Catman is a "BIG BANG" approach to NetBackup migrations This "BIG BANG" approach can be effective in some situations, although not all.
- It can require extensive downtime for the migration, this means the backup environments will not be available for BACKUP or RESTORE while the migration takes place.
- It makes ALL testing something that can only happen after the migration, is complete, resulting in extended outages, and a higher probability of a ROLLBACK.
- While rollback will get NetBackup online, the target catalog may be in an inconsistent state (with disk/tape storage), this is made worse if the backup environment was running for many hours doing testing before the rollback took place, as storage is not cleaned up as part of the rollback process.
- It is time-consuming, and high risk to use Catman for environment splits (it effectively "clones" the catalog and then you have to manually clean up (expire) any data that isn't required, which is both time consuming, and increases RISK.
- Catman is only Available as a Consulting Services from the Backup Vendor. The tools are not "user friendly" and engagement need to be planned well in advance to ensure resources are available.
STONE RAM NO LONGER PROVIDE SERVICES FOR CATMAN. WHILE OUR FOUNDERS HELPED TO CREATE THE CATMAN TOOLS AND PROCEDURES BACK IN 2012, OUR INVOLVEMENT SINCE 2014 HAS BEEN TO SUPPORT ITS USE BY PROVIDING MANUAL WORKAROUNDS TO ANY ISSUES AND LIMITATIONS.
We provide an ALTERNATIVE called Tranzman, we can deliver this as either a Service, or as a Software solution.
If you are interested knowing more Tranzman and these additional features, either as a our NetBackup Transitioning Service, or as a software solution Tranzman for NetBackup please contact us to discuss,