Virtual Agent VS Remote agent per instance

[brian_harris]

Hey Guys!

    I was hoping you could help me out with this...a few questions

1) Is VCB needed to utilize this agent?

2) If VCB is not being used, can I still purchase the agent and push out unlimited RALUS/AWS agents? (since it allows the backup of unlimited guests)

 3) What would the advantage be to use this agent over just purchasing remote agents for every instance?

Thanks a lot! 

[Jeff_Myers · Accepted solution]

Here's the answers:

1) To do off-host backups of your VM environment then yes, you would need to use the VCB along with a Backup Exec media server.

2) Yes, the Virtual Agent is licensed per host and does not require you to use the VCB backup method.  So for each VM host you can buy the virtual agent and then just install the RALUS/AWS agents and back them up in the "traditional" way to start and then maybe switch to VCB backups down the road. 

3) Well the advantage would be that the Virtual Agent gets you the ability to do off-host backups, meaning that your backups can go directly from the shared storage your VMDKs are on to your backup device(s).  Traditional agent-based backups put a lot of I/O load on your VM environment (and I/O does not virtualize well), so all guests on that host will get impacted by the backup of even a single guest.  Also, for hosts with many guests it may be cheaper to buy the Virtual Agent over individual licenses.

I hope that helps.

Jeff

[brian_harris]

Perfect!

This helps a lot!!