BESR2010 Disaster Recovery Environment Best Practice Advice

[Michele_2]

Hi,

Currently I have BE 12.5 backing up about 100 windows servers. I also have a dozen RH Linux servers. I have confidence that I can recover files, directories, etc. with my full and incremental policies. Now I need to evaluate a solution for Disaster Recovery and Bare Metal Restore. I am not sure the current IDR component of BE 12.5 will suite my needs and I have nothing for Linux....Then I saw the BESR 2010 and the Linux Option.

So, I would like to know if anyone has a similar environment, if they are using BESR2010 for both Windows and Linux, and how that integrates with BE 12.5 for a totally protected environment.

My thoughts are that I will continue the daily Full/Incremental policy backups and incorporate a Weekly BESR2010 system restore point backup of both my physical windows and linux servers excluding data drives. Then when the 'big one' hits (Florida hurricanes;), I would use the SRD to recover to the system recovery point for each server (Windows and Linux) at the recovery site (possibly on dissimilar hardware) and use BE 12.5 to restore data and up to date incremental changes.

Am I on the right track? and does anyone have this or another solution in place and tested?

Thanks in advance for your advice.

[Symanticus]

Hi Michele2,

I also would lie to hear from anyone who has done similar things too,

I've tried to restore Windows Server 2003 (DC and Exchange) into dissimilar hardware it works fine, at first i was panic since the restored OS is restarting several times and shows me the initial setup wizard like in the installing stage, but then everything seems to be working great with the SRD.

[NeilMurphy65]

Hi Michele,

I am currently deploying BESR 2010 into a Windows-only environment for a client. They already have BE 12.5 protecting about 40 servers. Unfortunately, although both products are called Backup Exec ****, they are not integrated in any way. I have developed a bare-metal recovery procedure that works well by using BESR to bring back the OS partition first and then doing a regular BE 12.5 restore for the remaining volumes.

I would advise anyone considering this to build a test environment in which to develop, test and document your own procedure. Restoring to dissimilar hardware in particular can be quite complex and your procedure will depend on your own environment and the type of hardware available for recovery.

Hope this helps,

Neil.

[ioniancat21]

If I heard correctly, I believe Backup Exec 12.5 has a bare-metal recovery snap-in or add-on you can purchase. Can anyone add to that?

I figure, why buy BESR if BE already does the job although the restore to different hardware options I believe are exclusive to BESR................