Hi all,
I am in the process of getting my licensing together to upgrade Backup Exec from Version 10d to Version 2010. I have a complicated set up, so here goes, and I apologize ahead of time for the lengthy post.
I have two Backup Exec servers (AS33 and DMZAS01) on two different domains (company domain, and the DMZ domain) at our data colocation facility; they're literally on top of each other in the rack. Those are the workhorse servers that backup all of the file and application servers at our data colocation facility.
I also have 17 remote sites, that have, for the most part, one file server and one application server. These sites are scattered across the country and are on the same domain as AS33, and are connected via a WAN. Each of these remote sites has their own BE server (Version10d) and one tape drive (or in some cases a tape library for the bigger sites) that they use to backup that particular site.
I was asked a question by the person responsible for maintaining our licensing if the following was possible. From what I can see, the answer is "no," but I figured I'd ask here first in case I was incorrect.
She is asking if we could have a scenario where AS33 (at our data colocation facility) could be designated as a central administration server, but instead of each remote site having its own copy of Backup Exec server, it would have a remote agent installed on it and its own tape drive (one for each of the remote sites). Could those tape drives be seen by the AS33 backup server, and used to run backup jobs. So, basically, AS33 would kick off a backup job to backup, say, one of the remote sites, but instead of backing up to a tape drive at the data colocation facility, it would back up to a tape drive on the remote site itself.
My knee jerk reaction, and after a little research, is that even with BE 2010, the answer is no. We can't do a backup across the WAN to a tape drive at the data colocation facility, because the bandwidth is too limited, and the backups would take forever. The closest option I saw was the Central Adminisration Server option, but each of the remote sites would still have to have their own copy of BE, which defeats the purpose of why she asked the question.
She asked this question to see if she obviously could save money by just purchasing two server licenses for the data center, and then just use remote agents and individual tape drives to backup the data on each of the remote sites. It would also centrally locate all backup data (like a central administration server) at one place.
Thanks for any input,
Chris
