Backup Scenario Question

[Colski_Lavan]

Hi,

Current situation is we have a few Backup Exec 9.1 installs sitting on servers and backing up to their own tapes.

What I want to change to is a Backup to Disk then to tape setup.  I've read through a lot of the posts and think I know what needs to happen (just that there are a number of products now and trying get the right mix is the hard part).
We will be adding more (windows) servers in the near future (plus an Exchange and SQL server) so I want to get things right before installing them.
What I want to be able to do is:
Have ability to do bare metal recovery of the servers
Do nightly incremental backups with a weekly full backup
Have when I do a restore (be it bare metal or other) that it understands the incremental set so I don't have to worry about it
Backup the "backups" on the BESR server to tape for offsite storage

What I think I need is:
BESR agent sitting on the servers I want to backup.
BESR on a server that has a large capacity storage disk set
BE (11d) on same server with large capacity tape drive attached

Questions:
Will BESR handle the incremental and weekly backups
Will BESR handle Exchange (think I saw an agent for it)
Will BESR handle SQL server (on Win2K3 server)
Can BESR do a image of itself - in case it dies?
Do I need the full BESR license for the servers I am backing up or is there a different agent license

Many thanks
Colin

[Bill_Felt]

Hello,

Those are all very good questions.  We often recommend customers use both BE "classic" and BE System Recovery together, as you are considering.

Here are what I believe to be the answers to your questions:

Questions:
Will BESR handle the incremental and weekly backups - Yes, BESR supports incremental backups

Will BESR handle Exchange (think I saw an agent for it) - Yes, we quiesce VSS aware databases automatically

Will BESR handle SQL server (on Win2K3 server)  - Yes, we quiesce VSS aware databases automatically

Can BESR do a image of itself - in case it dies? - I'm not sure I understand this question

Do I need the full BESR license for the servers I am backing up or is there a different agent license - BESR is licensed per server.  So each server on which the product (agent) is installed would require a license.

Please let me know if you have any additional questions.

Thanks.

[Colski_Lavan]

Thanks Bill,

In relation to the BESR and images of itself,
You have the BESR server dumping images down of other servers so that you can restore them quickly, but what about the BESR server itself, what method do you use to restore that?  Do you just use classic BE?

thanks
Colin

[Bill_Felt]

Hello,

You can install the BESR agent to a system hosting BESR Manager and backup that system as well.  You could also backup the volume to which all the client backups are being stored, if desired.

Thanks.