Archiving and recovering from a specific point in time
If your data center or computing environment requires recovery to a specific point in time (not just to the most recent valid backups), you can set up a process that ensures that you can recover both the NetBackup catalog and the data for that specific time. You should retain the corresponding catalog backups for the same length of time as the corresponding data backups.
The following high-level information is intended as an overview of how to archive the catalog and data so you can recover to a specific point in time. Detailed instructions for accomplishing all the tasks necessary are not included.
Before you can recover to a specific point in time, you must archive the catalog and data.
To archive the catalog and data to a specific point in time
- Use your normal procedures to vault the data and NetBackup catalogs for that data.
- Use the bpmedia command to freeze the data volumes and catalog volumes that you want to retain.
Freezing the volumes prevents them from becoming unassigned and from appearing on the Picking List for Vault report. Do not recall the volumes from off-site storage when they expire.
- Vault a printed copy of the Recovery Report for that specific point in time.
You need the Recovery Report from the specific point in time so you can recall and restore the appropriate catalog and data volumes.
- Optionally, remove the media IDs from the volume database.
This reduces the size of the database and improves performance. Depending on the number of volumes, maintaining the media IDs in the volume database may not degrade performance much.
To recover the catalog and data to a specific point in time
- Retrieve the appropriate printed Recovery Report from off-site storage.
- Using the Recovery Report, recall the appropriate catalog backup and data volumes from off site storage.
- Recover the catalog that you recalled from off-site storage.
That version of the catalog contains information about the archived volumes and the images on them.
- Use the bpexpdate command to reset the expiration date on the recalled volumes so they are not expired. Use the -policy option to change the expiration date for all media that is associated with a specific policy.
- Change the images to be recovered to primary (NetBackup restores from the primary image).
To change a large number of images to primary, use bpchangeprimary -group option to specify all images in a specific off-site volume group.
For information about the bpchangeprimary command, see the NetBackup Commands Reference Guide.
- Restore the data.
The NetBackup Administrator's Guide, Volume I includes an alternative procedure for archiving the catalog. That alternative procedure uses the catarc catalog archive policy to archive old data in the NetBackup catalog. You can then vault the archived catalog data or a copy of the archived catalog data.
See "Catalog Archiving" in the NetBackup Administrator's Guide, Volume I.