Need Advice

[Sandip]

Hello

I am currently using BEWS ver 10.d which is installed on two different servers which each have an HP LTO Ultrium 2 attached to the servers.  Each server runs a different backup job e.g server 1 runs a daily full backup job called Backup Job1 and server 2 runs a daily full backup job called Backup Job2. Our other remaining servers (FNP, Exchange 2003 etc) all have the respective BEW agents installed on them, which are backed up by BEWS.

However as the backup and recovery strategy is reliant on LTO Ultrium tapes I have been reading up about BESR.  I have a few questions :-

1.  Can I install BESR on the same server(s) which are currently using BEWS ver 10.d? If not how many servers will I require to use BESR?

2.  I would like to use BESR to backup and recover a in house SQL DB server, a Web Application server in their complete state.  To do this will I require another server with lots of HD to store the backup images and then do a tape backup of these images to ensure safety?  Will I have to remove the BEWS agents from the servers that I wish to backup using BESR?

3.  Can I use BESR to replace BEWS as my disaster recovery solution?

Thanks

Sandip

[David_F]

1.  What creates the backup is the agent that gets installed from the BESR product install. It is similar to the RAWS agent that gets installed with 11d, except that it does not need a media server (i.e. the BESR console/UI) once configured; the agent is independent of the managing console the configures it. An agent will need to be install on each system you want to backup at is capable of being install on the same system running 11d.   

2.  BESR can backup to an attached external hard disk drive connected directly to the agent system; it can also backup to a network share via a UNC path if needed.  Backing up and recovering a SQL server and a Web Application server in their complete state would not be much of an issue with BESR, I would though suggest if you plan to do this in a test environment to also take and restore a copy of the DC these two servers authenticate with.  Once backup to disk as *.V2i files the local RAWS agent on the storage system housing our images can send the images to the media server that will package them to tape to ensure their long term safety. Again, with the version that you are using you will NOT need to remove the BEWS agents from the servers that you wish to backup using BESR? 

3.  BESR & BEWS are very different products. As for your disaster recovery solution you might want to consider using both. BESR for system recovery, and BEWS for brick level restore of applications like SQL that occurred between BESR backups. If tape needs to be a consideration, then BEWS between the two products are the only one that directly works with tape at this time; consider a Disk-to-Disk-to-Tape solution.