Virtualization- what can I say other than it has “virtually” changed the IT world in which we all work and play?  Why is virtualization so attractive to IT administrators?  In short, the answer is easy- there are many uses and benefits that we gain through virtualization.  For starters, the thought of being able to have a single server’s physical footprint represent many servers on the network has been a boon to administrators looking to consolidate space and reduce operation costs.  Having the ability to quickly stand up a vm copy of a major application or work server for patch testing is a benefit that allows administrators to test during business hours is simply a game changer. 

So, how else can we leverage this exciting technology?  Well...how about recovery?  What if I said we were talking about both physical and virtual environments?

I often speak with administrators that look...

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. I am Jason von Eberstein, a Principal Quality Assurance Engineer at Symantec. I will be blogging about some of the new and exciting features in Backup Exec 2012 that relate to virtualization. First, a little background on me.  I started with Symantec (Seagate Software) 14 years ago in Technical Support. Back then, Backup Exec version 6.11 was the latest shipping product. Wow, how things change! J After 3 years in Support, I moved into Quality Assurance, where for the past 6 years I have focused on VMware and virtualization technologies.

                Lets face it, everyone should have a disaster recovery (DR) plan in place. For some, it might be as simple as rebuilding hardware and restoring from backups. For others, it might be a complete remote DR site. For SMBs, a DR plan can be challenging, to say the least.  Complete restores from backups can be time...