Strategies that ensure successful catalog backups

Use the following strategies to ensure successful catalog backups:

Use only the methods that are described in this chapter to back up the catalogs. The methods that are described here are the only operations that can track all relevant NetBackup activities and ensure consistency between the catalog files.
Back up the catalogs often. If catalog backup files are lost, the changes that were made between the last catalog backup and the time of the disk crash are lost.
Do not use methods other than NTFS compression to compress the catalogs or NetBackup may not be able to read them.
Never manually compress the catalogs or NetBackup may be unable to restore the catalogs using bprecover.
If you back up your catalogs to disk (not recommended), always back up to a different disk than where the catalog files reside. If you back up the catalog to the disk where the actual catalog resides, both catalog backups are lost if the backup disk fails. Recovering the catalog is much more difficult. Also, ensure that the disk has enough space for the catalogs. Backups to a full disk fail.
The NetBackup binary image catalog is sensitive to the location of the catalog. Storing the catalog on a remote file system may have critical performance issues for catalog backups. NetBackup does not support saving catalogs to a remote file system such as NFS or CIFS.

Note:

The catalog backup tape must be removed when the backup is finished or regular backups cannot proceed. NetBackup does not mix catalog and regular backups on the same tape.