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General Questions about Backup Exec configuration

Rob_Riley
Level 3

Hi,

We're considering Backup Exec as a backup solution and trying to find out if it fits our needs. We have 3x remote sites. Each site has a Windows server (2008 or 2012) and a handful of Windows and Mac clients. I've been flicking through the admin guide but thought it would be quicker to ask some questions here:

1) We want each machine to be able to back up to any server - the one on its local network and either/both of the 2x remote ones - is this possible?

2) We want to be able to select different files for backup on a machine depending on its backup destinations - for example if a machine is backing up to a local and remote server we may exclude some larger files from the remote backup. Is this possible?

3) Can we administer and configure multiple backup servers across different locations from one server? 

4) Can we set up email alerts for failed backups, failed storage and so on?

I hope these are simple questions for someone already using Backup Exec.

Thanks in advance.

Rob

 

5 REPLIES 5

Rob_Riley
Level 3

Can anyone help out with this?

Thanks,

CraigV
Moderator
Moderator
Partner    VIP    Accredited

Hi Rob,

 

I actually responded to this and it timed out meaning my responses weren't added correctly...

1. No. a server that needs to be backed up can't pick and choose randomly which media server it backs up too. It's selected when you create the backup job. Only other way around this is to use something like CASO which is licensed with Enterprise Server Option, and using optimized dedupe, backup locally on a site and then duplicate those backup sets elsewhere. But round-robining of media servers isn't present in any version of BE.

2. You would need to create 2 jobs. Backup to a local source, and then duplicate a backup set elsewhere.

3. Yes, and you'd use CASO for this. Read about it above in #1.

4. Yes you can, but not failed storage. Only failed/successful jobs. BE has canned reports for this. You'd need to set up alerting on a hardware level for hardware failures.

Thanks!

Rob_Riley
Level 3

Thanks very much Craig - really helpful. Just absorbing this and looking at CASO.

Cheers.

Rob_Riley
Level 3

So just to confirm - there's no way of setting up destinations A and B for example and then setting up 2 backup jobs on a computer where one job backs up to A and the other job to B? But with CASO you could backup to A and then duplicate to B?

Is that correct?

Thanks again.

CraigV
Moderator
Moderator
Partner    VIP    Accredited

You can backup a local server to a remote media server. 1 job can backup locally, the other remotely. But unless you're using optimized dedupe to duplicate backup sets, you're essentially backing up "fat files" with no compression or optimisation across a WAN link and this might be slow.

Thanks!