About discovery of SQL Server objects
NetBackup discovery runs regularly and gathers information for instances and for advanced and basic availability groups in your environment. (Read-scale availability groups must be discovered manually.) The data expires after one hour. The NetBackup Discovery Service (nbdisco) runs "shallow" discovery every 8 hours for instances and availability groups on the clients for that master server. The NetBackup Agent Request Service (NBARS) polls the master server every 5 minutes for any non-expired data.
Deep discovery includes discovery of databases and is performed in the following circumstances:
After a full backup, an incremental backup, or a restore occurs
The client sends details when database data is changed and not more than every 15 minutes.
When you run a manual discovery of databases or availability groups
After you add credentials for the instances or replicas
By default, this service reports to the master server when it finds SQL Server instances. However, the user can turn off discovery for a specific client, with the bpsetconfig utility. See the REPORT_CLIENT_DISCOVERIES option in the NetBackup Administrator's Guide, Volume I.
The client maintains a cache file NB_instancename_cache_v1.0.dat in the NetBackup\dbext\mssql directory for each instance. The file can be deleted and NetBackup recreates it after the next full backup when deep discovery data is sent again.
A message Starting the discovery of databases... displays after you click or . This message only indicates that a request was made to start the discovery process. However, database discovery can fail for different reasons. For example, if the instance is not associated with valid credentials or the host cannot be reached. You can consider the deep discovery is successful when the message displays: Successfully started the discovery of databases. Click Refresh to update the list.