BESR vs. regular BE

[MIXIT]

Just wondering but for a single-server office is there a compelling argument to use BE instead of BESR?  It seems that BESR, despite some bugs and what not, is generally designed as a better product for this purpose. 

Further on this point, since BESR Server edition supports single-console management for multiple servers, what does regular BE have that BESR doesn't? 

I have to pleasd ignorance as my experience with regular BE is limited to basic admin tasks only.  I know there is probably a comparison chart out there somewhere (and if such exists, feel free to post link or I will if I find it first), but I'm mostly interested in the opinion of anybody knowledgable and/or experienced with both products. 

Thanks! 

[Dinsdale]

Hello Mixit:

We use both and find each works well.  For a single server, I woiuld tend to BESR.  I especially like the ability to restore to any hardware and convert to a VM as a good disaster recovery solution.  You don't get some of the granular recovery tools for SQL/Exchange and SharePoint and dedupe is not there.

We use BESR on servers that run simple things like a web server or an FTP site but we also grab a BESR image of critiacl servers in case something goes terribly wrong and we need to restore to new/old hardware or create a VM

[Digerati]

Dinsdale,

Am I right in thinking that BESR 2010 does offer granular restore of exchange mailboxes too now ? I am also planning to purchase BESR for protecting our Exchange 2007 SP1 box, any suggestions or thoughts would be helpful.

Kind regards

[MIXIT]

Dinsdale will no doubt know more about this than I, but I can tell you for sure that the BESR 2010 documentation says that it does support granulat restore for Exchange, though I didn't read into what versions. 

[Dinsdale]

BESR 201 now includes Granular Restore as mentioned.  We are using the older version 8.5 without granular restore.  I guess since we had this in BU Exec, it was not considered.  I would suggest giving the 60 day trial a test run.  If you like it, it can easily be activated without an uninstall and re-install

[CarolineKiel · Accepted solution]

Hi,
Here are some of the major differences between BESR and BEWS:
- BESR cannot write data to tape, only to disks
- BESR cannot granular recover items from the Active Directory, BEWS can do so.
- BESR is hardware indepenent, BEWS is not (out of the box)
- BESR has no Server/Agent archictecture (all servers need full license), while BEWS has real remote agents

So, to answer your question: It depends on what is installed on your server and what kind of restore you need. If you have no problems to backup only to disk and don't need a GRT from Active Directory, I would suggest to take BESR.
If you need one of the features, you'll have to use BEWS.

HTH,
Oliver

[MIXIT]

BESR not having tape support is a major consideration for sure when factoring in servers and their often large data volumes.  Archival backup solutions pretty much require the use of cheaper tape media vs. 500GB or larger disk-based removable disks but I really like the hardware-indepednance restoral idea in BESR. 

Is making BEWS hardware independant a simple task such as buying a module for it?  Or is it something more like putting together a driver disk of your own.