Introduction to Storage Units

A NetBackup storage unit is a group of one or more storage devices of a specific type and density that attach to a NetBackup server. The administrator defines the storage units that are available for a backup and which storage unit to use for each policy. For example, it is possible to specify a robot as the storage unit for one policy and a standalone tape drive for another policy.

There are four types of storage units:

• Media Manager storage units

A Media Manager storage unit uses tape robots, standalone tape drives, or optical disk devices, that are under control of Media Manager. Media Manager controls the allocation and mounting of media (called volumes) in the storage devices. See Media Manager Storage Unit Considerations.

• Disk storage units

A disk type storage unit consists of a directory on a hard disk that stores the backup or archive data. NetBackup permits an unlimited number of disk storage units. See Disk Storage Unit Considerations.

• NDMP storage units

NDMP storage units are controlled by Media Manager but attach to NDMP hosts and require that you have the NetBackup for NDMP option installed. See NDMP Storage Unit Considerations.

• Disk Staging storage units

A disk staging storage unit provides the first storage location in a two-stage process called Disk Staging. In this process, client data is backed up to a disk staging storage unit, then, in the second stage, the data is relocated to another storage unit. See Disk Staging Storage Unit Considerations.

The following figure shows the components involved and steps in managing the storage of client data.