Backup Exec V-Ray

[GoldenTait]

I have a couple of questions in regards to the V-Ray Edition of Backup Exec

1) With this v-ray edition does it matter how many BackupExec media servers there are? My customer intends to have one in Vancouver and one in Toronto. 

2) Does it matter how the vCenter hosts are distributed? As long as the CPUs are licensed it can be in whatever cluster configuration is needed? There will be clusters in four locations so I just wanted to make sure.

3a) Does the vCenter agent dedup? 

3b) Is it suitable for backing up a VMs on a remote vCenter cluster over a WAN link? 

3c) Does it ever need to do "full" backups after the first time? Can it do incremental forever (assuming (dedup) disk target). 

4) If the customer choses to use a Windows agent on a VM for some reason am I free to do so license-wise? 

(I actually thing I just answered this as 'yes' by reading this http://eval.symantec.com/mktginfo/enterprise/other_resources/backup_exec_licensing_guide_21223660.en...)

5)  Do I need to add a license to operate two drives in a tape library?

6) What type of storage does the deduplicated disk media support? I assume any actual disk on the media server via direct attached or SAN works but how about NAS? CIFS? NFS?

Thank you

[CraigV · Accepted solution]

Hi,

1. Not quite sure on this, but see what you can find on the links below:

http://eval.symantec.com/mktginfo/enterprise/fact_sheets/b-symc_backup_exec_2012_vray_edition_overview_DS_21227307.en-us.pdf

http://www.emea.symantec.com/beguide/en-GB/files/BE2012_customer_license_guide.pdf

2. It would yes, depending on where you are doing your backups. If your line between sites is fast enough, it might be possible to do backups across a WAN. If not, then having storage on site would be a better option!

3a. No...the V-Ray would dedupe VMs when pointed to a dedupe store though. This is a licensed function of BE, not on an agent-basis. Simply create your backup job and select the dedupe store as the target.

3b. As with 2...if your line isn't very fast, then consider optimised deduplication. Read the TN below for further information. this would mean local backups to a dedupe store on 1 site, and with the help of a CASO license on 1 of the media servers, you could duplicate this information to the other site's dedupe store. Effectively you'd send less & less information across the WAN depending on dedupe ratios, how often you run the jobs and how long you keep the data for.

http://eval.symantec.com/mktginfo/enterprise/white_papers/b-backup_exec_dedupe_optimized_2010_WP_21158107.en-us.pdf

http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH172464

4. Yes.

5. BE ships with 1 license free for a drive in an autoloader/library. Every other license needs a Library Expansion Option license. In your case you'd need 1 LEO.

6. Check the BE 2012 HCL below for disk support:

http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH175582

Thanks!

[pkh]

1) You have to get a different set of V-Ray licences for each media server.  Suppose you have a VM host with 2 CPU sockets and you want to backup the host using media server A and B, then you need to have a 2 socket V-Ray licence for each media server.  If you only want A to backup this host and B to backup other things, you only need 1 two socket V-Ray licence for A.  There is no need to get one for B.

Do confirm all licencing matters with Symantec Licencing because they are the final authority on licencing matters.

3c) You can just do incremental after doing the first full backup but would you want to do this.  When you restore, you need to restore the full backup + ALL the subsequent incremental backups.  You should plan on doing more frequent full backups.

6) Only direct attached storage.  You cannot put a dedup folder on a NAS, CIFS or NFS.