Managing the Backup Infrastructure - BE Infrastructure Manager

[GFK]

Someone told me the other day that they thought that nowadays Backup Exec was pretty complicated and it struck me that it wasn’t so much that Backup Exec had become more complicated, so much as the infrastructure that had. I was routing through my desk draws not so long ago and came across a copy of NetBackup 3.2 a single CD which included Media Management, Clients and all Robotic Support - a single CD! It now takes a few more than that to ship a backup product. Backup has become largely distributed throughout most organisations in order to deal with the demands of modern business. But this does mean that we need new ways to automate the deployment, updates, upgrades, and licenses efficiently across the environment.

Many organisations run a mixed environment of many different versions of Backup Exec and at different patch levels. When managing a large Backup Exec installation, it may not be clear;

* Which versions of BE do I have and where are they?
* What BE license keys have been installed and which Agents and Options?
* Are the patch levels for BE up-to-date?
* What data or machines are not protected?
* How can I update and upgrade multiple BE installations?

A significant deployment or upgrade of Backup Exec really does need careful planning, and subsequent management and now we have the tool to help the management of remote backup servers from a single place.

Backup Exec Infrastructure Manager (BEIM) will be available from early April - based on the Altiris delivery technology from Symantec - it will enable organisations to manage almost all BE operations through a web-based browser. This means you will be able to manage the :

* Discovery and Inventory of All Servers, Agents, and Options
* Creation of Custom Backup Exec Installations
* View of Protected vs. Unprotected Systems
* Creation of Backup Exec 9.1-12.5 Version Upgrades
* Creation of Backup Exec Patch Deployments
* Backup Exec License Management
* Backup Exec Disk Consumption Monitoring for Catalog and Disk-based Backup Data
* Command-line Script Management and Diagnostic Log Gathering

The new tool can help organisations reduce management costs; reducing time to deployment, patching, upgrading, troubleshooting, and monitoring the various components of Backup Exec. The combination of Backup Exec Central Administration Option (CASO) and BEIM is ideal for remote branch offices where network connectivity may be intermittent, but standardisation is needed.