Backup exec 2012 Agent Licensing

[venkat444]

Hi

I have polled a few of the Tech support guys and do not seem to get the right information. We are running Backup exec 2012 SP2 on a media server, We do have the following in our environment

1. VM environment with 2 Hosts and a handful of VMs (An Active directory controller and SQL server are some of the VMs)

2. Physical environment of 2 Servers (1 DC and 1 x Microsoft Exchange Server)

Current Licensing we hold

1 x Backup exec 2012 Server License

2 x VMware agents

1 x Agent for applications

Q1. Is this correct way of Licensing the Agent for applications?

Q2. Would a Deduplication Agent License be helpful in reducing the backup we do in a VM environment

Appreciate your feedback

[pkh]

You are short of Agent for Applications and Databases licences.  You would need 1 such Agent licence for your Exchange server and if you want to do GRT restore of SQL databases, then you need 1 such Agent licence for each VM with SQL in them.

For your DC's, if you want to be able to restore individual AD objects, then you would need 1 Agent for Applications and Databases licence for one of your DC's.  This assumes that you are willing to wait for the restored AD object to be propogated to the other DC's.  If you are not willing to wait, then you would need 1 Agent for Applications and Databases licence for each DC.  If you don't need to restore individual AD objects, then you would need a RAWS licence for your physical DC.

You did not say which machine is BE installed on.  This will also have an impact on the licencing.

If you get the dedup option and use dedup, you would be able to reduce the amount of data that you keep for each backup.  You can get your reseller to run the Dedup Assessment Tool to tell you whether you get any benefits from using dedup.

[venkat444]

We have the Backup exec installed on the Media Server.

[pkh]

Yes, but which machine is your media server.  Is it a separate machine from the configuration that you described?

[venkat444]

Yes it is a seperate machine and we have enough disk space on this to backup to the disk

[pkh · Accepted solution]

Then my earlier comment will be suitable for your environment.

I would also suggest that you verify this with the Symantec Licencing department.

[venkat444]

Thank you