Backup Software - LiveState Recovery Desktop 6.0

Author

LiveState Recovery Desktop 6.0

Maikata

2006-03-21, 2:55 am

I recently purchased 150 Licenses for this product. Intitial testing
proved the software to be a valid solution for backing up a working PC
to a networked storage system. My test consisted of a full backup of
the hard drive (30 GB of data) to our NAS. I removed the 40 GB hard
drive from the client and installed a used 60 GB that contained data.
With the bootable CD that was shipped with the product I was able to
configure the network settings for the client, connect to the NAS,
recover the image to the 60 GB hard drive, and the computer came back
on working normally.
This past weekend I installed the software to 15 clients. All were
running XP PRO with a mixture of SP1 and SP2 except for one WIN2K
machine. The hardware was a mixture of Intel Pentium 4, AMD Athlon,
AMD Duron and Pentium M processors. All of the Pentiums were Dell
Optiplex machines, the AMD's were Systemax and the Pentium M was a Dell
Lattitude 610.
Out of the 15 installs, only 10 were able to succesfully create the
image on the storage device. The five that failed all experienced the
same identical symptom. All 15 devices were configured exactly the
same, under the administrator log in. All were writing to the NAS with
the same network credentials.
The 5 that failed never revealed an error. When the recovery point was
initiated the progress window would stop at 5% with 3 bars filled in on
the progess bar. The progress message was "Calculating remaining
time". I allowed one of these to continue for 24 hours and it never
finished. If you clicked on the cancel button it would acknowledge the
cancellation request but never stop. The only way to stop the
processes was to shutdown the PC. I tried to find a common thread
amongst the machines that failed and the only thing was DELL, but other
Dell machines that were identical in configuration and software worked
normally.
On the laptop, I tested it by creating the backup on an external USB
hard drive. The same symptom resulted. When I tried it again the next
day it worked! When I tried to send the image to the NAS it failed,
but if I tried to send the small DELL image (39MB) to the NAS it worked
like a charm. This tells me the software kind of works but not
consistently. Not exactly what an enterprise needs for schedules
backups.
Unfortunately, if you only purchase the LiveState Recovery Desktop 6.0
License and fail to purchase a support agreement Symantec provides no
assistance at all. If you send an email to the tech support with this
issue, they reply with a message for you to contact phone support.
Without a purchased maintenance agreement, phone support will not
assist you. They do not even provide free support for a limited time
frame after the initial purchase.
My initial consultation with pre-sales tech support pointed directly to
this product as a good solution. They even discouraged me from
purchasing the suite (which comes automatically with gold support)
because the Manager product was deemed not ready for the market place.
Others in my IT group have confirmed this. The suite also contains the
optional Restore Anywhere that allows you to restore an image to
different hardware. This is not included with LiveState Recovery
Desktop 6.0 licensing only. You have to purchase the suite.

I am of the opinion LiveState Recovery Desktop 6.0 is not ready for the
market either. The concept is a godsend for enterprise backup. And if
it would work reliably I would sing it's praises from the mountain top.
But it does not.
If anyone has experience with this software and has experienced this
same problem, please post to this. Especially if there is a solution.
Symantec makes no mention of this in there knowledge base nor anywhere
else on the web.

Andy Lee

2006-03-21, 2:55 am

On 20 Mar 2006 13:39:53 -0800, "Maikata" <maikata329@gmail.com> wrote:

