Will this be the only media server in your organization, backing up other resources, or will it only backup itself+Exchange?
If you will be backing up/restoring other servers, you may wind up with a network bottleneck affecting the mail users.
In days past, if you put the media server on an Exchange server, you could also run the box out of resources, but most modern servers have the memory and cycles that a media server on the Exchange box shouldn't hurt.
Also, if the Exchange server ever dies, you then have to rebuild the media server first, then restore Exchange. I alway prefer to have a dedicated media server, if possible.
If you do go the route of a BackupExec media server different from your Exchange box, I'd recommend a separate Network (extra NICs in each box) for backup/restore only, separate from your regular LAN. It doesn't have to be a real powerhouse, and doesn't have to run Server OS. W2K Pro and XP Pro are both supported for media servers - though Vista is not. As long as it has plenty of RAM and will accept the controller for whatever interface your backup device needs, a modern business desktop platform should suffice
As an example, at one point, I had a DeskPro PII/233 with an add-in low end SCSI controller driving 2 DLT7000s. It was running NT4W and had 640MB of RAM, and did just fine (did I just date myself there?
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Message Edited by Ken Putnam on
02-26-2008 02:38 PM