What solution do I need? CDP or BE with SRO, or SRO Full Blown?

[kpapreck]

I am currently working with a customer that has Backup Exec 12 and also has the Server Recovery Option component of Backup Exec 12.  His main concern is that he wants to make sure that if a server fails, he can get it back up and running within a couple of hours (hense the server recovery option).

The problem he is facing is:Server Recovery Option with Backup Exec is for full backups only.  So there is no incremental.  So the customer has to do a Backup Exec file level backup as well as the Server Recovery Backup.  This is not a good solution for the customer. 

1. The other concern is that one of there file servers with 3TB of data is going to at a remote location.  They want to be able to send this data back to the main site.  So they need to:
   1. Do incrementals forever
   2. Use Backup Exec CDP option and continue to just do the SRO backup seperately once every couple weeks or so.  If we go down this route, the SRO image of the remote server will stay at the remote site on seperate JBOD.
   3. Just use Full Blown Backup Exec Server Recovery Option since the full blown version can do incremental backups as well as be able to do file level recovery.  The only question I have with this is, how do they back the SRO data to tape?  Is this possible?  Also, does SRO work well with SAP, Exchange, SQL, and File data?  Does it have application integrity?

Any help would be appreciated.  If you need more information about the environment please let me know. Sorry for any ignorance here.  I just have not had the chance to really dig into Backup Exec 12.5 and Backup Exec Server Recovery Option yet. Just looking for help architecting the solution while I continue to do my own research on the side.

[adpwl1 · Accepted solution]

Lets see if I can answer a few of your questins here.  First the full blown BESR can not backup to tape, at all.  What you can do is take the image file that BESR makes and use BE to backup the image file to tape, but the issues with that, if you have a server failure, you will have to recover the image file first, before being able to recover the server using BESR.

Second, BESR does not do well in SAP or any other application environemnts except Exchange. There are not application agents in BESR for other apps beside Exchange.  Now you can backup the server and the app, but there is not guarantee the data will be consistanat.

With BESR 12.x, you now have the ability to do a 3rd copy of the date to a remote site (FTP,UNC....)

Now, you can still mix BESR and BE together, just make sure the jobs don't run into each other.  Example, lets say you have the server split C: as the OS and App and Data on D:   Use BESR to backup C: weekly and then have BE backup D: daily.

Just a few thoughts.  Hope they help.

[kpapreck]

What is a more effecient for transferring over the wire if you are only protecting file servers CPS or BESR?