Single Physical Machine Environment - Backup Exec Media Server

[Vickreman_Chett]

Hi.

  I have a production environment consisting of a single physical machine as the domain controller, which hosts eighteen virtual machines (which are members of the domain controlled by their physical host). I want to use Backup Exec to back up data on the both the physical machine and the virtual machines to a single quad-drive tape library. The physical host is connected via a Fibre Channel switch to a tape library containing four Half-Height LTO-5 8Gb Fibre Channel Tape Drives.

  As I do not want to get a second server to be the Media Server, I need to know whether the virtual machine host server (running on Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 Datacenter Edition) can also be the Backup Exec Media Server; i.e. the Backup Exec Media Server software would be installed in the parent partition of the Hyper-V host, not in a virtual machine.

  Thank you and regards, Vickreman Chettiar.

[pkh]

Yes. You can do so, but you are putting all your eggs in one basket.  If your physical machine dies, you would have nothing, not even a server to restore from.  It would be better to have a separate physical machine for your BE media server. It don't have to be a powerful machine.  Also, it can become another DC so that you have your AD even when the VM host dies.

[Vickreman_Chett]

Hi pkh,

  Thanks for your reply. I know I'd be putting all my eggs in one basket, but I think I could use a Symantec System Recovery Disc to mitigate the risk of having nothing to restore from if the physical machine dies. Would this work?

  Regards, Vickreman Chettiar.

[pkh · Accepted solution]

I believe that you can only backup to disk with SSR, not to tape.  So if you have a hardware failure, it would not work.  I would suggest that you check this alternative with the experts on the SSR forum.