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Topic starter
We've made the decision that Backup Exec just cannot work correctly. Horrible UI, Customer Service is bad, and when you need a restore, you better hope that you have another backup in your back pocket.
We're going with AppAssure from Dell because it has reviews that are better than others, will take care of our Disaster Recover (DR) requirements, and will take care of our environment.
At this point, we've bought the product and a server for it.
I'll try to remember to update this Topic as I install and use the product.
Posted : November 12, 2013 3:26 am
If you need any assistance feel free to reach out to me.
It has been some time since we switched form Backup Exec over to Appassure. It was pretty painless to set up and get backups running.
Posted : November 12, 2013 4:47 am
Topic starter
Thanks!
Posted : November 12, 2013 5:23 am
Topic starter
Well, I've received everything, and here's what I've done and learned:
I got an R320 1U server from Dell, configured with an 80GB system drive, and leaving 3+TB free on the RAID 6 configuration. The system has a six-core 2.4GHz processor, and five 1.1TB drives, with three disk slots spare.
I started up the machine, configured it, and play-installed AppAssure. Unfortunately, I didn't have a 3TB disk partition waiting for me, just a 1.9TB and a 1.3TB partitions. What gives??? Anyway, I installed AppAssure - what a honey of a process - really!
I easily set up four Hyper-V clients, and off AppAssure went!!! Backing up, and then updated every hour! Easy-Peasy! I think I'm really going to like this app!
Meanwhile, all but two brain cells were saying, "You can figure out this disk thing, Dave!" The other two brain cells were saying, "Call Dell."
I called Dell. I had to reset to use UEFI instead of BIOS boot mode, then re-initialize the RAID, then reload Server 2012. Like I said, I play-installed AppAssure.
So NOW I have a 121GB system drive, and 2.99TB for my AppAssure local store. Now we're talkin'!
I bought AppAssure installation services from Dell, so now that I have Some Clue as to what we bought and how to use it, I can learn from the pros.
Posted : November 22, 2013 4:23 am
Glad to hear you are making some progress and liking it! there are some definite weird things that Appassure does / doesn't do.
For instance you cannot have a local disk repository and a shared folder repository.
Apparently there is no bandwidth throttle and during certain operations such as replication or virtual standby you can bog down your network if it is not up to the task.
My main problem right now is that the Agents will decide not to start sometimes after a server reboot and there is no monitoring or alerting mechanism for this, so you have to visually verify all agents are running and backing up.
Otherwise AppAssure has made my life so much easier, these backups really are as close to set and forget as you can get with a backup system.
Posted : November 22, 2013 4:44 am
Topic starter
Well, I can tell you that from my glimpses of AppAssure, it is way way better than BackupExec 12.
My current thinking is to bring up my servers locally, one at a time, and then after a week of so, cut a drive to get the remote built.
Posted : November 22, 2013 5:38 am
Topic starter
And... Thank you for the bandwidth heads-up. I just configured our firewall to throttle the traffic to/from AppAssure!
ie, I pressed the Easy button.
Posted : November 22, 2013 6:42 am
Well I'm not 100% on the actually problem, as I have not actually run into any myself. The guys over at support are good but there are only a few of them right now so it is sometime hard to get in touch with some one.
Good luck!
Posted : November 22, 2013 6:47 am
dnlustig said:
And... Thank you for the bandwidth heads-up. I just configured our firewall to throttle the traffic to/from AppAssure!
ie, I pressed the Easy button.
How well did that work for you? I think I tried that but it still punched my system pretty hard (network, or system, not sure). However, I upgraded my servers and all is well now.
Mike Zavolas
Tallahassee Neurological Clinic
Posted : November 27, 2013 5:52 am
Topic starter
To tell you the truth, I haven't implemented the remote store yet. I'm still getting the machines on the service locally.
Posted : December 4, 2013 4:52 am
whatever you do keep the AppAssure core server as close to the repository as you can on the network, it will greatly increase your speeds on everythign it does.
Our repository was on a SAN about 3-4 hops from the Core server, everything was slow, rollups, backups, just loading the webpage to check on things.
Moved the Core server so it could connect directly to the repository and have never been happier!
Posted : December 4, 2013 5:02 am
Topic starter
Our Repository is Direct Attach! Warp Speed!!!!!
Posted : December 4, 2013 5:24 am
joshua.tilson said:
whatever you do keep the AppAssure core server as close to the repository as you can on the network, it will greatly increase your speeds on everythign it does.
Our repository was on a SAN about 3-4 hops from the Core server, everything was slow, rollups, backups, just loading the webpage to check on things.
Moved the Core server so it could connect directly to the repository and have never been happier!
I just moved my to a remote site (Main box, not a remote store). Works great so far but I did tweak QoS to make the Appassure traffic lowest priority.
Mike Zavolas
Tallahassee Neurological Clinic
Posted : January 14, 2014 3:21 am
