Managing the Backup Infrastructure – BE Infrastructure Manager
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.
How efficient is your backup?
Keep your business up and running - by discovering backup and storage management inefficiencies you can cut costs, while making sure that your data is fully protected. Highly beneficial at a time when budgets are under strain.
It is really useful to go through the process of trying to find out:
- How well your data is protected
- If you are missing backing up critical data
- How prepared you are for increasing data volumes
- Whether your strategy supports business growth or lowers performance
- If you are taking advantage of the most cost-effective solutions available
It never ceases to amaze me how well we don’t know ourselves. To quote Polonius, “unto thine own self be true”; the more honest you are with yourself the more accurate and the more useful the results will be. We know our business, don’t we? We know that we are doing the best we can, aren’t we? It’s not like someone is trying to catch you out – give it a go, there are some pretty simple questions you can ask yourself just to get going, simply because the world has moved on, the drivers for improving backup and recovery operations are ever stricter:
- How can you keep business-critical applications running, delivering improved ROI, while complying with regulations
- How can you justify spending in times of budgetary constraint by demonstrating the quality and effectiveness of your systems
- What is the best way to convince business users of the importance of investing in backup solutions, before data is lost, while also establishing what should be backed up – and why
- How confident are you that you can cover all your IT service requirements? If you are not very confident – how not confident are you, 25%, 50%, or do you stick to all your business service agreements?
- What level of backup reporting do you have that allows you to justify future IT investment to optimise your recovery time objectives? Is there a requirement for reporting metrics, occasionally, or more regularly?
- How confident are you that your main business managers understand the importance of backup? Most of us take backup for granted but how confident are you that your backup policy covers all areas of the business?
Are you confident that you have the right backup and recovery systems in place and are getting the most out of them? A backup and recovery, or storage, assessment will highlight areas of weakness but also help to identify where Backup Exec can improve efficiencies and save you money.
Data Leaks for Dummies
Guy Bunker and I have a new book out “Data Leaks For Dummies”, now available from Amazon and all good bookstores in both the US and the UK.
You may think that data leaks has precious little to do with backup, but there you would be wrong. Interestingly I am finding it increasingly difficult to talk about data leaks/loss in isolation from storage management and backup, security and network access control, or, for that matter to talk about backup without talking about data leaks. So, as with all things, backup is joined to the whole of the computer infrastructure and remains the foundation of IT.
The book offers practical advice on how to protect your customers, the reputation of your business, and your bottom line. It is designed for pretty much everyone and anyone from the CEO to the backup manager or data capture personnel – or anyone who deals in sensitive or confidential information, that’s everyone, of course.
Backup Exec 12.5 Granular Recovery
One of the really cool functions of BE is the Granular Recovery Technology (GRT). By the way, anytime you need more information on any aspect of BE please see the Backup Exec for Windows Servers Administrator’s Guide. In fact, don’t take my word for it, download from here:
http://seer.entsupport.symantec.com/docs/308400.htm
Just a few tips to help you get the best out of BE’s GRT:
- Review the requirements for staging locations in the Administrator’s Guide.
- You must use a staging location for GRT-enabled jobs in the following scenarios:
- You back up to or restore from a volume with file size limitations.
- You restore granular items from tape.
- You run an off-host backup job.
- You are better off creating a separate backup-to-disk folder specifically for all GRT enabled backup jobs – this really simplifies media management. You will need to manage the IMG media that GRT enabled jobs create differently than other backup-to-disk media.
- Don’t allocate a maximum size for backup-to-disk files. If you do then you are in danger of getting failed jobs because of low disk space. This is because the backup-to-disk file often occupies extra space since GRT information is stored in IMG media and Backup Exec will only create a backup-to-disk file that is as large as the size that you specified.
- If you are using frequent incremental GRT enabled jobs it is a really good idea to run a full GRT enabled backup job every so often. This is because each incremental GRT enabled job requires a small amount of internal storage. If this storage amount increases too much, it can affect system resources. When you run the full GRT enabled backup job, you make available the storage space that has accumulated from incremental jobs.
12.5 delivers GRT for Exchange, Active Directory, SharePoint Server, and SharePoint Services which gives you the ability to recover granular data quickly and efficiently from a single-pass backup. It means, for example, that you do not have to run Exchange mailbox backups to recover granular data, including documents, list items and user attributes, or properties.
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