Sep 29 2008 6:24AM GMT
Posted by: Raj Perumal
Symantec,
Virtualization,
VMWare,
virtual machines,
backup,
Microsoft,
virtual,
Backup Exec,
Hyper-V,
ESX,
ESXi,
Symantec Backup Exec 12.5,
backup agents,
windows agent
So this just in. Just in case if you were still wondering if there was anything to the virtualization mantra that is being constantly recited through the IT community, Symantec has announced that you no longer need to purchase individual Symantec Backup Exec agents for each guest OS that exists on one physical box. Instead you only need to license once per Hypervisor with Symantec Backup Exec 12.5.
That’s right, you heard me, one agent, multiple virtual servers, one physical box. Can I get a booyah!?!?! I told you this competition would be great for consumers! Microsoft breaking into Hyper-V to compete with VMWare has been great for the market. First VMWare’s ESXi becomes free, then Microsoft relaxes their licensing restrictions in relation to VMWare, and now Symantec makes it cheaper for businesses to use Symantec’s backup software if they virtualize.
Now that’s what I’m talking about! It’s about time companies stopped penalizing people for virtualizing and instead start encouraging it! This is a great move and I commend Symantec for taking this step. Symantec Backup Exec is probably one of the most popular pieces of backup software out there and this announcement will definitely help push business in what I believe is the right direction towards virtualization.
I hope this war doesn’t end for a long time, because the longer it plays out, the more benefits to the consumer it will bring! You can read more about the announcement here.
-RP
Jun 27 2008 3:56PM GMT
Posted by: Raj Perumal
disaster recovery,
imaging software,
backup,
Ghost,
Acronis,
Acronis True Image Echo Server for Windows
Hello again! Today I wanted to talk a little bit about the value of imaging servers. What I mean by this is using a software product like Ghost or Acronis to take an exact image of the disk partitions so you have a nice “point in time” copy of a server.
You see there are times when you need to perform maintenance or patching to a server in order to fix something but you might be unsure of what the outcome will be. I have seen lots of small patches or upgrades bring down a server to the point where the technician needed to reinstall the operating system and restore data from backup. Normal backups are great, however they typically take a lot longer to restore which in the end causes more down time for the client. If you just take an image of a server then you can easily restore that image in a short amount of time if whatever you did causes an issue.
I have been on tech support calls with certain software vendors before where the technician on the line has told me to do certain things and that it shouldn’t affect anything. Then I make the recommended change and it instead blew up everything! If it wasn’t for the image I took beforehand I would have been faced with a long recovery time.
My personal favourite imaging software is Acronis True Image Echo Server for Windows. I’ve used it many times for imaging servers.
-RP
