Symantec announced Backup Exec 2010 R3 earlier this month, and there are a number of improvements and enhancements to the product. If deduplication and further enhancments and integration with VMware vSphere 4.1 are on your list, then you are in luck. Below is quick break down of the major take aways from Symantec’s latest release.
#1 Deduplication Option has new features:
* Much improvement has been in the deduplication ratios for GRT-enabled backups, especially VMware
* Capacity of deduplicated data now supports 32TB
* Performance optimization as less CPU resources are needed via the improved automatic compression of deduplicated data
* Enhanced flexiblity with deduplication folder and managability (easily associate with another media server & easily change dedupe folder to another drive)
* Improved management of disk space and media
#2 Backup Exec Agent for VMware Virtual Infrastructure has new features:
* Improved deduplication ratios
* GRT of VMware backups now includes support for file and folder data recovery from Guest OS including (Dynamic Disks, Extended partitions, and Disks with software RAID enabled)
* Support for multiple types of GRT: VMware, Active Directory, SharePoint, and Exchange
* Includes support for VMware’s vStorage API (version 1.2.1), and includes the following features (Hotadd transport method for virtualized BE 2010 R3 servers running on vSphere 4.1, NBDSSL transport mode for encrypted backups of VMware VMs across the LAN, and Windows 2008 guest VM backup support without the need for Backup Exec Remote Agent (BERA) to be installed on the guest OS).
* Improved SAN backup support of functionality for VMware ESX 3.5
#3 Backup Exec Management Plugin for VMware vSphere
New plugin provides consolidated status view of all VMs and includes many useful and handy items:
* Last backup status
* Last backup run time
* Next schedule backup run time
* Backup job name
*Backup method
* Unprotected machine view
* Drilldown directly into the Backup Exec job logs
This plugin should ease the administrative burden considerably and give vSphere Administrators a better idea of the status of their VMs moving forward.
#4 Backup Exec Archiving Option has new features:
* End users can now access thier their archived email messages (read-only access) directly through Microsoft Outlook via enahancements to the Virtual Vault
* Supports archiving from Exchange Server 2010 and Microsoft Database Availability Groups (DAG)
* Multiple index locations are now supported
This release also marks the end of support for a number of legacy solutions:
* ESX 2.0
* SQL Server 7
* SharePoint 2001
* Exchange 2000
* Oracle 8i
* Media Server Support for Windows 2000 & Small Business Server 2000
* Tivoli Storage Manager
As always, Symantec has a FREE TRAIL available. Currently the trial has a duration of 60 days. I recommend spinning this up immediately in your test environment and checking it out by backing up a few test machines before rolling into production.
To learn more, please go HERE.
