Product Overview; Key Features Of Veritas Netbackup - VERITAS NetBackup White Paper

Product Overview

The VERITAS NetBackup ™ product family provides a complete set of solutions for protecting data from the desktop to the
data center and consists of three distinct yet complementary products: NetBackup DataCenter, NetBackup BusinesServer
™ ™
and NetBackup ™ Professional. NetBackup DataCenter is the classic NetBackup product designed for enterprise environments
and high-end applications. NetBackup BusinesServer is a scaled-down version of NetBackup DataCenter optimized for smaller
workgroup environments or remote sites. Finally, NetBackup Professional is designed to provide a scalable and practical
solution of centrally managing the backup of desktops and laptops within a corporate environment. NetBackup DataCenter
and NetBackup BusinesServer are based on the same core architecture and code base, and this document describes these
concepts in detail. NetBackup Professional, while an important part of the NetBackup story, is based on a different
architecture optimized for desktop backup and recovery and will not be discussed here. Information on the details of
NetBackup Professional can be found in other available documentation.
VERITAS NetBackup DataCenter is the industry's leading enterprise data protection solution that provides centralized control
from a single management interface. The multi-tier architecture of VERITAS NetBackup DataCenter provides customers with
a fast, reliable, data center strength backup and recovery solution that can protect environments that span terabytes to
petabytes in size. The NetBackup DataCenter "master" server uses other NetBackup DataCenter "media" servers as
workhorses to accomplish backup and recovery tasks in a highly centralized fashion. In contrast, NetBackup BusinesServer,
designed for smaller environments, does not need the scalability of this three-tier architecture and instead functions as a
standalone master/media server. Despite this key difference, most of the underlying architecture and capabilities of the two
products are the same. For simplicity, this document generally will not distinguish between DataCenter and BusinesServer
products and will instead simply refer to "NetBackup."
Key Features of NetBackup
Key features in VERITAS NetBackup include the industry's most advanced media management, disaster recovery support, and
intuitive Java and Windows NT/Windows 2000 administrative interfaces. In addition to protecting data in a mixed UNIX,
Windows NT/Windows 2000 and Novell NetWare environment, VERITAS NetBackup provides advanced, "application aware"
solutions for all leading applications including Oracle, Informix, Sybase, DB2, SAP R/3, NCR Teradata, Microsoft SQL Server,
Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes. VERITAS NetBackup provides high performance backup, archiving, and recovery services
for UNIX, Windows NT/Windows 2000, and PC client systems in client/server networks. It can be economically scaled to
serve any size operation ranging from a standalone system to an entire enterprise.
Storage devices can be disk, tape, or optical. The Media Manager component of VERITAS NetBackup manages the tape and
optical storage and is designed so that secondary storage devices can also be shared by other VERITAS storage products,
such as VERITAS Storage Migrator. NetBackup provides extensive and automated support for most tape libraries, which
means human intervention is rarely required.
Administrators can set up periodic schedules for automatic, unattended backup operations for clients across the network. These
backup operations may be full or incremental. A full backup processes all files, while an incremental backup only processes
those files changed since the last full or incremental backup. By carefully scheduling automatic backups, an administrator can
achieve systematic and complete backups over a period of time, and optimize network traffic during off-peak hours.
In addition to scheduled backups, administrators can perform manual backups of client data using the same criteria as
specified for automatic backups. Manual backup operations are useful in special circumstances, such as backing up a client
that missed a previously scheduled backup or preserving a system configuration prior to installing new software.
Client users, too, are able to initiate backup, archive, and restore operations for data on their client systems – without
operator or administrator intervention. User-directed backups allow users to protect their files immediately on demand. If
files are damaged or accidentally deleted, users can quickly and easily recover any backed up or archived files by restoring
them back to their primary disk space.
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