If you do not create a customized pool to receive data from manual backups, Backup uses the Default pool and looks for a mounted volume from the Default pool on which to write manually backed-up data. Because Backup tracks the volume location of all backup data, you do not need to worry about tracking which volume contains the manually backed-up data. If you need to recover the data, Backup requests the correct volume.

Caution - When you perform a manual backup, the client index and server bootstrap are not included in the backup. If you never perform regularly scheduled backups of the clients and server machines, the information vital to data recovery in the event of a disaster is not available.

Using Storage Devices and Pool Configuration to Sort Data

You can configure pools to sort data to different storage devices. You can either use specific media to receive data or designate a specific storage device to receive data from a designated pool.

Volume Pools for Backup Data Directed to a Specific Device You can associate a pool with a specific storage device. For example, you may want your full backups written to optical disk for off-site storage. You have two ways to ensure that data goes to one specific storage device:
*Keep a labeled volume associated with the appropriate pool mounted on a
specific storage device. When a backup requires a volume with the correct label,
Backup will find the volume on that storage device which is the only one
available. If the volume resides in an autochanger, Backup automatically mounts
the volume when it is requested.
*In the Pools resource, associate the pool with the device in the pool configuration
attribute list. All data is written only to that device.

Volume Pools for Backup Data Written to Different Media Types
You can write data across several volumes of different media type (for example, magnetic disk and tapes), as long as the volumes mounted on the storage devices have the appropriate label associated with the pool.

Chapter 4

Device and Media Management

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