advice on modules to purchase

[kk20]

You don't seem to have a general section so i'll post here. I have been a happy backupassist user since V6. It has done everything I need and ive used the system "in anger" for a restore and all worked well. The infrastructure I have is changing so im looking at buying BA again but need advice on what I need to purchase.

Previously we had 3 servers, 1xemail, 1xSQL (and user profiles) and 1x general dogsbody server. BA was installed on the email server. Jobs ran sequentially (as BA couldn't run simultaneous jobs). Job 1 backed up user profiles to our NAS, Job 2 backed up SQL, Job 3 backed up emails - all to NAS. This worked (although took all night as they are sequential - not a problem for us). BA did not handle bare metal backups - windows backup did this as our NAS was not able to hold the windows backups due to non-NT permissions. We purchased 1x BA6 1x SQL and 1x exchange module.

New setup is as follows:

2x servers in a failover hyperV host configuration talking to a SAN (MD3200) with addon storage module (MD1200 - packed with 2tb drives). I intend retiring our aging NAS from primary backup to archive and moving the backup destination to the MD1200 via CSV. I will independently script copy these backups "in slow time" to the NAS as a failover (in reality that will be the least of our issues if the SAN dies!) I am happy to continue my current solution of backup with the email guest controlling the show as the backup time will be quicker using the CSV via SAN than the older NAS im using now. I will restructure the backup to use bare metal backups as the NAS will be compliant.

However, should I move the BA to the hyper-v hosts then i'd need to purchase more licenses. How does BA work in a cluster environment? Since I will have HOST1 and HOST2 I assume I would need to purchase twice the licenses or for BA purposes is only ONE host allowed to run (and thus being installed) BA? That means if HOST1 dies then my backup routine dies too (whereas if I staying with the current situation my failover means the guests carry on doing what they do).

For my example with clustering would it be better for me to purchase 1xBA and 1x exchange for the email guest and 1xBA 1xSQL for the SQL (+ profiles) guest and leave the backups to the guests? Can BA do a bare metal backup of the hosts leaving the CSV out of the equation? since the hosts will do little else I am happy just to use windows backup (and not backup the raw CSV)

[Stuart]

Hi there,

Thanks for your detailed explanation.

With the way BackupAssist works, it's only able to back up the 'local' volumes/guests residing locally to that machine when in a CSV environment.
This means that you will need to install BackupAssist on both HOST1 and HOST2 to gain full coverage of the CSV. More reading on CSV can be found at http://www.backupassist.com/education/v ... paper.html.

To perform a bare metal backup; the Hyper-V role will be detected and automatically selected meaning that the CSV will always be included into a bare metal capable backup.

As far as your proposed scenarios; it's much up to what you wish to do. It's feasible to install BackupAssist on the guests as you've outlined (with the add-on products you've mentioned as well).
Our recommended practice is to back up the physical machine and include the guests within that backup for total coverage (and the ability to recover the entire system should it fall over).

I don't see any flaws based on your outline other than if one of the physical machines goes down, you'll need to recover from scratch then you'd perform the restore of the guest using the backups from BackupAssist. This could increase the amount of downtime having to run two recovery processes instead of just the one if you were running BackupAssist on the hosts.

Hopefully this gives you some clarity on making a decision.