Backup Central

Hello All,

We are in the market to test out some different backup solutions and we are looking for some recommendations. I have read several threads on this forum asking the same/similar question, but I keep seeing Backup Exec and ARCServe. Unfortunately those are the two products I'm trying to find alternatives to!

Backup Exec has treated us well since the old v8.6 days. However, we keep seeing issues with the software and have noticed a certain fragility to it (issues with media sets, problematic jobs, the v11 GRT nonsense, etc). It has a great feature-set, a decent price point for the SBS and regular server editions and is more stable than most of the other applications we have run across. The flip-side is to get extended features on non-SBS servers you need to spend almost $700 per agent to get the thing running! And ArcServe's price model does not seem much better.

We would not mind the price if we felt a little better about the product. Acronis has some excellent bare-metal restore options, but their products do not offer much in brick-level restores (namely for Exchange). Products like Yosemite and Retrospect among others seem a little hoaky...they either need to run from the desktop or offer limited reporting and notification options.

Does anyone have any alternatives they can suggest? Some of the key components we would be looking for:
- Email notifications
- The ability to run the application as a service
- Exchange and SQL agents with brick-level restore capability
- Relatively easy configuration / deployment options

Any advice is welcome.

Thanks in advance,

Aaron

IMHO, you're contemplating a major sin - brick level backups of
Exchange haven't been recommended by any Exchange MVP or MSFT staffer
that I've heard from in literally years and a couple of major
versions.

You also don't mention how much data you're backing up.

For smaller installations, you might take a look at Ultrabac - www.ultrabac.com

For larger installations, IBM's Tivoli Storage Manager is worth a look.

Kurt

On Tue, Nov 11, 2008 at 12:50 PM, AGitlin
<backups-forum < at > backupcentral.com> wrote:

Hello All,

We are in the market to test out some different backup solutions and we are looking for some recommendations. I have read several threads on this forum asking the same/similar question, but I keep seeing Backup Exec and ARCServe. Unfortunately those are the two products I'm trying to find alternatives to!

Backup Exec has treated us well since the old v8.6 days. However, we keep seeing issues with the software and have noticed a certain fragility to it (issues with media sets, problematic jobs, the v11 GRT nonsense, etc). It has a great feature-set, a decent price point for the SBS and regular server editions and is more stable than most of the other applications we have run across. The flip-side is to get extended features on non-SBS servers you need to spend almost $700 per agent to get the thing running! And ArcServe's price model does not seem much better.

We would not mind the price if we felt a little better about the product. Acronis has some excellent bare-metal restore options, but their products do not offer much in brick-level restores (namely for Exchange). Products like Yosemite and Retrospect among others seem a little hoaky...they either need to run from the desktop or offer limited reporting and notification options.

Does anyone have any alternatives they can suggest? Some of the key components we would be looking for:
- Email notifications
- The ability to run the application as a service
- Exchange and SQL agents with brick-level restore capability
- Relatively easy configuration / deployment options

Any advice is welcome.

Thanks in advance,

Aaron

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Hi Kurt,

Thanks for the prompt reply! I will take a look at Tivoli and UltraBac and see what they can do for us.

I wanted to pick your brain a little bit about the brick-level backup. We wouldn't use it for disaster recovery purposes; that would be done with a standard store backup. The brick-level would be used for the instance that Bob accidentally deleted an email that he needed and we had to retrieve it. The v12 edition of BackupExec supports a *functional granular backup of the IS which I know removes the need for a brick level for this scenario. How else would I be able to retrieve those emails without the brick-level in a pre-v12 or alternative software environment?

Thanks again - also, anyone else who has some suggestions, I'm open to them!

-A

For lost emails, you'd be much better served with an Exchange archival
product. The good ones have self-service for end-users, and they have
many other benefits as well, including reduction or elimination of the
need for PST files, reduction of the load on the Exchange server
because mailboxes can be made smaller, and facilitation of e-discovery
in case of a lawsuit, thereby avoiding sanctions from the bench.

I won't pretend to be able to give recommendations on that front, but
I'm going to be considering the Sunbelt Software product, among
others, when I get some of my other projects done. Mimosa is another
product that I've heard of with a good reputation, and there are a
host of others.

On Wed, Nov 12, 2008 at 2:28 PM, AGitlin
<backups-forum < at > backupcentral.com> wrote:

Hi Kurt,

Thanks for the prompt reply! I will take a look at Tivoli and UltraBac and see what they can do for us.

I wanted to pick your brain a little bit about the brick-level backup. We wouldn't use it for disaster recovery purposes; that would be done with a standard store backup. The brick-level would be used for the instance that Bob accidentally deleted an email that he needed and we had to retrieve it. The v12 edition of BackupExec supports a *functional granular backup of the IS which I know removes the need for a brick level for this scenario. How else would I be able to retrieve those emails without the brick-level in a pre-v12 or alternative software environment?

Thanks again - also, anyone else who has some suggestions, I'm open to them!

-A

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If you'd like to join the discussion, go to http://www.backupcentral.com and get
a user id. Then subscribe to one or more of our mailing lists or follow the
discussions in one of our forums (http://www.backupcentral.com/phpBB2).

Hi,

I have been through a one-on-one demo with the folks at Sunbelt re: the Exchange Archiver solution and am very impressed with how well it works. I do see the value in a product like that. We've also looked into Symantec Vault and some others, but for the price point, Exchange Archiver seems to be one of the best.

Good luck, and thanks again for all of the input!