Best Practices for New User Implementing BE 11d?

[Joe_Hutchison]

I am new to Backup Exec and I was looking for some advice.

What I want to do is perform Backup to Disk backups on a hard drive on our server. From there, I want to transfer them to an external hard drive for disaster recovery purposes.

I'm also installing Continuous Protection, to ensure that I get the files that change during the day.

Should I just copy the Backup to Disc folders to the removable hard drive, or should I create removable Backup to Disc folders, and copy the data files to them?

What strangeness does Continuous Protection add to this mix????

Thanks! I do appreciate someone taking the time to help out a new BE user!

[Philip_Pearson]

It depends what DR you are trying to achieve.

If you backup to a removeable hard drive you only have one point of recovery, if you backup to a hard drive on your server and copy to your removeable drive then you have two.

The trouble I see you having is with historical data, you would have trouble going back 6 months for example to get an old file. That is the beauty of a good tape rotation, you can go back a long way. I would prefer to see you backup to disk then to tape for your offsite storage. Hard drives can be problematic for long term storage.

CPS is real time backups, you do not have a specified backup window. So file changes are automatically protected as they occur.

A few people have had issues though with CPS so it may take some time to get going.

[Joe_Hutchison]

Philip - thanks for taking the time to respond!

I'm after 2 things with DR:
1) Catastrophic recovery - I lose the entire server, and I need to recover on a different system at a different location.
2) People errors - accidental deletion or overwrite of a file.

I'm not concerned about going back many months, as the bulk of our projects are completed within 1-2 months, and I plan on archiving completed project-related files on DVD.

I'm more interested in being able to recover from #1 quickly. Regarding #2 - it's acceptable to provide good coverage for 1 month of changes.

I appreciate any comments!

Thanks - Joe

[Joe_Hutchison]

I also meant to add that I want to store the backup data on 2 locations - the media server folders on the "backup Server" system, and copies on the removable hard drives.

As Philip pointed out, I do want 2 recovery points.

Thanks!

[Ken_Putnam]

Just be sure that you DUPLICATE the first backup to the second HD

If you do this, then then you can restore directly from the 2nd disk without having to restore BKF files, then Catalog the drive.

You can use policies to start the second (D2D) as soon as the first B2D ends

[Philip_Pearson]

To acheive what you want to achieve you may be better using system recovery, rather than CPS (or as well as CPS), it allows a restore to disparate hardware as long as you have the drivers

[Joe_Hutchison]

Yes, that's what I'm beginning to think as well. I'm just attempting to avoid having to order yet another software component, with presumably yet another installation/configuration/set of services to add in and manage, if what I have already purchased will do the job.

Thanks again for all of your comments - I do appreciate the time folks spend helping others!

-Joe