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acl03's avatar
acl03
Level 4
15 years ago

Creating a central administration server

We currently have two BackupExec v12 servers running Windows 2003, in two separate locations, each with their own SCSI-connected HP tape libraries. I currently back up each server's "c:\program files\backup exec" folders weekly to the other backup server, to have the ability to restore the catalogs and jobs if we were to lose one server.

Does it make more sense to "pool" these servers together? Is that possible? To relpicate the catalogs/jobs/devices with each other so they are able to be run from either one? Similar to how Active Directory domain controllers are really just a "pool" of servers.

I assume this is possible...am I right? If so, what's the best way to do it?

Thanks!
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  • Hemant_Jain's avatar
    Hemant_Jain
    15 years ago
    Central Admin server is similar to AD in certain ways, but not totally. You can have a Central Admin server, which is a licensed option. It would give you the ability to delegate backup and restore jobs from Central server to Managed servers. That way, you would not need a skilled administrator to manage the managed media server, as creation of jobs will be done on the central admin server. But, there is no automatic replication in terms of creation of jobs or any modification in the console. Both CAS and MMS, have their own databases and settings. You can create a pool of media servers from CAS. By creating pool, you can choose to submit the backup job to a pool of media server, and any of the available media server can pick the job. Also, catalogs can be totally replicated. But, as far as database is concerned, only device information is centralized and not jobs. So, if you create a job from managed server, it would not be seen on central admin server's database. So, the idea is that information is replicated between server, but not fully.

    In order to implement this, you would need to buy a CAS license and add it to one of your servers and then other servers would becom MMS, and will need to point to CAS.

    Please mark it a solution, if this is of help.
    Thanks

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  • Hemant_Jain's avatar
    Hemant_Jain
    Level 6
    15 years ago
    Central Admin server is similar to AD in certain ways, but not totally. You can have a Central Admin server, which is a licensed option. It would give you the ability to delegate backup and restore jobs from Central server to Managed servers. That way, you would not need a skilled administrator to manage the managed media server, as creation of jobs will be done on the central admin server. But, there is no automatic replication in terms of creation of jobs or any modification in the console. Both CAS and MMS, have their own databases and settings. You can create a pool of media servers from CAS. By creating pool, you can choose to submit the backup job to a pool of media server, and any of the available media server can pick the job. Also, catalogs can be totally replicated. But, as far as database is concerned, only device information is centralized and not jobs. So, if you create a job from managed server, it would not be seen on central admin server's database. So, the idea is that information is replicated between server, but not fully.

    In order to implement this, you would need to buy a CAS license and add it to one of your servers and then other servers would becom MMS, and will need to point to CAS.

    Please mark it a solution, if this is of help.
    Thanks
  • acl03's avatar
    acl03
    Level 4
    15 years ago
    Thanks for the quick and detailed explanation.

    One more question: Is my current setup, backing up the BackupExec program folder, all I need in order to restore my jobs/catalogs in case of a server failure in a non-CMS environment? Thanks.


  • Hemant_Jain's avatar
    Hemant_Jain
    Level 6
    15 years ago
    Yes, that should be enough, as long as you have not changed the location of job logs, catalogs or database. The default folders for this data is : data and catalogs folder int he install location. So, you must be ok.

    Thanks