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  1. Home
  2. Veritas NetBackup™ Administrator's Guide, Volume I
  3. Section V. Configuring backups
  4. Protecting the NetBackup catalog
  5. Parts of the NetBackup catalog
  6. About the NetBackup image database
Veritas NetBackup™ Administrator's Guide, Volume I

About the NetBackup image database

The image database contains subdirectories for each client that is backed up by NetBackup, including the master server and any media servers.

The image database is located in the following location:

  • Windows: Program Files\Veritas\Netbackup\db\images

  • UNIX: /usr/openv/netbackup/db/images

The image database contains the following files:

Image files

Files that store only backup set summary information.

.lck files

Used to prevent simultaneous updates on images.

Image .f files

Used to store the detailed information about each file backup.

db_marker.txt

Used to ensure that access to the db directory is valid when the NetBackup Database Manager starts up. Do not delete this file.

The image database is the largest part of the NetBackup catalog. It consumes about 99% of the total space that is required for the NetBackup catalog. While most of the subdirectories are relatively small in the NetBackup catalogs, \images (Windows) or /images (UNIX) can grow to hundreds of gigabytes. The image database on the master server can grow too large to fit on a single tape. Image database growth depends on the number of clients, policy schedules, and the amount of data that is backed up.

If the image catalog becomes too large for the current location, consider moving it to a file system or disk partition that contains more space.

The image database component of the NetBackup catalog uses the .f files in binary format for Windows, Solaris, and Linux platforms.

The catalog conversion utility (cat_convert) can be used to upgrade an image database to the binary format.

Information about the cat_convert command is available in the NetBackup Commands Reference Guide.

More Information

Estimating catalog space requirements

Moving the image catalog

Estimating catalog space requirements

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