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.
