The physical cartridges are called tapes, media, or volumes. When we discuss them within NetBackup Media Manager, they are referred to as volumes. These are the actual tapes that will be used to hold the data that is being backed up. Once you have configured one or more robotic devices, you can use the Volume Configuration Wizard. An easy way to proceed, at least for the first time, is to use this tool and to inventory the robotic libraries. If you are not using a library or have media without barcodes, you can use the Volume Configuration Wizard, but you would use the 'Create new volumes for use in standalone drives' option.

Once you have made your selection, the wizard returns the list of actions that are required. This can include new volumes that were found in the library and need to be added to the database, volumes that the database shows as being in the library but that the robot indicates are not present, and volumes that are in different slots. When you select Next, the volume database is updated to match the robot inventory. You are even given the opportunity to identify cleaning volumes that might be in the library. As you add volumes, either manually or via the wizard, you should ensure that the media type for the volumes matches the media type for the drives. Note that there are three different DLT designations, since a single library could contain a mix of DLT 4000, DLT 7000, and DLT 8000 drives. You must be able to differentiate between the volumes for each of these drives. This is done by using DLT, DLT 2, and DLT 3 designations for the drive and media types. The other method used to differentiate between volumes is volume pools. As you build your backup environment, you will find that you need to be able to control the flow or keep backup data separate. One mechanism to do this is to use volume pools. A volume poolidentifies a logical set of volumes by usage. You can create pools that span libraries. It is common practice to have long-retention full backups, such as the monthly full backups, to have a unique pool. If you are duplicating volumes, you should always have the duplicate copies in a different pool than the original copy. It is best if you configure your volume pools before you start adding volumes, since you cannot put volumes in a pool that does not already exist. You can also use the concept of a scratch pool whereby you can define all your pools but you put all the volumes in a scratch pool. NetBackup would then automatically move a volume from the scratch pool to a designated pool as required.

After configuring physical devices and creating storage units to use these devices, you need to create policies to actually back up data from clients and write it to the appropriate storage devices. There is a wizard that can walk you through the creation of a policy, and it might be helpful to use this initially. After a few policies, however, you will probably go straight to the Policy tab and create your own. One note here: policy is a NetBackup 4.5 term. In previous releases this was called class.

If you decide to use the wizard, the first thing you will be asked is to provide a name and policy type. The policy name should be something meaningful to you. The type is dependent on the type of client you are backing up and the type of backups you are doing on the client. All of the clients within a single policy must use the same policy type. Most of the special policy types, such as the different database backups or Network Data Management Protocol (NDMP) backups, are separately priced options and will not show up as possible types without the appropriate license key. After selecting the appropriate policy type you add the specific clients that will be backed up by this policy. The wizard brings up the Backup Policy Configuration Wizard.

After entering all the clients that you want backed up by the policy, you are next prompted to enter a file list or set of directives to select what data to back up. At this point, you can select specific files, directories, filesystems, or raw devices, or you can give directives such as All Local Drives, which tells NetBackup that you want to back up everything. To further control how the backup is performed, you can use this directive with another attribute, Allow multiple data streams. Following the file screen in the policy wizard is the Backup Type screen, where you can select what kind of backup you will be performing. As shown, you can select full, incremental differential, incremental cumulative, or user backup.

If you selected both the full and incremental backup types, you could indicate different frequencies for the full and the incremental, but the retention would be the same for both; this is not the normal practice. Generally, you will keep full backups longer than incremental backups and perform the backup less often. The final screen in the policy wizard is where you set the actual time of day for the backups to start and the length of time the backup window will be open. At this point, the wizard is finished. You are given the option of saving, canceling, or going back. You can now take a closer look at the actual attributes of the policy and see if this matches your requirements or if it needs to be modified. As you can see from the policy attributes screen, there are several potential selections that you were not prompted about during the wizard setup of the policy. In the following list, we highlight them and give a brief description for each. The product documentation goes into every one of these items in detail, so if you have further questions, the appropriate system administrator's guide would be an excellent place to look.

After selecting the specific attributes need for a specific policy, you can also further refine the scheduling. If you select the Schedules tab from the Change Policy screen, you will see the schedules that you have already created. After getting all the schedules configured, click on OK if you are finished making changes to the policy; if you want to add more clients or change the file list, select Add, and then the Clients tab or the Files tab, as appropriate. On the Files tab, you can select to add directives. These work together with the attribute of 'Allow multiple data streams' to control how many jobs are actually started when a policy begins and how many data streams are sent from a specific client. Auto-discovery streaming mode is enabled if 'Allow multiple data streams' is selected and ALL_LOCAL_DRIVES is in the file list and NEW_STREAM is not the first line in the file list. If this is the case, the file list is sent to the client, which preprocesses the list and splits the backup into streams.