Our 3 key components are: Backup Server (sometimes called the master server, the master scheduler) ⎯ this allocates the resource, actually tells people who, when and where they are backing up their information so it controls the scheduling. also be responsible for storing the catalogues, effectively our tape index.
Backup Client ⎯ this runs on the application or the file server. This is going to identify what we are backing up. The files or the blocks, which blocks are we backing up.
Media Server Component ⎯ the media server component (library server, mount host, tutor server) controls the writing of the data to the physical media (i.e. our tape or our virtual tape).
These are the 3 components. If you just have one server in your organization with a direct attached tape to it, all 3 would run on the one box. As your organization scales and you have multiple servers, you may separate out some of these functions.
We need to understand these 3 key components and where they need to run.