NetBackup optimized duplication using Storage Lifecycle Policies
Storage Lifecycle Policy (SLP) is a way of creating a storage plan for backup data. Each SLP can have operations which define how data is stored, retained, and replicated. Backup data can be duplicated from one storage unit to another storage unit. During disaster recovery configuration, the storage unit for backup comes from the primary site and the storage unit for duplication comes from the secondary site. During primary service failover and migration, Veritas recommends reversing the direction of duplication by changing the SLP under the backup policy.
As part of disaster recovery configuration, four SLP templates are created using the NetBackup RESTful APIs for SLP management.
Format of the SLP template:
<source_cluster_name>_<retention>_to_<destination_cluster_name>_retention
Weekly retention: clusterA_7days_to_clusterB_7days
Monthly retention: clusterA_30days_to_clusterB_30days
Weekly retention: clusterB_7days_to_clusterA_7days
Monthly retention: clusterB_30days_to_clusterA_30days
For example, the SLP template clusterA_7days_to_clusterB_7days backups the images to cluster A, duplicates the images from clusterA to clusterB, and retains the data for 7 days in both the clusters.
For more details on the NetBackup RESTful APIs used for SLP configuration, refer the NetBackup Configuration API document on SORT.
To promote the secondary (copy #2) as primary, see the Promoting a copy to a primary copy section in the Managing backup images chapter in the Veritas NetBackup™ Administrator's Guide, Volume I on SORT.