Data protection is one of the most important aspects concerning a secure datacenter and network. Though I do own and operate OCmodshop that isn’t my full time job. I currently work as network analyst and know how essential a reliable backup system is. Veritas is the leader in data protection and has been for quiet a while, so needless to say they know what they are doing when it comes to designing backup software. Veritas Backup Exec 9.1 for Windows servers is compatible with all Microsoft operating systems including Windows Server 2003.
The box itself isn’t something flashy and I don’t think that with software like this it has to be. The back of the box has a lot of good information on it which will let you know if it is compatible with your operating system and hardware.
The media comes packaged in a sealed sleeve so the CDs are not scattered throughout the box. There is also a licensing agreement which is quite lengthy but necessary for software these days with piracy running rampant. 3 CDs come in the box: Veritas Backup Exec 9.1 build #4691.1, ExecView 3.1, and eLearning which is an interactive tutorial software.
ExecView is a web-based monitoring tool that includes a user interface called the ExecView Console. This console will allow you to remotely administrate your server via the web which can be useful if you are out of the office. I took the time to look at the eLearning CD and it is actually quite good. It is only one chapter which covers how to backup and if you want to get the all of the lessons you will have to purchase it separately.
The manual is looks identical to that of the box which is a very nice touch in my opinion. The manual does have a good amount of information to help you with the software. There are two inserts that also come in the box both are for other software titles from Veritas, the first is for DocStore and the other StorageCentral.
I am going to be installing this software on the OCmodshop server which has the below specifications. I will be backing up the system state for the operating system, data from Internet Information Services, Exchange mailboxes, Exchange public folders, and SQL databases.
OCmodshop server hardware
- MSI K7D Master-L
- 2 Athlon MP 1.2GHz
- 2 Golden Gate heatsinks
- 1GB registered ECC PC2100 from Corsair
- Thermaltake Xaser WinGo V8000A
- 470w Vantec Stealth PSU
- Adaptec 19160
- 30GB Western Digital 7200RPM ATA100 hard drive
- 2 Maxtor Atlas III 10000RPM Ultra160 SCSI (RAID 1)
- 52x Liteon CDROM
- GeForce MX440
- HP SureStore 5000 tape drive
OCmodshop server software
- Microsoft Windows 2003 Standard
- Microsoft Exchange 2003 Enterprise
- Microsoft SQL 2000
- Symantec AntiVirus Corporate Edition 8.1
- Symanetc Mail Security for Exchange
The installation wizard starts with a welcome screen like most do. Clicking next takes you to the license agreement which you have to accept before you can proceed to the next step.
There are three options for how you want to install the software. You can install Backup Exec and options which is the actual server. You can install the console which would be installed on another workstation to remotely administer the server. Or you can do a remote installation which pushes agents and media servers to other servers. For now I just went with installing Backup Exec to my server locally. Backup Exec is driven by SQL so you will either need the Microsoft Desktop Engine or SQL 7/2000. Since I am running Microsoft SQL 2000 on my server I am just going to add the BKUPEXEC database to it.
The next screen is where you can put in all of your serial numbers. Backup Exec and the agents have
separate serial numbers. So if you just buy Backup Exec 9.1 and put that serial number in you will only be able to backup Data. If you want to backup Microsoft Exchange for example you would need to
perchance a license for that and add that in here. Once you have done that you would then be able to backup Exchange.
There are quite a few options and agents that you can install with Backup Exec 9.1. I had a Not For Resale serial number which unlocks all of the agrents. I just want everyone to understand that you don’t get all of these options with Backup Exec 9.1. If you want these other options you will need to buy them separately.
For my installation I will be installing tape device drivers, the documentation, the ExecView Communication module, Advanced Open File Option, agent for Microsoft Exchange, and agent for Microsoft SQL. There are plenty of other agents that can be installed to backup just about everything including Oracle, Domino, SAN, and much more. For my server the agents and options that I have chosen to install will backup everything I need.
The service account needs to be setup next which Backup Exec will use to authenticate with. You will put in the desired username, password, and domain that you want to use. You also need to choose how to handle the drivers for your tape device. I chose to go with the Veritas drivers over the Windows 2003 drivers since it is recommended.
