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Back up Catalogs?

Updated: 22 May 2010 | 2 comments
Skinjob's picture
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In the Job Log for my daily backup I am seeing under the heading Exceptions the following:

"....The item D:\Program Files\VERITAS\Backup Exec\NT\Catalogs\{5FB87412-AECC-4D3F-844D-50C7A50180F1}_75.img in use - skipped....."

The name or number of this file changes every day.
When I check the detail of the backup within Veritas\Backup Exec\NT\Catalogs a few items are 'pre-selected' in that the files with both the FH and IMG extension for two days, the backup day (the day before) and the current day are ticked.
The message is not a serious issue in that it does not stop the backup running but do I need to backup the Catalogs?
My assumption is that if they are not backed up I may have difficulty with future restore operations in that I will not be able to drill down and select the item to be restored from any particular backup tape?
Am I correct in my thinking?

Comments

Colin Weaver's picture
11
Sep
2009
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Having the catalogs on the

Having the catalogs on the server speeds up the ability to do a restore, but you can always run a catolog job against a backup tape (or bkf file) in order to recover the catalogs themselves

Backing up Catalog files to tape does however give you a Catch-22 situation where in order to restore your catalogs from tape - you need a catalog of the tape they are held on... At which point you might as well just catalog the tape containing the data you need.

There are Pros and Cons to having the backups of the catalogs but if you don't back them up then I would recommend keeping some kind of record of when your jobs run and what media is used so that you can easily locate the media you need at a later date.

Ken Putnam's picture
11
Sep
2009
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RE: Back up Catalogs?

That open Catalog file is for the backup that is currently running

Backing up the entire \Catalogs folder is essential for Disaster Recovery, or else, as Colin says, you have to catalog each tape individually, which can take a LOOOONG time depending  on the drive an media type

If this response answers your concern, please mark it as a "solution"