Product Reviews

Veritas has always been quick off the mark updating its backup software to keep in step with the latest operating systems. Backup Exec was the first to offer full NetWare 5 support and now the NT version is fully compatible with Windows 2000. This brings support for Active Directory, Distributed File System and NTFS new file structures, and it can protect features such as System State components, disk quota data and removable storage data.

Installation starts at the server, where Backup Exec loads as a group of seven services that look after areas such as the tape drives, job scheduling, notification and Agent monitoring. A management console for local access can also be installed and, for remote administration, the console can be loaded on other NT/2000 systems as well. Backup Exec kicks off by setting overwrite protection levels to protect against media being overwritten. This can be very useful, as it will stop tapes that are part of a rotation strategy from being accidentally erased if they're loaded at the wrong time. Virus protection is also on offer but this is limited to NT/2000 systems, so you'll need to have separate anti-virus software installed on other systems.

There are two prerequisites for securing Windows 2000 systems - they can only be backed up via a Windows 2000 backup server and each one must have the Agent Accelerator service installed. You can use network shares, but Veritas warns against this as reliable backup and restore operations can't be guaranteed. The Agents can be loaded quickly from the main backup server as the Backup Exec options installer automatically scans the chosen domain and displays all Windows 2000 systems for easy selection. I found that remotely loading the Agent service on a Windows 2000 Professional system only took a couple of minutes. Client Agents for Windows 95 and 98 are included as standard with all versions of Backup Exec. Windows 95 users can install the embedded Agent service from the Network Properties but this is an older version with limited features. The latest version includes a status window that can be selected from the System Tray to show the progress of any backup jobs currently

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running.

Standalone backup jobs are easy to create and the advanced scheduler now offers a Calendar view, date exclusion facilities and the option to select a time window during which a job may start. For tape rotation systems, you might want to use Backup Exec's Assistant as it streamlines this process nicely. It doesn't provide any predefined strategies but I still found it fairly simple to set up and use. Once started, Backup Exec will manage the entire strategy leaving you to load the tapes it requests. File grooming is an option but it isn't particularly sophisticated, as it can't be integrated into an existing backup strategy. All you can do is create a standalone job that will delete the selected files after they've been successfully secured to tape.

On a dual-Pentium II/400 system running Windows 2000 Advanced Server, the performance for an HP DAT40 tape drive was similar to that under Windows NT 4. Average backup and verify speeds of 210Mbytes/min and 212Mbytes/min were marginally faster than the results achieved in the last tape drive benchtest (see enterprise, issue 64). An Exabyte Mammoth 2 drive produced substantially different results though. Backup speeds of 680Mbytes/min were around a third faster, while a full restore of a 3Gb partition returned a low 162Mbytes/min average - less than half that achieved under Windows NT. Backup Exec also supports data interchange with the Windows 2000 backup utility although this appears to be tape drive dependant. The catalogue on a tape created by the DAT40 drive using Backup Exec was successfully imported into the Windows 2000 utility, but it refused to recognise a tape created on the Mammoth 2. Forward compatibility was also a problem as a Windows 2000 backup created using the Mammoth 2 caused a Backup Exec catalogue job to hang.

File restoration is a simple task as Backup Exec maintains a database holding details on all tapes in use and all file versions secured and you can view this information by volume or by media. System State information can be fully restored and if the target server is a domain controller this will include the Active Directory database and SYSVOL directory.

Veritas offers plenty of optional extras including intelligent disaster recovery (£345), shared storage for SAN (storage area network) devices (£1,095) and Agents for SQL Server (£545) and Microsoft Exchange (£495). At £545 for the Server Edition, Backup Exec looks particularly good value. It comes with Agents for Windows 95, 98 and 2000, Unix and Mac and has unlimited support for all tape drives plus one single drive autoloader. Veritas also offers Backup Exec Advanced and DataCentre versions as well for a comprehensive coverage of Microsoft's latest operating system.