Before installing it will give you a summary of what will be installed and where incase you want to change anything. When you click next it will install all of the software, drivers, and setup the database. When it finishes it will take you to the final screen where you can choose to register, view the readme, and create a desktop shortcut.
When you start Backup Exec for the first time you will be prompted with a first time startup wizard. This wizard will walk you through setting up your media sets, device configuration, Backup-to-disk folders, verify device configuration, and setup your logon account. The media set wizard is first up, this wizard will walk you through setting the overwrite protection period and the append period.
You first have to choose to either setup the media now or later. If you choose to continue with setting up the media it will start. If you do not want to setup the media at that time you can always do it later.
Since this is the first time creating a media set there is nothing to edit. You then need to give it some sort of name which can help you easily identify what is being backed up.
You then need to choose how long you want the media to be protected from being overwritten. This will vary depending on your backup scheme and how you intend to do everything. You can then set how long you want media to have the ability to be appended to. This is useful if you ever want to retire media or take it out of circulation at a certain time.
You then get a summary of what you have just setup and are able to either setup more media sets or finish.
After choosing your overwrite protection you want to specify the order of what type of media is overwritten. The default is to overwrite scratch media first but you can choose to overwrite recycled media first as well. Lastly you can set how much overwrite protection you want to use. Full will never allow media to be rewritten, partial will not allow allocated media to be overwritten but will let imported media to be, and none will let anything be overwritten.
The logon account wizard will let you setup accounts to access to the media server. Since this is the first time setting up accounts we need to add a new one and can edit in the future.
To choose the Active Directory account to use just use DOMAIN\Username along with the password for it. You need to be sure whatever account you use for the system logon account has full rights to the domain and Exchange. If you set this up incorrectly you will get errors when trying to backup and the job will fail.
You can make the account common which will allow anyone can access it without a password or restricted which will require a password. In my opinion it is always best to secure everything use a password anywhere that allows you to do so. Of course your situation may be different and you may not need to worry about these security issues. When you click next it will take you to a summary page (not pictured) and then allow you to either add more accounts or finish.
Device Configuration Wizard
Once you finish the account setup it will automatically open the device configuration wizard. This wizard will help you configure your tape device for use with Backup Exec. I currently have a HP SureStore 5000 tape drive connected to my server which can backup 4GB of data. Since I don’t backup a huge amount of data this should be sufficient for a while. In the future I will need to get a larger drive to handle everything or backup to disk.
You can choose to add backup-to-disk folders at this time or do that later. I chose to set those up later and just continued with the wizard. After you verify that everything is setup correctly you can click next and it will take you to the finish screen (not pictured).
After completing the installation and wizards Backup Exec will load and you will be taken to the overview section of the console. The overview section has a lot of information which is very valuable in setting up and learning to use the software. You can also switch to a system summary on the left side which will show you a lot of good information. The job setup section is where you can view jobs, templates, and backup selection lists that have been setup. To the left there is a menu where you can do just about everything converting backing up and restoring. Backing up and restoring will be looked at in more detail later in the review.
In the job monitor section you can view jobs that are active or on hold as well as job history. When a job finishes it will then be put in the job history section where you can view more information about that job. The alerts section holds information such as warning, errors, and other useful information. This is a good place to look if you have problems or need information about what is going on with the software.
There are a lot of reports that you can run to get information about almost anything. When you select a report to run you can customize it to get certain dates or other specific information. When you run the report it will query the database and output your report. You can then read over your results, print them, or save them as a HTML document. These reports could be very helpful especially in a company that wants a lot of information.
The devices section shows the stand-alone drives, robotic libraries, backup-to-disk folders, and cascade drive pools installed. I have added a back-to-disk folder which is on my RAID 1 drive for backups I don’t need on tape. Finally the media section is where you can view all the media that you have. You can view, move, rename, and delete media and media sets from here. You can also see imported media which could be media from previous backups with NT Backup.
Before I get started on the actual backup procedure I wanted to touch a little bit on the different methods and technologies Veritas uses for backing up. There is way too much information to cover in this review so please forgive me for being short on some of these topics.
Hard drive and VSS
Hard drive data is simply backed up so that it can be easily restored in the future. There is not much to say about this since it is just raw data. Windows 2003 Server introduced Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) which essentially takes a snapshot of your system and can be very useful for disaster recovery. Backup Exec 9.1 supports this and allows you to backup the system state, user data, and service state. To read more information on VSS you can visit this link from Microsoft.
