In Backup Exec 2012's new server-centric Backup and Restore view, some of you may be wondering if you can see backup jobs across your environment at once since there is no "Job Monitor" anymore. The answer is that you can.

In the "Backup and Restore" view, you see a list of the servers you are backing up. This shows you the name of the system, active alerts that are related to jobs on that system, an overall backup status, the last and next backup dates and a graphic we call the "last 7 days" indicator. The last 7 days indicator gives you a visual snapshot of how the last 7 days of backups have gone - red/yellow/green. You can click on that indicator and see the list of jobs that ran and further click on those to see their job log. This view gives you a lot of information about the servers you are backing up and their status. You can also right-click on the column header to select other columns such as the agent version information and other...

I have been part of the Backup Exec development team for over 15 years.  During that time, I have primarily focused on the user interface/user experience aspect and I have never been more excited about the product and its future. Over the coming months I intend to write about Backup Exec's product design and user experience and hopefully hear feedback from many of you.

Backup Exec 2012 was recently released, and long-time customers will notice dramatic change in the product's design. These changes run deeper than just the user interface. They represent changes in the direction of the product design itself. To understand why we changed the product, let's first take a look at where we've been. 

Backup Exec has a long successful history in the backup world. It started with NetWare and Windows NT and grew to become a dominant player in the backup space. Originally, backup was pretty simple. You installed a backup product on a computer, hooked up...

Hello, my name is Bill Brown and I'm a software developer for the Backup Exec product team.  I've been working on Backup Exec (and its progenitor, Maynard Electronics Maynstream) for nearly 21 years.   Over the years I've spent time in just about every part of the product but lately I've been involved in improving the security of the product.  In upcoming posts I hope to give some technical insight into the inner workings of Backup Exec as well as give a peek into ideas for future enhancements.

I thought as an introduction, I'd discuss some of the usability improvements for session security in Backup Exec for Windows Systems 2012.  Last year, we introduced enhanced security between media servers and remote agents in Backup Exec 2010 R3.  I realize that it has caused some consternation among users because additional security seems to always introduce inconvenience.   In BE 2010 R3, we introduced the concept of a 'trust...