What is the NetBackup Catalog?

The Catalog is an integral part of NetBackup and should be protected. In a nutshell the NetBackup Catalog is the internal database containing fundamental areas which include:

  • Configuration files containing information about schedules, policies, storage media, etc.
  • NBDB (the NetBackup database)
  • Image database

NOTE: The NetBackup Catalog is kept on the NetBackup master server and should be backed up on a regular basis.

Configuration files

The configuration files consist of directories and flat files:

  • class* — policy information
  • client — master server client attributes
  • cltmp* — policy temporary information
  • config — host properties, data classification properties
  • DBVERSION* — NetBackup version
  • error — activity logs
  • failure_history — list of failed backups
  • IDISTRUCT — structure of images database
  • images — backup image database (flat files)
  • jobs — job information
  • media — temporary area for media activity
  • sched — staging schedules
  • ss — storage lifecycle policy (SLP) information
  • vault — vault properties

The above files and directories are located under /usr/openv/netbackup/db (unix/linux), and NetBackup\db (windows).

NBDB (NetBackup Relational database)

The NetBackup relational database (NBDB) is created during the installation of the NetBackup Master server running on Sybase SQL Anywhere.

Database files located under /usr/openv/db/data (unix/linux) or \NetBackupDB\data (windows) are as follows:

  • NBDB.db - main database used by many NetBackup services and processes
  • EMM_DATA.db and EMM_INDEX.db - used by the nbemm (EMM service)
  • DBM_DATA.db and DBM_INDEX.db
  • DARS_DATA.db and DATS_DATA.db - used by the Database Agent Requester Service (DARS) for Oracle database recovery and cloning purposes
  • SEARCH_DATA.db and SEARCH_INDEX.db - used by the NetBackup Search and Hold feature for legal holds
  • JOBD_DATA.db - used to populate job information in the activity monitor
  • SLP_DATA.db and SLP_INDEX.db - contains information about SLP
  • NBAZDB.db - used by the NetBackup authorization and authentication services

NBDB log files:

  • NBDB.log
  • NBAZDB.log
  • BMRDB.log

Configuration files are located under /usr/openv/var/global (unix/linux) or \NetBackupDB\conf (windows):

  • vxdbms.conf — configuration information specific to the database server installation
  • server.conf — configuration information for the NetBackup databases
  • databases.conf — the locations of the main database files and the database names for automatic startup

Image database

The NetBackup image database stores image information such as:

  • backup header — which defines the backup id, size, state, etc. — prior to NBU 7.5 these were stored as flat files, in later releases they are now stored in the NBDB.
  • file metadata — which defines the files that have been backed are stored under /usr/openv/netbackup/db/images (unix/linux), and \NetBackup\db\images (windows).

WARNING: Without regular catalog backups, you risk losing regular backups if there is a problem with the disk that contains the catalogs.