procedure in the NetBackup documentation before trying to reuse tapes. The procedure is also covered in a tech note here.

  • Watch out for failed jobs with NetBackup 6
    If you are using checkpoints and a job fails for any reason, it may be automatically deleted from the list of jobs to be run in the pempersist file. Even if the job restarts and runs to completion, it will not run as scheduled in the future. As a result, critical files may be missing from your next restore. Veritas discusses this bug here.

  • Configure the catalog for fast reads
    NetBackup's disk-based catalog has a major impact on restore performance. For faster restores, optimize the configuration of the disk array for fast reads. For example, you might want to use RAID-10 rather than RAID-5 for the catalog disk array.

    • Do you know…

    How to refine your backup procedure?

    About the author: Rick Cook has been writing about mass storage since the days when the term meant an 80 K floppy disk. The computers he learned on used ferrite cores and magnetic drums. For the last 20 years, he has been a freelance writer specializing in storage and other computer issues.


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