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Install Backup Exec 2014 on virtual machine??

ddorton
Level 4

Hello,  I am currently running Backup Exec 2014 on a Server 2003 machine that also servers as our secondary domain controller.  We backup to disk first then copy to tape.

We are migrating to new servers running 2012r2.  Can BE 2014 be installed on a virtual server?  I thought this would be a good way to separate the secondary DC role from Backup Exec.  

 

Thanks

 

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AmolB
Moderator
Moderator
Employee Accredited Certified

Its not recommended to install Backup Exec on a VM. Read the below forum thread.

https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/forums/how-setup-tape-library-be-2014-server

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AmolB
Moderator
Moderator
Employee Accredited Certified

Its not recommended to install Backup Exec on a VM. Read the below forum thread.

https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/forums/how-setup-tape-library-be-2014-server

Colin_Weaver
Moderator
Moderator
Employee Accredited Certified

As you have mentioned writing to tape then passthrough access to physical tape hardware from inside a VM is not supported and from reports by the few custoemrs that have tried it, will sometimes work, but gives all sorts of seemingly random/intermittent problems.

If your tape drive/libary is on our HCL against an iSCSI connection (so not SCSI or FC), then that should work with a virtual media server and would be supported. Note the library itself must directly support iSCSI don't try to use a software iSCSI solution.

 

Please also note: if your domain is moving to Windows 2012 R2, then for full functionality the media server itself wil have to be running in Windows 2012 R2 as well.

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jelutz
Level 3

I'm thinking about using a virtual machine, since our media server is getting old and we use a Data Domain appliance and DDBoost to do the backups anyway. That means that all of the storage is attached via 10Gb Ethernet anyway (though our Data Domain only has 1Gb), and most of the traffic goes between the backup target and the Data Domain or between our in-house Data Domain and hosted Data Domain, rather than through the media server. When major traffic does through the media server, it's because of server-side deduplication via DDBoost with SAN transport. I was actually wondering if there is a virtual appliance out there at this point (perhaps on Linux)? I guess not, since there are still discussions about supporting a virtual media server.

I really think the key is that if you have hardware that needs to be attached to a physical server, the supported configuration would be to use that physical server.

Colin_Weaver
Moderator
Moderator
Employee Accredited Certified

There is another limitation - SAN Transport (against the VMware backup API) is not supported when BE is within a VM - but you can use HotAdd instead.