About the NDMP backup process

During a backup, the following events occur in this order:

From the Enterprise Media Manager (EMM), NetBackup obtains a media ID for the tape that is used for the backup. It then sends a tape-mount request to ltid.
ltid on the NetBackup for NDMP server sends the necessary NDMP (SCSI robotic) commands to mount the requested tape on the storage device.
NetBackup sends the NDMP commands that are necessary to have the NDMP server application perform a backup to the tape. The backup data travels in one of two ways:
- Between the local disk and tape drives on an NDMP host.
- Over the network, data travels from an NDMP host without its own storage device to an NDMP host (or NetBackup media server) with a locally attached storage device (three-way back up).
The NDMP server application sends information to the NetBackup for NDMP server about the files that were backed up. This information is stored in the NetBackup file database.
The NDMP server application sends status about the backup operation to the NetBackup for NDMP server.

The following figure shows the NetBackup processes that are involved in the NDMP backups.

Figure: NetBackup backup processes