>I recently purchased 150 Licenses for this product. Intitial testing
>proved the software to be a valid solution for backing up a working PC
>to a networked storage system. My test consisted of a full backup of
>the hard drive (30 GB of data) to our NAS. I removed the 40 GB hard
>drive from the client and installed a used 60 GB that contained data.
>With the bootable CD that was shipped with the product I was able to
>configure the network settings for the client, connect to the NAS,
>recover the image to the 60 GB hard drive, and the computer came back
>on working normally.
>This past weekend I installed the software to 15 clients. All were
>running XP PRO with a mixture of SP1 and SP2 except for one WIN2K
>machine. The hardware was a mixture of Intel Pentium 4, AMD Athlon,
>AMD Duron and Pentium M processors. All of the Pentiums were Dell
>Optiplex machines, the AMD's were Systemax and the Pentium M was a Dell
>Lattitude 610.
>Out of the 15 installs, only 10 were able to succesfully create the
>image on the storage device. The five that failed all experienced the
>same identical symptom. All 15 devices were configured exactly the
>same, under the administrator log in. All were writing to the NAS with
>the same network credentials.
>The 5 that failed never revealed an error. When the recovery point was
>initiated the progress window would stop at 5% with 3 bars filled in on
>the progess bar. The progress message was "Calculating remaining
>time". I allowed one of these to continue for 24 hours and it never
>finished. If you clicked on the cancel button it would acknowledge the
>cancellation request but never stop. The only way to stop the
>processes was to shutdown the PC. I tried to find a common thread
>amongst the machines that failed and the only thing was DELL, but other
>Dell machines that were identical in configuration and software worked
>normally.
>On the laptop, I tested it by creating the backup on an external USB
>hard drive. The same symptom resulted. When I tried it again the next
>day it worked! When I tried to send the image to the NAS it failed,
>but if I tried to send the small DELL image (39MB) to the NAS it worked
>like a charm. This tells me the software kind of works but not
>consistently. Not exactly what an enterprise needs for schedules
>backups.
>Unfortunately, if you only purchase the LiveState Recovery Desktop 6.0
>License and fail to purchase a support agreement Symantec provides no
>assistance at all. If you send an email to the tech support with this
>issue, they reply with a message for you to contact phone support.
>Without a purchased maintenance agreement, phone support will not
>assist you. They do not even provide free support for a limited time
>frame after the initial purchase.
>My initial consultation with pre-sales tech support pointed directly to
>this product as a good solution. They even discouraged me from
>purchasing the suite (which comes automatically with gold support)
>because the Manager product was deemed not ready for the market place.
>Others in my IT group have confirmed this. The suite also contains the
>optional Restore Anywhere that allows you to restore an image to
>different hardware. This is not included with LiveState Recovery
>Desktop 6.0 licensing only. You have to purchase the suite.
>
>I am of the opinion LiveState Recovery Desktop 6.0 is not ready for the
>market either. The concept is a godsend for enterprise backup. And if
>it would work reliably I would sing it's praises from the mountain top.
> But it does not.
>If anyone has experience with this software and has experienced this
>same problem, please post to this. Especially if there is a solution.
>Symantec makes no mention of this in there knowledge base nor anywhere
>else on the web.

A couple of things that worry me about your Backup stratagy

Why are you backing up a whole PC and 30Gb of Data over a network. A
client PC has no neet to be backed up IF there is no user Data stored
on it. A Desktop PC in an office environment has no need to hold User
Data. All user data should be stored on a file server.

In an Office of say 300 PC's 30Gb per PC is never going to be a
practical solution to be imaged across a network. Symantec Ghost
Enterprise CAN be used to send basic client images to a new or rebuilt
machines but I don't think it was ever envisaged as a tool to backup
multiple PC's in this way.

The best solution is have a standard Client build held on either a
Network location and initiate the build via a bootable CD or hold the
image on bootable DVD. Store user data as mentioned above and use
Roaming profiles for the user.

This is a proven reliable stratagy that results in minimal downtime in
the inevitable case of client PC hard drive failure.

Laptop users are more difficult to cater for as inevitably there will
be User data stored on the machine but this can be minimised by using
folder redirection and synchronization for say the My Document's
folder and User education and the fact that most new Laptops are
supplied with an opticat writer of some form.

Maikata

2006-03-21, 8:46 pm

Unfortunately this is not an office setting where cubicle clones all
use the same tools. This application is a manufacturing environment
where the data held on the PC is subject to change at any time and
there is no standard rollout. Not to mention the fact that the
software installed on most of these machines is not available in a
volume licensing scenario that Microsoft and other vendors provide. In
the event a PC fails, and the manfacturing process is down because of
this, the downtime is measured in thousands of dollars per minute.
Restoring the latest image is paramount, regardless of the size. I
agree that 30 GB is a bit large but that was an entire image on a
development machine that had more than the normal amount of software.
Typically the images are 4~8 GB in size depending on the software
installed. However many of the desktops are running a local instance
of SQL data base that can become quite large depending on the
retentention settings. My attraction to LiveState Recovery Desktop was
the restoration capability to bare metal drives. More than likely we
see drive failures because the PC's run 24/7. The ability to pop in a
new drive and restore the image is crucial. We also chose this over
Ghost because it allows the PC to run without booting into DOS and
restarting unattended. Backups are performed over the weekend and the
risk of not rebooting properly is not something we want. My biggest
problem with Symantec's product is it's failure to create the image and
their lack of support because a maintenance contract was not purchased.
I found out today that if I don't cough up $7.45 per license by April
6th I will never be able to purchase support. So if I didn't discover
a problem until later in the process I would be stuck with over $6000
of worthless Symantec code.

vvlada

2006-07-13, 3:04 am

For LiveState Recovery, there are quite good news for you. First, starting from July 18th there will be new version of the product with new name, BackupExec System Recovery 6.5 (basicaly LiveState Recovery with Restore Anywhere option included) and next, there is possible solution for you if your version is older then 6.02 (because, there was some fixes in this new release 6.02). I don't know from what region you are and I wonder why you didn't purchase maintenance (I always recommend for more then 10 lic.) but I think that this can help you. If you need more info, just let me know and we will try to help you. Also, just for your info, you can purchase maintenance during 60 days from purchasing products.

Sincerely yours,
Vladimir Vucinic
Net++ technology d.o.o., Belgrade