Backup Exec 21.1 Best Practices

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Product(s): Backup Exec (21.1)
  1. Backup Exec Best Practices
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Best practices for Backup Exec Simplified Disaster Recovery

Best practices include tips and recommendations to help you use Backup Exec Simplified Disaster Recovery (SDR) effectively. For more information about SDR, see the Backup Exec Administrator's Guide.

The following best practices help you use SDR effectively:
  • Review all of the requirements for SDR in the Backup Exec Administrator's Guide.

  • When you run backup jobs with critical system components selected for Simplified Disaster Recovery preparation, Veritas recommends that you do the following:

    • If you install Backup Exec into an existing SQL instance, use the Backup Exec Agent for Microsoft SQL to periodically back up the SQL system database.

    • Avoid excluding files from the backup using the Selection Details tab.

  • When you make considerable hardware changes to the computer such as if you change the Host Bus Adaptor or network interface card of an SDR protected system, follow these steps:

    • Run an SDR backup of the system to back up the new hardware drivers.

    • Create a new SDR disk or customize the existing SDR disk. This ensures embedding the new drivers into the SDR disk that might be required during SDR restore.

  • Use SDR to perform a test recovery of a non-production computer before a disaster occurs. You can use a virtual environment such as VMware or Hyper-V for test recovery purposes. A test recovery lets you familiarize yourself with the SDR recovery process before it is needed.

  • For disaster recovery purposes, consider the following:

    • The installed hard disks should be the same size or larger than the original.

    • The latest RAID, SCSI, or NIC (if remote) drivers are required.

  • SDR supports recovering the computers that use the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) standard. However, backups of UEFI-based computers cannot be restored to standard BIOS-based computers.

    Note:

    UEFI computers use GPT-style disks. MBR-style disk data cannot be restored to GPT-style disk, and vice versa.

    For the computers that support both UEFI and BIOS firmware types, you must start the computer using UEFI firmware if you backed up the computer in that mode.

  • If you have OEM partitions such as Dell Utility partitions on the system, they are considered part of a computer's critical system components and are backed up and restored as such.

  • Ensure that Backup Exec Database maintenance runs after you configure new storage devices on your Backup Exec server but before you run an SDR-enabled backup job. This ensures that the Backup Exec Database contains the latest storage device configuration details, which can be restored as part of an SDR recovery. You can set the schedule to run Backup Exec Database maintenance by enabling the option Enable Backup Exec database maintenance. Click the Backup Exec button, select Configuration and Settings, and then select Backup Exec Settings. In the left pane, click Database Maintenance.

  • Specify an alternate location where Backup Exec can store the disaster recovery information files. These files contain specific information for each computer that you back up with SDR. The alternate location should be on another computer or on a different physical drive than the default location.