Admin delegation with BackupExec

[hatte]

Hello!

Our customer here in Germany has two departments and like to have two backup administrators control over their distinct tape pools and clients.
I don't have any experience with BackupExec so like to ask if this (admin delegation) is possible on a single backup server or would require a separate backup server for each department.
Today they have a bunch of smaller libraries/stackers and like to consolidate into a larger library in the 300-500 slot range to better utilize the resources.

So is there a way to use a single backup server with admin delegation functionality (maybe this is called differently in BackupExec)?

Thanks,
Hatte

[CraigV · Accepted solution]

Hello Hatte,

I wrote an article a couple of weeks ago outlining the benefit of using the Backup Exec Remote Console.
THe short version is that you don't need to give the users admin rights...they can use their normal accounts, and be given the necessary rights on the local server ONLY.
Give it a read, and give me a shout if you get stuck. I have successfully implemented this on 34 sites using 1 service account for all the sites, limiting the need to have 34 extra admins =)

https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/articles/how-leverage-backup-execs-remote-console

Laters!

[hatte]

Hello CraigV,

as far as I understand our customer like to have separated access for the two departments each managing it's own tape pool but share the same library.
Maybe I should call this two instances instead?
Would that require two backup servers or can two instances run on one backup server?

Hatte

[CraigV]

Mmm...are they attached to a SAN or not? If you have a SAN in place, you can use Backup Exec SAN SSO which is a licensed option. What that allows is any SAN-attached server to share a SAN-attached tape drive.

However in this case, you cannot really separate the 2. You can create 2 different accounts, and use the steps in the article to prevent each account from logging onto the other server, but not differentiate what hardware/jobs/tapes etc. they can see.


The only other option in my mind would then be to get hold of another backup device and attach it to the other server, thereby separating the backups as well. Create the 2 accounts, give each account access to the required server, and give them access via the Remote Console. This isn't what you want...

[hatte]

LSI Storage is attached to SAN but no plan to share tape drives over SAN.
Idea is to use LSI snapshot feature of RAID systems, mount filesystem on backup server, run backup and release snapshot when ready.

[CraigV]

Cool...if that works out for you, great. =)
If not, I would suggest finding out how much SAN SSO costs and look at implementing it. I used it, and it cut some of my backups down by 60%. 4Gbps fibre is so much better than 1Gbps LAN =)
Let us know how it goes!