The Auxiliary Copy operation creates additional standby copies of data. These standby copies are referred to as secondary copies. You can use different VTL libraries for the primary and secondary copies. You can copy data from the production site to a remote DR site, where a local IBM i DR client can access the backup data for recovery operations. For the auxiliary copy operations, jobs with valid data are copied sequentially from the primary copy to the secondary copy. Valid data is defined as the data from a data protection job that has not failed or has not been killed.
When IBM i clients have access to the same VTL drives and tapes, and if the primary copy becomes inoperative due to a storage media failure or a library or network malfunction, you can promote a secondary copy to become the primary copy. Promoting a secondary copy allows you to continue operations as before and make repairs without interrupting backup and restore operations.
The MediaAgent controlling the Commvault VTL 2.0 for the secondary copy must have a disk library configured to save indexes of copied jobs.
You can create two types of secondary copies:
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Synchronous secondary copy
A synchronous secondary copy automatically includes all valid data from a source copy. For more information, see Secondary Copy (Synchronous Copy).
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Selective secondary copy
A selective secondary copy automatically includes valid full backup data based on specified criteria. A selective copy also has a manual job selection option that enables the user to select any type of job, including non-full backups. For more information, see Secondary Copy (Selective Copy).
Key Features
Streaming
The data streams on the primary copy are copied to a secondary copy. To optimally use the streaming feature, you can set the number of streams for an auxiliary copy operation.
For more information, see Streams Overview.
Encryption
Data encryption encrypts the data transmitted over non secure networks when data is copied between VTL servers.
For more information, see Data Encryption - Overview.