Did you know- How to navigate the user interface and find tasks in Backup Exec 2012?

The newly designed Backup Exec 2012 interface, like any new UI, will take some getting used to. If you are upgrading from Backup Exec 2010 to 2012, you can expect a different navigation experience as well as a shift in how you access your tasks in the toolbar. Initially there will be a learning curve, but to get you up and running faster, I’ll deconstruct the core navigation and the toolbar layout. If you understand the basic principles that were followed when designing the UI, you may find it easier to navigate and locate tasks.

Let’s start with navigation. Backup Exec 2012 has four main tabs, Home, Backup and Restore, Storage, and Reports. The Home tab is a configurable user interface that gives you a high level overview of your environments. It includes information about alerts, backup status, storage usage, help and documentation links, etc.

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Install failures happen, and when they do, you need to know the why and how to fix it. My esteemed co-worker Tom Svare has written another contribution to the Backup Exec Install Blog for your benefit. We hope you find it useful! Here is Tom's writeup:

The Backup Exec installation log contains a large amount of data that can overwhelm you if you are not familiar with the Backup Exec installation.  I can see from activity on the forums that the installation log file is reviewed and often times used to solve installation issues.  For the power users on the forums, this blog entry will be an overview, but it may also provide new information that can help in troubleshooting.

General Overview:

The Backup Exec installation log file uses colors to identify informational, warning and error messages.  The warning messages are yellow and errors messages are red. 

The installation log file receives logging information from the Backup Exec...

After two weeks on this job it's plain to see there are some major industry dynamics afoot.

The backup market is in a consolidation phase, as we've seen companies dedicated to addressing virtualized environments mature and get aquired. Dell picked up AppAsure, Quest aquired VizionCore and then BakBone (then Dell aquired Quest), Quantum grabbed Pancetera.

Industry analysts are pointing out that point products are not effective for long-term data management strategies. Just like in the storage industry, a unified architecture platform is the smarter play. NetApp's championship of NAS and SAN at the same time in the same box drove EMC to aquire and integrate for years to achieve a similar solution. Dell aquired Compellent (after losing 3PAR to HP) after great success with a point product from EqualLogic to address some of the same problems.

VMware...

Did you know that Backup Exec 2012 has filtering capabilities that allow you to customize your views?

Sorting and filtering is not a new concept to Backup Exec, but in Backup Exec 2012 you can customize server and storage views and save them to use whenever you like.  Here’s how it works: in many of the tabs, your data is represented in a table with columns and rows. You have the ability to add, remove and change the order of the columns, and you can sort and filter your data to see what you want in the order that you want. You can save that view so that each time you switch tabs or reopen Backup Exec, your view remains the same. Backup Exec comes preconfigured with several views, and it’s easy to switch from the default view to a preconfigured view, or to one of your customized views.

I’ll walk you through how you can save your customized filter configuration and how to turn off the filters after they are applied. In this example, I’ll...