Layout of the NetBackup Catalogs

Before implementing a solution for backing up large NetBackup catalogs across multiple tapes, it is important to understand the structure of the catalogs.

The NetBackup and Media Manager catalogs are held within subdirectories on the master server and media servers. The NetBackup catalogs reside in the directory /usr/openv/netbackup/db and the Media Manager catalogs reside in /usr/openv/volmgr/database. Typically, it is the NetBackup catalogs on the master server that will grow large and can fail to fit on a single tape.

The directories under db contain further subdirectories or files, which together make up the NetBackup catalogs. The images directory contains a directory sub-tree, with one subdirectory for each NetBackup client that has been backed up (including the master server and any media servers). Beneath these subdirectories are further directories and files, which hold the information about all the backup images held by NetBackup.

While most of the subdirectories in the NetBackup catalogs are relatively small, the images directory can grow to several tens, or even hundreds of gigabytes. See Determining Catalog Space Requirements for more information on estimating the size of the NetBackup catalogs.

Due to its potentially large size, it is the images subdirectory that can become too large to fit onto a single tape and it is therefore this subdirectory that is addressed in the following sections.