Last week, I introduced Symantec Continuous Protection Server (CPS). Today, I will discuss, how CPS interacts with Backup Exec 11d.

To copy the back-up data on the CPS to tape for long term archiving, you have to configure a back-up job with Backup Exec. If there is a CPS agent and a Backup Exec agent installed on the server, then Backup Exec will allow you to select all Protected Sources on this CPS system with just a mouse click.

You can setup a so-called SmartLink connection between a CPS job and the Backup Exec job by copying the data to tape. SmartLink is just a simple command that will run before a Backup Exec job starts. This allows Backup Exec to check the status of the CPS job.

The CPS manual talks about monitoring CPS jobs, but all it really does is, add some information of the CPS job to the log file of the Backup Exec job. This way, the Backup Exec administrator gets informed whenever problems occur during the CPS backup.

Backup operators can restore data from tape that was originally secured by CPS, directly to the original backup source. In Backup Exec, you can’t even see that these files were secured by CPS, i.e. it seems as if Backup Exec secured this data from the original server.

In the next post of this series, I will explain, how you can continuously secure an Exchange Server with Backup Exec 11d and CPS.

• Symantec Backup Exec 11d: Conventional backups at its ends?
• Review: Symantec Backup Exec 11d - Continuous Protection Server (CPS)
• Review: Securing Microsoft Exchange with Symantec Backup Exec 11d and Continuous Protection Server (CPS)
• Review: How Symantec Backup Exec 11d interacts with CPS
• Review: Symantec Backup Exec 11d and Continuous Protection Server - Conclusion