Microsoft Exchange
Where you see Microsoft Exchange Mailboxes and Public Folders this is a brick level backup. Backup Exec uses MAPI to connect to each mailbox and public folder and individually back them up. The benefit to doing this is if you lose one item or even a whole mailbox you can restore it without having to restore the entire Exchange information store. This is very beneficial because it saves time and allows you to restore an individual Email. The information store is what Exchange uses to store basically all of its information. This needs to be backed up even if you are doing a brick level backup incase of a disaster. If Exchange needs to be reinstalled from scratch the brick level will not be of much use.
Microsoft SQL
Microsoft SQL has the ability to backup databases using the Enterprise Manager and can be scheduled to run jobs. The benefit to having it within backup Exec is you have everything in one backup and can use a single backup program. Of course you could always schedule SQL to backup then backup that backup with Backup Exec but
that’s way too many backups as you can tell.
When you click the backup button from the console it will bring up a new backup job. The selection list name is automatically added but you can change it to whatever you like. The selection list is where you will choose all of the data you want to backup. If you select the entire level of a structure it will be indicated by a check mark. If you exclude anything from a
section the levels above it will have a backslash in them. I have chosen to backup some information from E:, some Microsoft Exchange Mailboxes, all of the Microsoft Public Folders, all of the Microsoft Information Store, some of Microsoft SQL Server, and some Shadow Copy Components.
The resource order defines the order of what will be backed up. In most cases this probably wont matter but you may be in a situation where you need things backed up in a certain order. The resource credentials section shows which account is assigned to the different parts of the backup. Certain accounts may not have access to certain resources on your network so you need to be sure to use the correct one. If you end up getting permissions errors this would be one of the first places you would look.
Within the device and media section you can choose which device you want to backup to, for this backup I am going to use my hard drive. You can also assign it a media set, family name, whether to append or overwrite the existing data, password protect, and a few other options. The general section is where you can name the job, set its priority, give it a description, choose the method of backup you want to use (full, copy, differential, etc) and choose if you want to verify when complete. This general section is about all the options you would get with NT backup so you can see already that Veritas is much more powerful.
The advanced properties allow you to choose some more options such as remote agent priority, open file option, and a few others things. Pre/Post commands allows you to run commands before or after the job completes which may be necessary for your environment.
Advanced Open File Option is a great technology from Veritas. Normally if a file is open it will not be backed up since it is in use. Three challenges to IT administrators are incomplete backups, minimal or no backup window, and maintaining data integrity. If a file is open it will not be backed up which means the backup will not be complete.
Many businesses do not have time to take down the network for backups which means there needs to be some way to backup files. If a file is open and changing during backup it will likely be corrupted rendering it useless. With Advanced Open File Option these three obstacles can be easily overcome. I don’t have time to fully delve into this subject but you can read this white paper for more information. The SQL options allow you to chose the backup method and if you want to run a consistency check before and/or after the backup.
For the Exchange options you can choose the backup method for the information store and mailboxes. You can also choose the method of backup for IBM Domino.
The NetWare section allows you to backup compressed files in decompressed form. The network section allows you to configure your network adapter for use with a Storage Area Network.
A nice administrative tool included is a notification feature. I have set this job up so it emails me when it finishes letting me know how the job went. You can also set this up to page you if you still carry around a pager. Last is scheduling where you can choose the run the job immediately, at a certain date/time, or on a schedule. You can also submit the job on hold if you don’t want it starting right away. If you don’t want the job running too long you can set it to cancel if it runs for longer than a certain amount of time.
I left out a few sections from the restore properties because they are the same or very similar as the backup properties. From the selections section you can see the different sets of media by date and time. So if you want to restore something from E drive from the 18th you go to 8/18/2004 under E: and browse for the folder or file you need to restore. The restore media is automatically added to these backups which makes things a lot easier. In the device section you can choose where you want to restore to.
A great feature for restoring is file redirection which allows you to restore your file to an alternate location than the original one. This is extremely useful if you don’t want to overwrite the current file or if you want to restore something to check it first. The SQL redirection is also a great option allowing you to restore a database to another database or different server. This can also be done in Microsoft SQL’s Enterprise Manager but again it is nice to have everything in one place. I personally find this easier to use than the Enterprise Manager as well having used Enterprise Manager in the past to redirect databases.
