remote agent compatiability

[philg123]

My post is a request for help resolving a license / organizational issue.

I am running 3 servers each has a copy of backup exec (BE). Server A is running BE 12.5, Server B is running BE 12.5. Server C is running BE 2010.

I have a remote agent on Server A so that I may back up some share folders that exist on server A to the tape drive on server B. Everything works great. I would like to back up some additional share folders from server A onto Server C (BE 2010) tape drive.  When I first installed 2010 on server C the share folders were backed up just fine but I received a warning about the the target computer having an older version of the remote agent and I should upgrade. Now it will not work.  

Now I guess I will have to at the least upgrade server A remote agent. This brings up several questions.

If I do this will Server B still be able to back up the folders assigned to it or will I have to upgrade from 12.5 to 2010?

Will I have to upgrade Server A's BE or can I just upgrade the agent?

Windows backup will do all of this for free why should I shell out for upgrades? I like the product and it is nice to have a common interface but this sure feels like I am being taken advantage of if it turns out I have to purchase upgrades of all of the machines and spend 'X' amount of time getting everything configured to work.

Cost effective advice on how to accomplish a backup of data as I have discribed above would be greatly appreciated.

[AmolB]

Hello 

 You cannot update the remote agent on the Media server. (You cannot have BE2010 remote agent on BE12.5 Media server)

 You will have to upgrade BE12.5 to BE2010 which will also update the remote agent on the media server.

 BE2010 will be able to communicate with BE12.5 agent, You will get warning that you are using an older version of remote agent.

 The backup jobs will complete successfully, simply ignore the warnings.

[Ken_Putnam]

You can backup one media server from another media server?

Whoo Hoo

(I fought this for so long I just gave up trying  )


Other than that, i agree with A_Z_C   all of your media servers would need to be at the same version for any one to backup any other

[Ben_L_]

BE2010 can backup servers with a 12.5 remote agent on them.  So you should be able to backup data from the servers with 12.5 to the 2010 servers.  But the 12.5 servers will not be able to backup a machine with a 2010 remote agent on them.

The message you are getting about the remote agent needing an upgrade is just an exception, you should still be able to back them up with BE2010.  The reason for the exception is because the 12.5 agent does not have all the functionality of the 2010 agent, so to get all the functionality the server will need to be upgrade.  But if you have a support contract the upgrade should be free.