2 versions of BE.

[prs246191]

I know that you can not have 2 versions of BE installed on a single machine.  However can you install BE on a machine that does not have BE on it and install agents on machines that have another version of BE on it.  Right now each of our 6 servers are acting as their own media server, we will be purchasing BE 2012 sometime this week and our current backups are in complete disarray.  I would like to avoid migrating the exiting data to the new version of BE, however I cant go with out any backups.  I talked to a friend of mine and he has BE 2010 on one of his servers and BE2012 on another, both are backing up all of his servers.  

[pkh · Accepted solution]

You can only have 1 version of BE remote agent on one machine at a time.  There is no way around this.

The situation described by your friend is because BE 2012 can work with BE 2010 agents.  This is not meant to be a long term solution because the BE 2010 agents will not have the enhancements that comes with BE 2012.  The remote machines would have to upgraded to the BE 2012 agents and BE 2010 will not be able to work with BE 2012 agents.

If you have BE 2010 on some machines, then you can set up your backups on the BE 2012 media server.  Once they are running properly, uninstall BE 2010 and then install the BE 2012 agent.  For machines with older versions of BE, you would just have to bite the bullet, uninstall the old BE, install the BE 2012 agent and carry on from there.  For these machine, it will be a sudden cut-over.

[prs246191]

Thanks..Makes alot of sense