I currently use Ghost Corp Ed. to backup a number of machines in a
corporate LAN.  I recently ran into some trouble because of Ghosts
inability to deal with certain RAID configurations, which is a bit of
a problem as we have begun creating mirrored drives on some mission
critial workstations.  Symantec tech support suggested that I check
out V2i Protector which I did and it looks good.  The problem is that
the demo does not support a bare metal recovery, which is exactly the
feature that I want to test out.  After discussions with Symantec they
refuse to release a demo that contains this feature.  I'm more
interested in the V2i Protector for servers, and I'm reluctant to fork
out over a thousand dollars just to try the product.  Does anyone have
real world experience with V2i Protector Server Edn.?  Specifically,
anyone who has used it to successfully perform hot backups for
Exchange or SQL servers, followed by a successfull recovery from bare
metal?

Thanks,
Tristan

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

I have done many bare metal restores using the V2i recovery CD and not had a
problem.  Two of my servers are RAID5 arrays.  Go to powerquest.com and read
the whitepapers on the right side nav bar - they talk about SQL Server and
Exchange.   They say V2i uses the SQL Server API to backup databases
correctly.  I do backup a SQL Server DB, but it is lightly used so may not
be comparable to high stress environments.   I do not use Exchange.

IMO, V2i Protector is an excellent product - been using it for over a year
now - I use it quite a bit lately to get ready for server hardware/software
upgrades - it's nice to have a current copy of the production servers to
play with without any downtime.

They can't give you the restore CD as an eval, because that would be giving
away the store - basically the entire product is on there without
restrictions - they probably haven't figured out a way to eval that yet...

-- Paul



"Tristan" <tristan_d@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:b58d9931.0408160329.2e67dec@posting.google.com...
> I currently use Ghost Corp Ed. to backup a number of machines in a
> corporate LAN.  I recently ran into some trouble because of Ghosts
> inability to deal with certain RAID configurations, which is a bit of
> a problem as we have begun creating mirrored drives on some mission
> critial workstations.  Symantec tech support suggested that I check
> out V2i Protector which I did and it looks good.  The problem is that
> the demo does not support a bare metal recovery, which is exactly the
> feature that I want to test out.  After discussions with Symantec they
> refuse to release a demo that contains this feature.  I'm more
> interested in the V2i Protector for servers, and I'm reluctant to fork
> out over a thousand dollars just to try the product.  Does anyone have
> real world experience with V2i Protector Server Edn.?  Specifically,
> anyone who has used it to successfully perform hot backups for
> Exchange or SQL servers, followed by a successfull recovery from bare
> metal?
>
> Thanks,
> Tristan

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

Sorry, whitepapers are displayed on the right side of this page:
http://sea.symantec.com/content/product.cfm?productid=5



"Tristan" <tristan_d@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:b58d9931.0408160329.2e67dec@posting.google.com...
> I currently use Ghost Corp Ed. to backup a number of machines in a
> corporate LAN.  I recently ran into some trouble because of Ghosts
> inability to deal with certain RAID configurations, which is a bit of
> a problem as we have begun creating mirrored drives on some mission
> critial workstations.  Symantec tech support suggested that I check
> out V2i Protector which I did and it looks good.  The problem is that
> the demo does not support a bare metal recovery, which is exactly the
> feature that I want to test out.  After discussions with Symantec they
> refuse to release a demo that contains this feature.  I'm more
> interested in the V2i Protector for servers, and I'm reluctant to fork
> out over a thousand dollars just to try the product.  Does anyone have
> real world experience with V2i Protector Server Edn.?  Specifically,
> anyone who has used it to successfully perform hot backups for
> Exchange or SQL servers, followed by a successfull recovery from bare
> metal?
>
> Thanks,
> Tristan

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

i've used V2i protector in numerous envoiroments and its the best thing
since sliced bread. it works on all systems.... raid included and is much
faster than ghost. plus it stays in windoze to image the drives.
one thing with exchange is...... it doesn't flush the logs like backup exec
etc so you have to enable circular logging in order to keep the drives from
filling up. there is a work around for this by using the batch file options
before and after backup.
the program is that good.... guess who bought it out!! and guess what the
new ghost looks like??
definetely in my armoury, if only to make images. i use a combination of v2i
for a bare metal restore from months ago and then use veritas backup exec to
load over the image. this is far better than having to install a basic os
and then backup exec to get to the tape drive. its much faster. you can also
use it to access images on another system on the lan from the boot cd and
browse the image to extract files etc. ultimately, i'm sure we will
completely go over to v2i as it offers compressed incramental backups.
well worth the money!!

louis

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

On Sat, 25 Sep 2004 06:37:19 GMT, louis@NoReply.com wrote:

>i use a combination of v2i
>for a bare metal restore from months ago and then use veritas backup exec t
o
>load over the image.
Why?  If V2i Protector or Ghost 9 are working for you, then you can do
incrementals while you work as many times a day as you want and just
bare metal right up to the last incremental.  Of course, if you have
the problems I'm having with V2i incrementals (i.e. BSOD on reboots),
then I understand.  I have done exactly what I said you could do
several times, BTW, and I once recovered from a USB/firewire Maxtor.

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

mainly because of exchange. backup exec allows you to do a brick level
restore ie restore an individual message to an individual mailbox. try doing
that with v2i and you will come a cropper. we have an exchange database with
4 gig of public and private messages. the only way v2i can do it is to
restore the entire database, something not to be taken lightly.
also, exchange logs fill up until they are backed up with an exchange
compliant backup program..... something which v2i is not! left unattended,
the logs can cosume the disk quite easily and cause the server to crash.
symantec agknowlege this in their white papers regarding exchange and any
database for that matter which is open while v2i runs. they advocate closing
the database, backing up and then restarting the database via batch files.
for any other use, v2i is fine. do not get me wrong here, i swear by it and
that is why we invested in it. we also had backup exec prior to v2i and that
is why we use a combination of the two. v2i will not let you do incramentals
if another form of backup software is on the system which is for obvious
reasons.

Lou1z

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