Just got my BackupExec 2012 working. Some things are nice. Some things are annoying. The Servers summary screen is nice, being able to see so much information together. The new "bare metal" disaster recovery restore system seems very promising, especially since it says it can do a bare metal restore using a recovery DVD without me having to reinstall OS first. When I tried a bare metal disaster restore recently on BE12.5 it took 14 hours to complete the restore of one server, plus the time to reinstall the OS, and in the end it failed. So I am hoping the redesign in BE2012 will work better!
The new job design now puts a selection list together with one or more schedules, and each job is associated with ONE server. This looks initially nice, however it has caused great inconvenience. I have a small network here with a SBS2008 server and 8 workstations all of which need backing up. Yesterday I wanted to do a special (out-of-schedule) backup of server and workstations to my month tape. But when I do "run-now" I have no way to choose which "schedule" to "run-now". Previously I had: 1x Selection List including ALL 8 workstations, 1xSelection List for server, 1xJobSchedule for server to month-tape, 1xJobSchedule for server to week-tape, 1xJobSchedule for daily server to disk, ditto 3xJobSchedules for workstations to xxxx; in summary 2 selection lists and 6 JobSchedules - that allowed me to do any special run-now jobs I wanted (e.g. if I forgot to bring in the month-tape on time). Now I have to have TWENTY SEVEN jobs to allow me to do "run-now" jobs to whatever medium I need - (9 server selections)x(3 media sets). And when I want to do a special backup I need to start NINE JOBS instead of 2 previously. This is a mess, very frustrating and making my job less productive than before.
There is also a serious credential bug: backup of SQL server instance always uses backupadmin account even when I ask it to use System Logon Account. Unfortunately also the backupadmin account was not setup correctly by the install routine so that the backups would fail. Lost LOTS of time, but credit to Symantec Support for helping to find a work around.
