Backup Exec FAQ

A common source of confusion is the upgrade from 10 to 10d. 10d is in reality just version 10.1. The "d" was added (probably by the Symantec Marketing Department) to signify the backup to disk capabilities, which were already present in 10.0.

The upgrade from 10 to 10d/10.1 is therefore free, and you can use your existing license keys.

The installation files for 10.1 can be found at http://seer.entsupport.symantec.com/docs/279332.htm  

Backup administrators are always looking for more performance. Even if your backup fits in to your backup window now, it might not in a years time when the company has grown. It's better to ensure your backups are as fast as possible before they become problematic.

Servers running DFS and Windows 2003 R2 experience very slow backups, and sometimes no backups at all.

There are two ways to backup Microsoft Exchange Server - offline backups and online backups.

Backups always seem to take too long. There are several things you can check or change to speed up your backup. This article will deal with general checks you can make.

When using Backup Exec to back up Veritas Cluster Server nodes, there are certain steps you need to take to ensure that your data is fully protected. Luckily Backup Exec has a feature to make this slightly easier.

The "Installed Updates" feature (and the link to Veritas Update) doesn't always show the latest updates available.  For example, if you have Service Pack 2, and Service Pack 3 has been released, update may not show that as an option.

Deploying the v9 agent through Group Policy is easy, v10 & v11d isn't.

Not every Backup Exec Agent can talk to every server. Here's the combinations that will work.

64 bit CPUs have been out for a while, but 64 bit Windows was only released in April 2005 (http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2005/apr05/04-25Winx64LaunchPR.mspx). BE 10 was released in January 2005, so predates it. As a result, Backup Exec 10 (including 10d) are not supported on 64 bit Windows for the media server.

One of the most common misunderstandings with Backup Exec is how media sets work. It's common for people to think that by assigning a job to a media set, the media from that set will be used for the job. In actual fact, this assignment means that any media used in the job will be added or moved to this media set.