Exchange also has the ability to redirect which is incredibly useful. Having the ability to do a brick level backup is great and being able to redirect the restore is even better. An example of how this would be very helpful is if a user migrates their mailbox to a new one and the original mailbox. An older backup would be from the original mailbox and would normally want to be restored to the same one.
Without this option you would probably end up recreating the original mailbox, restoring, and moving the item. With this redirection you can simply point it from the old mailbox to the new one and be done quickly. You can also redirect with Sharepoint Portal which I don’t use on my server.
This general section is quite similar to the backup one however I wanted to add it since it is a more important one. Here you can name the job, set the priority, and configure some other options. The advanced properties give you many different options for restoring things such as disk quote data, Terminal Service database, and Windows NT 4 registry.
The SQL section allows you to set options for how you want to restore the database. These options can be quite helpful for those database administrators out there. I work daily with Exchange 2003 so I know how valuable some of these options are. There are a few things I really like about the Exchange section, the first being having the ability to recreate the user accounts and mailboxes. Using this would make restoring a user much easier if they are accidentally deleted. I also like that it will mount the database after restoring so you don’t have to do that manually in Exchange System Manager.
The Domino section allows you to restore the items with or without the original ID. The NetWare section allows you to restore volume restrictions with the data which is great. Without this feature you would have to go back and assign rights to your volumes and files.
I selected all of the items I wanted to backup on my server and set all of the options that I wanted to use. I selected all of the OCmodshop website information, Exchange mailboxes, Exchange public folders, Exchange information store, OCmodshop database, and shadow copy components. Once the backup begins you can it put into the job monitor under current job.
If you double click the active job it will show you information about the backup like the transfer rate and amount of data backed up. When the job completes it will be moved the job history where you can view all of details for that job. My backup completed successfully in 11 minutes 4 seconds and backed up 2.72GB of data.
Restoring
I then deleted a small directory from my server called !info then went into Backup Exec to restore it. Restoring files is just as simple as backing them up, I simply went to the media set I wanted to restore from and selected the directory I deleted. When the restore job starts it is visible in the current jobs section like a backup job would be. When the restore job finishes it is placed in the job history where you can view the details and get specific information.
Benchmarking
I wanted to do a little comparison between Backup Exec 9.1 and NT backup to see which was faster. I used both programs to backup the installation files for Backup Exec 9.1 which totaled 595MB. I set both programs to do a normal backup without any compression and to not verify the backup when complete.
I ran Backup Exec first and it finished in 2 minutes 44 seconds I then ran NT Backup which completed in 3 minutes 21 seconds. So with both programs backing up the same amount of data with the same options Backup Exec finished 37 seconds faster than NT Backup.
Conclusion
I have used NT Backup in the past for my OCmodshop backup needs which worked fine but was lacking in areas I needed. I am very impressed with Backup Exec because of it’s functionality, options, and speed. With the ability to backup data, Exchange, SQL, and the system state all with one program and all in a single instance the time saved is enormous.
Not only does the consolidated backup save time but if I ever need to restore anything that also will be much faster and give me more flexibility on how I want to restore. I administrate Backup Exec 9.1 where I work and we use it to backup data, Exchange, NetWare, and the system state of many servers.
I have pushed remote agents to other servers including NetWare ones with ease. I am also able to administrate the Backup Exec server from my desk so I don’t have to go into the data center. As you can probably tell by now I couldn’t be more pleased with Backup Exec 9.1 and am going to give it a 10/10 and award it the OCmodshop Seal of Approval.
Veritas has made it quite clear that they are the best in the backup software industry. I really want to thank everyone at Veritas for making this review possible, if you are currently looking for a backup software look no further.
Pros
- Has the ability to backup just about anything
- Advanced Open File Option ensures 100% backup
- Faster than NT backup
- Ability to do a brick level backup of Exchange
- Backup and restore jobs are simple to setup and manage
- Ability to push agents to remote servers
- Many setup and configuration wizards provided
- Powered by Microsoft SQL database
- Great administrative features and options
- Support for Volume Shadow Copy
Cons
- None