Archiving the catalog

The catalog archiving feature helps users tackle the problems that large amounts of catalog data can pose: large catalogs require a greater amount of disk space and can be time-consuming to back up. Catalog archiving reduces the size of online catalog data by relocating the large catalog .f files to secondary storage. NetBackup administration continues to require regularly scheduled catalog backups, but the backups are faster without the large amount of online catalog data.

Catalog archiving is available on both UNIX and Windows platforms.

Note:

When you consider whether to archive the .f files, note that additional time is required to mount the tape and perform the restore.

Catalog archiving operations must be performed when NetBackup is in an inactive state (no jobs are running).

To archive the catalog

Create a policy named catarc to reflect that the purpose of the schedule is for catalog archiving.
Run bpcatlist to display images available for archiving.

Running bpcatlist alone does not modify any catalog images. Only when the bpcatlist output is piped to bpcatarc and bpcatrm are the images modified and the image .f files removed.
Determine the images that were previously archived by running:
```
Install_path\VERITAS\NetBackup\bin\admincmd\bpcatlist -online
```
The command returns the following message if catalog archiving was not performed previously: No entity was found.
Once the bpcatlist output correctly lists all the images to be archived, pipe the output through bpcatarc and bpcatrm. For example:
```
bpcatlist -client all -before Jan 1 2010 | bpcatarc | bpcatrm
```
The command waits until the backup completes successfully before the command returns the prompt. An error is reported if the catalog archive fails.

The Activity Monitor displays a Job ID for the job. The File List for the job (double-click the job in the Activity Monitor) displays a list of image files that were processed. When the job completes with a status 0, bpcatrm removes the corresponding .f files. If the job fails, no catalog .f files are removed.
Restore the catalog archive by doing the following:
- Use bpcatlist to list the files that need to be restored.
- After the bpcatlist command displays the proper files to restore, run bpcatres to restore the actual files.
  
  To restore all the archived files from step 2, run the following command:
```
bpcatlist -client all -before Jan 1 2010 | bpcatres
```
  This command restores all the catalog archive files before Jan 1, 2010.