Symantec Backup Exec 2010 review

Data deduplication is one of the hottest storage technologies around, but we’ve had to wait a long time for Symantec to include it in Backup Exec. CA did it nearly a year ago with the A-Listed ARCserve 12.5, and Backup Exec 2010 (BE2010) finally brings Symantec into line with the main competition.

CA includes deduplication at no extra cost. Symantec offers it as a separately chargeable module, but it does provide a few extra features.

CA opted to deduplicate only at the backup server as it’s faster and doesn’t affect client performance. BE2010 offers client- and server-side deduplication, as well as support for Symantec’s OpenStorage technology, which allows it to integrate with intelligent disk services such as its PureDisk and other third-party products. A single deduplication licence allows you to use any two of the three options available.

To implement deduplication, Symantec ported over its NetBackup PureDisk solution, which essentially uses the same hash-based chunking technology as everyone else. Other new features in BE2010 are file and Exchange archiving, which is based on a light version of its Enterprise Vault. There’s also support for Server 2008 R2 as a media server and the Core version as a client, a remote agent for Windows 7 and support for vSphere 4.0 and VMware incremental backups.

We loaded Backup Exec 2010 on a Broadberry CyberServe SR1600 rack server equipped with dual 2.8GHz X5560 Xeons and 6GB of DDR3 memory. Installation is swift, and an optional environment check scans the server to ensure it meets the minimum hardware and software requirements.

The base product and multiple components can be selected at the same time and you can also remotely deploy extra media servers and remote agents at this stage. However, the deduplication option is 64-bit only. We didn’t spot the brief comment in the manual, and the installation routine allowed us to select the option and install it on a 32-bit version of Server 2008. It was only when we tried to create a deduplication folder that Backup Exec advised us that it wasn’t supported, requiring us to reinstall the 64-bit version of the OS.