Clarification needed about Symantec BE2014 V-Ray

[shekhar-nashik]

I am new to the V-ray Edition .I am a consultant and need to advise customer correctly about this.

I need confirmation  whether

1. Symantec BE-2014 V-Ray Edition will support a Database called Informix vs.11.7 ? Is there any agent available for this ? Any work around available?

2. Whether any Desktop and Laptops agents are included in the above edition?

3. Can one install the BE-2014 V-Ray Edition ON ONE OF THE VIRTUAL SERVERS ? Or one should advise  a separate physical server for the backup Server?

4. If I have three separate vmware hosts, do I need three separate BE2014 V-ray licenses for each of the hosts ?

5. DO I need a separate license for any physical servers on the same network ?

6. Image backups are possible for vmware virtual disks ?

7. If I have a vmware host with about 10 virtual Servers configured and I have a backup exec server as a virtual server on the same host , would my backup job ( for the 10 virtual servers ) run faster? as compared to having backup server on a separate server on the network.

8. If I take backup on a disk on local server, how can I repliacte the backup on another remote disk ? DO I have to start another backup job with source as my local backup and destination as remote disk? IS there any other way available with V-ray edition?

Clarification asap will be appreciated.

From :

Chandrashekhar ( shekhar@f1nashik.com )

[CraigV]

Hi,

1. No...never seen this listed, but confirm by checking out the BE 2014 SCL.

2. No. DLO is a separate product from BE 2012 onwards...

3. Ideally install BE on a physical server as you'd have full support. Installing it on a VM is considered an alternative configuration and you may/may not get support if so.

4. Vray is licensed per socket. This is dependant on the number of occupied CPU sockets in those hosts. You install BE on a server and license Vray with your *.slf file you get.

5. Yes you would. You would need either a RAWS agent for a server like a file server, or application agent for something like Exchange (which includes a RAWS agent anyway).

6. As in SDR? Should be possible. The Admin Guide will go more in-depth on this.

7. No, not necessarily at all. Faster backups are dependant on network, server resources etc.

8. You would target your primary hardware, and then have a duplicate job that duplicates to another device. If you want a DR-type environment, you would need VM hardware, a media server and backup target from which to pull the backed up data.

Thanks!

[VJware]

1) There isn't any agent for Informix. (NBU has though). Workaround would be a cold-backup, ie stopping the DB's services to release any hold during the backup.

3) Installing BE on a virtual server is fine as long as you dont use passthrough storage devices.

6) Using the VMware agent, you can backup the complete VM itself (akin to an image backup) and restore allows you to either restore the complete VM or individual items (if applicable) as well.

[Colin_Weaver · Accepted solution]

Just to clarify some of the answers from Craig

1) Informix is not directly supported and currently there are no plans to do so. A complete virtual machine backup would still back it up (and depending on whether or or not it is VSS aware) you may either get a VSS consistent or crash consistent backup of the database. Such a backup could probably only be used for a complete DR restore of the whole server, and the Informix DB Admin might have to take additonal manual steps to get fully operational. If Informix is running inside an unsupported operating system then you may have other issues to deal with.

3) BE is supported inside s VM however there are a number of configurations that either require physical or where physical is recommended as such the overall recommendation is plan for physical.

6) VMware agent backups are always analogous to 'image' backups as what is backed up is the VMDK. GRT functionality then accesses the 'image' contents for restore of individual data

7) The one scenario where your Backup Exec server MUST be inside a VM is when you use the Hotadd Transport. In theory the HotAdd Transport is the quickest backup method, but as you may then run into other limitations you should be looking at a Physical server with SAN Transport as a better option to optimize both speed and avoid the limitations.

[shekhar-nashik]

I would like to  thank all those who have replied back to my queries. It has satisfied all my doubts and clarified everything. 
 

It was a wonderful experience to interact with you.

---Shekhar@f1nashik.com