Vault Solutions

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Managing a Large Environment Using Global Data Manager (GDM)

Many people are finding that a single backup domain is no longer an option. This can be due to physical reasons (domains in different geographic locations), business reasons (different domains for business units), or size (too big for a single domain). Finding yourself with multiple backup domains can make the administration much more complicated. In situations like this it is nice to find a feature such as Global Data Manager (GDM) from VERITAS Software. This feature is a fourth tier in the NetBackup architecture. It is a master of masters that provides a single console that allows you to see and manage all of your backup domains. This type of feature makes it much easier to administer distributed backup domains by using a dashboard that gives you, at a glance, the real-time status and health of all your domains.

Figure 7.4 shows a typical GDM layout. As you can see, each of the master servers gathers data about its own domain and either rolls the data up to the master of masters or stores it in a local database where it is available to the master of masters should it be needed. Figure 7.5 is a sample of the dashboard used by GDM.

Figure 7.4: Global Data Manager.

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