Over the past few weeks I have received a lot of emails with questions about AIR and also comments as well under the following posts: NetBackup Auto Image Replication Overview or AIR configuration and I decided to write this post to clarify when we have to or should use AIR and when not.
NetBackup AIR is a useful feature that can be used for DR purpose and I think it's clear. So can I use this feature in any NBU installation? An answer is: NO. It depends on your environment and sometimes you can't use it or need to rebuild your NetBackup architecture to be able to use this feature. I will show it using the following two scenarios:
The first is based on NetBackup environment where you can find:
- Two locations (separate rooms, locations etc)
- One NetBackup Master Server
- Two Media Servers with MSDP configured (one in each location)
As AIR requires at least two NetBackup domains (it means at least two NetBackup Master Servers), in this scenario you can't use Auto Image Replication. However, still you can set up a replication between Media Servers and recover your Master Server in the second location if necessary. If you want to use AIR you need to check the second scenario described below.
The second is based on NetBackup environment where you can find:
- Two locations
- Two NetBackup Master Servers (one in each location)
- Two NetBackup Media Servers with MSDP configured (one in each location)
In this scenario you can use Auto Image Replication because there are two NetBackup domains and you can create a trust between them.
Note: Please remember that you can import images from the first NetBackup domain to the second one using different retention.