Dell NetWorker 19.9 Administration Guide

Designing data protection policies

Designing and developing effective data protection policies requires thoughtful analysis of the client resources from which to back up data, the actions to perform on the data, and the order and timing of the actions.

Data protection policies can be grouped into six main strategies:

• Traditional backups—Includes file system backups, NDMP backups, NMDA backups, NMM backups, and Block Based Backups. The NetWorker for Network Data Management Protocol (NDMP) User Guide provides detailed information about how to backup, clone, and recover NDMP data. The NMM and NMDA documentation provides information about how to backup, clone, and recover application data.
• NetWorker and NMC Server database backups and maintenance activities—Performs NetWorker server bootstrap and NMC database backups.
• Snapshot backups—Includes snapshot backups of supported storage arrays or appliances. You can clone snapshot data currently with the backup operation, or after the snapshot backup completes. The NetWorker Snapshot Management Configuration Guide describes how to configure data protection policies for Dell storage arrays and appliances with the NetWorker Snapshot Management feature.
• NAS device backups—Includes file system snapshots, and NAS snapshots. You can clone data after a snapshot backup job completes or concurrently. The NetWorker Snapshot Management Configuration Guide describes how to configure data protection policies for snapshot backups.
• VMware backups—Includes NetWorker VMware Protection with the vProxy appliance (NVP), VMware Backup Appliance (VBA) backups, VBA checkpoint backups for disaster recovery, and virtual machine backups. The NetWorker and VMware Integration Guide describes how to configure data protection policies for NVP, VBA, VBA checkpoint, and virtual machine backups and clones.
• Cloning- You can configure data protection policies that clone backup data by querying the media database for a list of save sets that are based on user defined criteria.
  NOTE:

  • You can also clone traditional, snapshot, bootstrap, and VMware backup data concurrently with the backup operation, or after the backup operation completes. The Integration Guides provide detailed information about how to clone Snapshot and VMware backup data.
  • The NetWorker data protection policy applies to scheduled backups only, and it does not apply to manual backups. Some NetWorker module backups might appear to be scheduled backups that are initiated by a policy backup action, but they are manual backups because they are initiated or converted by a database or application. The NetWorker Module for Databases and Applications Administration Guide and the NetWorker Module for SAP Administration Guide provides additional details.