How to install BE 11d on a new server, leaving upgraded Exchange and Server Agents on the old server

[Julian_2]

I have an installed BE10d Server with Exchange Agent on a Windows 2003(PDC) server. I have added a new Windows 2003(DC) server with much larger tape drive, and have installed a trial version of 11d on that machine. I now need to upgrade the old Exchange Agent to 11d, install a Server agent on the old machine and if possible be able to read the old tapes on the old machine. The new LTO3 tape is not compatible with the old tape drive, although Dell sold it as thought it was. I do not want to disable the current backup system until the new system is fully functional. This used to happen with Cheyenne backup software. New software see's the old software over the network and disables both, with endless warning broadcast messages, requiring you to remove new system from network, deinstall software, etc...

[Ken_Putnam]

Since BackupExec will only talk to a tape drive that is locally attached or on a SAN, your only option would be to move the  old drive to the new server as a second drive

To move your entire configuration to the new server, see http://support.veritas.com/docs/280710  to migrate v10 to it, then shut down all services on the old, connect the old drive to the new and install v11 on top on the new server.  This should enable you to restore any previous tape (and they should all appear in the catalog) using the old drive on the new server.

(You might not be able to write to the old tapes with the new drive, but can you at least read them?)

[Julian_2]

I just finished writing a lengthy and considered response, but when I submitted it it was rejected, I probably took too long.

So here's a quick response.

The method you described is lengthy, risky and leaves the server unprotected during the process.

Could I not install v11 on the new server( I already have a trial copy running), upgrade the old server to v11 with an Exchange agent. Backup both systems meanwhile, then test and implement backing up both systems and Exchange to the new server. Once that has been verified then either, import the old tape catalog into the new system and downgrade the old system or leave the old system in place and update its licensing.

Oh, this all has to be done remotely.

[Ken_Putnam]

Remotely?  Oh Joy!!

No way that I know of to backup a media server from another media server, so you would have to uninstall v10 to verify that your new server can backup the old.

If your new drive is indeed not compatible with your old one, you wouldn't need to worry about migrating the catalog files as long as the old drive is not connected to the new server

I guess that you could shut down all the BackupExec services on the old server  and copy the entire install tree to a safe place, then upgrade to v11, use BEUTIL to copy the configuration to the new server, remove v11, re-install v10 and then copy the entire install tree back, but that would take at least as long, and has (IMHO) more chance of something going wrong than the procedure I outlined. 

You could also just upgrade the old system to v11 and let it sit around, doing nothing, waiting to restore data from your old tapes    

[Julian_2]

The simplest solution always seemed to me to be upgrading v10 to v11 in place and installing a clean copy of v11 on the new server. Then simply stopping the BE services on the old server, leaving the Exchange agent and Server Agent running to enable a consolidated backup to the new(much larger) tape drive. The old services could be restarted if an old backup needed to be restored, such as old emails for regulatory purposes. A full  system backup could be performed on the old server if there were significant changes to the registry, or in event of a major hardware problem.

This approach concerns me only because of my prior experience with Cheyenne's Backup system, I forget the name. There I did essentially the same thing, bringing up a new Exchange and Domain Server prior to moving over the mailboxes and then downgrading the old system as a file repository. The problem was that the backup system broadcast it's identification across the domain, was picked up by the other backup services, and slowed both systems to a crawl with error messages before I managed to turn it off. I didn't want to use this live system to test if this might occur.

Does BE have a more benign approach to rolling migrations?

Thanks for mentioning BEUTIL, sounds useful.