Server 2008 R2 & Backup Exec

[FN-GM]

Hi,

I am just wondering what the situation is with Server 2008 R2 and Backup Exec?

I have heard that some people said they have got version 12.5 working with Server 2008 R2 after installing updates. Has anyone achieved this?

Thanks

[DrCheese]

Not supported
The server part of 12.5 will never be supported on 2008 R2, but the agent part might be.
Backup Exec 12.5 on Server 2008 R2 RTM x64 errors | Symantec Connect

Currently, there are no plans to support Backup Exec 12.5 on WIndows 2008 R2. In future, they might release a hotfix for supporting remote backups of Windows 2008 R2.

Again it's another piece of software you could probably force to install if you really wanted to, but do you really want to trust something so important to a hacked up install?

[Rick2134]

Hi,

I am just wondering what the situation is with Server 2008 R2 and Backup Exec?

I have heard that some people said they have got version 12.5 working with Server 2008 R2 after installing updates. Has anyone achieved this?

Thanks

Symantec are not going to support R2 and no future plans to. I would take a wide birth of R2 especially with hyper-v so many bugs! Argh nightmare!

[FN-GM]

Its going to be on a test server so i was wondering if anyone has forced it on?

[Rick2134]

Its going to be on a test server so i was wondering if anyone has forced it on?

I tried it on hyper-v and everything fell over, Thank You Microsoft! Bin R2

[FN-GM]

I tried it on hyper-v and everything fell over, Thank You Microsoft! Bin R2

I actually blame Symantec. It was the same with Server 2008 with Backup exec 11. Also the same with Symantec antivirus being behind and not working on the latest versions of windows.

[TheCrust]

We're fairly disillusioned with Symantec over this too.

We upgraded a file server to 2008 R2 at the end of the summer, then discovered the one thing we hadn't tested with the RC beforehand was our Backup Exec client - we just assumed (stupidly!) that it worked on 2008 so should be fine on R2.

Symantec's refusal to support Server 2008 under 11d forced us to move to 12.5 a year ago, and their apparent refusal to support R2 under 12.5 will force us to move again - only this time we're looking for an alternative product.

We've had enough - while Backup Exec itself works acceptably and does all that we ask of it in the main, we like to make good use of our schools agreement and Symantec seem to be make it unneccessarily hard every time there is a new server release from Microsoft.

We're currently looking at ARCServe r12.5 - this apparently supports 2008 R2 pretty well out-the-box already with only a hotfix to apply to it - that's more than Symantec gives us!

Anyone else thinking of such drastic action?

[jamesfed]

We are binning Symentic but for diffrent reasons, at the moment we are looking at HPs Data Protector Express.

[IanT]

take alook at Microsofts....Backup and Recovery product................MS Data Protection Manager 2007................2010 is in beta I believe.

[DrCheese]

A little bit more info today, it's not from a symantec employee tho.
Install Remote Agent on w2k8 R2 Core | Symantec Connect

Limited Remote Agent support fot 2008 R2 will be provided voa a Hotfix which is due for release mid to late October. This support wil only cover functionality that is already present in Wondows 2008 (pre R2)

Full support for Media Server installation and new functionality will be provided as part of the BE 2010 release

I guess they are using the GA/retail date as the reason for taking so long with agent support, it's kinda annoying for companies to do this tho given that they know their key customers have it had it for ages.

[ZeroHour]

+1 for MS DPM, we have 2007 here just installed this summer and its so cheap it made licensing symantecs latest version a joke at £1000's
It does need to be proded now and then but generally its ace and it also supports the "Previous Versions" tab that XP+ has remotly allowing a simple way for staff to restore stuff fairly instantly. Its continuous backups so you dont really have a backup window to worry about either. All round good and now we have agent lics for all our servers since its so cheap. BE meant we had to do backups from some servers to a BE backed up server = mess...

[DrCheese]

Backup Exec 2010 beta is released
Backup Exec 2010 - Deduplication Early Adopter Program | Symantec Connect

Supports R2 as a media server and exchange 2010. It is however a BETA so it's entirely up to you if you want to chance it. I'm not that crazy :P

[DMcCoy]

You can use 12.5 with the recent hotfix. Only the agent is compatible, not the media server. The updated agent won't install remotely as it has an error, also when you copy the agent folder to the local machine to install it you MUST copy it to the root of a drive as the temporary location to install from, anything else is too long and the patch list gets truncated which misses the R2 patch causing it to refuse to install due to not being a supported os

When finally installed the patched version seems to work well enough on R2. do be aware that 2008 and R2 are slower to backup do to having to use shadow copy agents over the other (considerably faster) methods.

[DrCheese]

The agent doesn't include exchange 2010 support, only the usually BEWS stuff.

[zag]

So how does Microsoft Data Protection work to backup Exchange, SQL server and files? Is it as easy as backupexec?

I just found out we get this program for free under our agreement :P

Could be interested in this as I have the same licensing issues with Backupexec (although it is a great program).