Symantec’s Backup Exec System Recovery has always been a pretty great product. Allowing admins to snapshot systems to give them a quick restore of OS, Apps and settings as well as dissimilar hardware restores, restore to virtual machines and more has made it a very popular tool 🙂 This month of Novemeber sees the release of BESR 2010 with new versions and new features, so let’s take a look.
Different Editions
BESR 2010 comes in the following flavours:
- Server Edition: RRP = $795
- Windows Small Business Server Edition: RRP = $495
- Desktop Edition: RRP = $69
- Linux Edition (available December 2009): RRP = $495
- Virtual Edition: RRP = $2495
- Starter Kit: RRP = $3495
An optional add-on is “BESR Management Solution” which allows you to centrally manage BESR jobs across your network. Perhaps surprisingly, this is available to all BESR customers free of charge!
FAQs:
What is the Starter Kit? The Starter Kit includes 5 Server Licences (with Granular Restore) and 10 Desktop Licences)
What is the Virtual Edition? A single Symantec BESR Virtual Edition licence allows you to protect all Windows VM’s on a single physical server. Companies should realise some definite savings here.
What is the Linux Edition? This gives image level backup of Red Hat & SUSE linux systems through a CMD-line interface.
What does it support?:
Symantec BESR 2010 fully supports:
- Windows Server 2008 R2
- Windows 7
- Exchange 2010
- Hyper-V 2.0
- vSphere 4.0
- XenServer 5.5
Full Windows Support:
• Microsoft Windows Server 2008, including SP1 and
Server 2008 R2
• Microsoft Windows Essential Business Server 2008
• Windows Small Business Server 2003 and 2008
• Microsoft Windows Server 2003 family including SP1 and R2
• Microsoft Windows Storage Server 2003 (SP1)
• Windows Vista Ultimate, Business and Enterprise
• Windows XP Professional/Home (SP2 or later)
• Windows XP Media Center
• Windows 7 Ultimate, Enterprise and Professional
Full Virtual environment support:
• VMware vSphere 4.0
• VMware ESXi 3.5 and 4.0
• VMware ESX 3.0, 3.5 and 4.0
• VMware Server 1.0 and 2.0
• VMware Workstation 4, 5, and 6
• Microsoft Hyper-V 1.0 and Hyper-V Server 2008 R2
• Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 and later
• Citrix XenServer 4.x and 5.x
Full Linux Environment Support:
• SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10, SP1 and SP2 (x86) 32-bit
• SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10, SP1 and SP2 (x86_64 not ia64) 64-bit
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.0, 5.1, 5.2, 5.3 (x86) 32-bit
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.0, 5.1, 5.2, 5.3 (x86_64 not ia64) 64-bit
Note: SUSE Desktop & RedHat Desktop are NOT supported and BESR f Linux is a 32bit app..so it you’ve disables 32bit runtime, it won’t work.
All in all, BESR 2010 is a pretty good bit of kit and will definitely make things easier should there be a disaster with the servers 🙂
Cloudy with a chance of Licensing 
Thank you very much for your article. I thinks it ok.
Rich,
Do you know of a page that describes the difference(s) between BUE and BESR? I haven’t found such a document on Symantec’s site
BESR Management Solution is only available for windows server 2003 32Bits. It won’t install on 64Bits!
The management solution for SR 2008 (previous version) was available for 64 bits. So it is free (allways was) but it has less specs, and it only installs on a server version of 7 years old!
There’s just little of NO documentation for how to run BESR 2010 on SUSE Linux systems. How to check status? How to install it?
RLR:-)
This is very useful, I think this will come in handy for me at work