Physical and Virtual Server Back Up Software

[djameson]

We have been using Backup Exec for several years and although it works, have not been satisfied like most of you. We are currently on BE 2012. We are looking to move to something new that handles virtual servers better. What do you use and what suggestions might you have for this? We have looked at Inmage, Dell Appassure, and VRanger. Has anyone had any experience with these?

Majority Windows 2008 R2 servers, 3 Linux servers
Only about 5 physical servers now and roughly 30 virtual

Thanks for your time and suggestions.

[m25man]

Everybody here is going to tell you to use Veeam or DPM (DPM as the license cost is silly if your on a school agreement).

The Veeam Free version has to be your first stop, if only to see what it can do, if it works for you then try the big boys version.

We have 12 servers on a 3 node Hyper-V cluster switched from BE to Veeam and never looked back Im guessing most here will say the same.

[TMODAlpha]

Sorry to jump in on this. I've looked at Veeam free to work alongside our BE we currently have. We have RDX drives with 500gb disks which backs up directly from inside a virtual Windows 2008 file server. To back up the VMs that are on the SAN would need TBs. Where do you guys using Veeam put your backups? Sounds like a daft question. Although our SAN has enough redundancy for disk failure, I'd hate to have to setup all the virtuals again and restore from the BE backup sets.

[glennda]

What I normally do with veeam is backup to secondary storage like NAS devices, We then put these backups on tapes.

[TMODAlpha]

What I normally do with veeam is backup to secondary storage like NAS devices, We then put these backups on tapes.

Thanks thought that might be the case.

[glennda]

Thanks thought that might be the case.

from a hint given by one of the Veeam guys via twitter its coming just wouldn't say when!

[penfold]

What I normally do with veeam is backup to secondary storage like NAS devices, We then put these backups on tapes.

I know it's a bit late, but as it's what I'm trying to do I didn't raise a new thread.... This is what we are trying to do now and at present we have some backup jobs created and I want to test the recovery side of things by following the procedure of restoring from tape. Ideally what we want to be able to do is in the case of DR take our backups of the VM and put them onto a new version of veeam and import the backup and get the VM up and running on a different site(due to a fire for example). If I wanted to test this in theory without going to the new site, can I copy the backup folder containing all backups onto a portable HDD, download the free version of VMware & Veeam and import the backup onto that and restore the VM from the backup? Or do I need to export the backup files to be able to import them properly?

[glennda]

I know it's a bit late, but as it's what I'm trying to do I didn't raise a new thread.... This is what we are trying to do now and at present we have some backup jobs created and I want to test the recovery side of things by following the procedure of restoring from tape. Ideally what we want to be able to do is in the case of DR take our backups of the VM and put them onto a new version of veeam and import the backup and get the VM up and running on a different site(due to a fire for example). If I wanted to test this in theory without going to the new site, can I copy the backup folder containing all backups onto a portable HDD, download the free version of VMware & Veeam and import the backup onto that and restore the VM from the backup? Or do I need to export the backup files to be able to import them properly?

Yes but you will also need a copy of the license file to install into the product - AFAIK Veeam free will not talk to ESXI or Hyper-V

[penfold]

OK, so it is possible in theory So if I now wanted to try it by taking a copying the VM Backups to HDD could I then delete the backups from our live setup and then import the backup and restore a VM to prove it works? I have a test VM that I can play with and it doesn't matter if it doesn't work, but we would like to test it rather than hope it works if we ever need to do it!

Can I:
1) Create backup of VM
2) Copy backup to Portble HDD
3) Make changes on the VM
4) Delete the backup on Veeam
5) Import the backup from Portable HDD
6) Restore from backup

I thought I read somewhere that playing with the backup files in Veeam is not a good idea and it is better to delete jobs within Veeam.

[glennda]

OK, so it is possible in theory So if I now wanted to try it by taking a copying the VM Backups to HDD could I then delete the backups from our live setup and then import the backup and restore a VM to prove it works? I have a test VM that I can play with and it doesn't matter if it doesn't work, but we would like to test it rather than hope it works if we ever need to do it!

Can I:
1) Create backup of VM
2) Copy backup to Portble HDD
3) Make changes on the VM
4) Delete the backup on Veeam
5) Import the backup from Portable HDD
6) Restore from backup

I thought I read somewhere that playing with the backup files in Veeam is not a good idea and it is better to delete jobs within Veeam.

You need to be careful with it but in theory it is possible. i would install veeam on a workstation and test importing the backups and restoring

I wouldn't delete any data!

[penfold]

You need to be careful with it but in theory it is possible. i would install veeam on a workstation and test importing the backups and restoring

I wouldn't delete any data!

Thats why I have a dummy server for me to play with

In order to do this I will need to install VMware & Veeam onto another machine (workstation as you suggested) and use our existing licence file to allow me to import the backups and then restore? Am I able to do this with a licence file or does it need to go online to register?

[glennda]

Thats why I have a dummy server for me to play with

In order to do this I will need to install VMware & Veeam onto another machine (workstation as you suggested) and use our existing licence file to allow me to import the backups and then restore? Am I able to do this with a licence file or does it need to go online to register?

Nope it shouldn't do - if it complains sign up for a free trial and get a 60 day key