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BizGuardian - Frequently asked questions
1. How long does it take to ship BizGuardian once the order has been placed?
- The BizGuardian typically ships from the factory within 10 working days. Direct from distribution, it will ship within a couple days. Currently, our distributors include Data Distributing, Condre and Promark.
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2. What is the average install time?
- Installation takes about an hour. Typically what takes longest is getting the IP address from the administrator. The box is all set up and ready to go. The racks are also partially installed. Put the rack kit in; plug in the power supply cords, plug in the Ethernet connection – it’s that simple. If you've done it more than once, it should take about 45 minutes.
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3. What client operating systems are supported?
- This is a complete heterogeneous system – we support clients for Mac OS, Novell, Windows, RedHat, SUSE, Solaris, Netware. There are also Exchange and SQL server modules available as an option from your reseller.
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4. Can you expand the BizGuardian with external disk arrays or tape libraries?
- Yes. The EMC AX 150 disk array, which is a 12 disk unit, is compatible with BizGuardian and can be added to the back of the system. Breece Hill has tape expansion systems that can also be added to the BizGuardian. Of course you will need an additional license for the tape expansion chassis.
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5. What is the expansion limit?
The AX 150 chassis has 12 drives with 500 GB; that would be an additional 4.65 TB of formatted storage. We are developing new tape expansion chassis which will require additional software licenses when you add them to the BizGuardian.
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6. Can it be expanded by more ethernet ports?
- The dual xeon version has 2 gigE ports built-in. The single pentium version has one gigE and one 10/100 ports. We have an Intel approved card that can be added to give additional expansion, but typically, you'll go into a switch and won’t increase performance.
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7. When is it necessary to go for dual xeon?
- A lot of times the dual xeon processor model is at the customer discretion. If you use encryption full time then the dual Xeon version is preferred. Also, if User Initiated Restores is being used then the dual Xeon machine would perform better.
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8. Does BizGuardian come in an LTO2 version?
We are trying to understand the market for this product. Keep checking our web site for news and further information.
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9. Can you explain the DR capability of the box?
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Yes. The BizGuardian provides Disaster Recovery to all of the machines it is backing up. If needed, it can create a bare metal restore of the client machine from it’s snapshot information. The client machine must first be replaced (like for like) or repaired and then booted from a Bare Metal Restore CD that can be created from the BizGuardian or any other machine on the network. The CD is a bootable image that allows the Operating System, System Registry, client software, and all necessary drivers to be restored. Once the machine is recovered to an operational state the rebuild is completed by a restore of the most recent system snapshot. To burn a CD you will need to use third party CD authoring software that can burn an ISO image. More details on this can be found on the EMC website.
1. Click on: http://EMC Insignia Support
2. Go to the Windows section (located in the left menu bar)
3. Search for “cd burning software”
4. Go to topic “# 7988 Preparing for Disaster Recovery-Windows 7.0”
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10. What is self-adjusting back up?
- The BizGuardian software is smart enough to adjust the schedule so it’s not on a fixed schedule. Typically, what happens with backup and recovery software, is you set server 1 to run at 11pm at night. You can't estimate how long it will take to back up server 1, but you want to leave enough time before you kick off server 2. So you set up server 2 to run at 1am and server 3 to run at 3am. These are fixed schedules. The nice thing about BizGuardian is that it self-adjusts time wise for the backups as they finish. The other key benefit is that if for any reason there is an interruption, it's smart enough to know exactly where it stopped so it can pick up where it left off. Instead of having to re-run the jobs from the beginning to ensure you have all the data before the backup failed, it will just pick up and carry on. It is very clever and really simplifies life.
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11. What options for Retrospect are NOT included in the package?
- SQL Server, Exchange and User Initiated Restores (UIR) are the three items that are not included in our standard package. You might also need a third party CD burning software package if you need to create disaster recovery CDs directly on the BizGuardian.
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12. Is the data cataloged on tape if you were to lose the disk?
- Yes. You can rebuild everything completely from tape.
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13. Does the system automatically detect computers on the network?
- Yes. Those machines that have been set up to be backed up using the BizGuardian will automatically be detected and backed up. When a client reappears, the BizGuardian software will identify it for you and reprioritize the backup. Let's say server 3 goes off-line for maintenance. When it comes back online it will automatically detect it and the BizGuardian will schedule a backup if necessary.
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14. When a machine comes back online and does a backup. Does it only back up the changes?
- Yes. The interesting thing about Retrospect is that is does synthetics instead of full backups. You don't have to go back and restore the full backup and then sequential incrementals. The software is smart enough to go back and find those files that have changed and restore only those needed.
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15. Is there an ability to limit backup times to certain hours?
- Yes, you can set schedules to run backups as well. You can set a job for each server. If the job didn't complete—if something doesn't work, you lose a switch, someone unplugs something—it will go back and run it again, when it can. You can also set it up to stagger; to ease up network time.
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16. Does the BizGuardian function as a RAID SAN being backed up "inside the box"?
- No. This is really using disk for staging and tape for saving the data. It's a network connection, file client backup system. The best part is that everything is built into the one product. You have the whole package in one unit—server, backup software, RAID, tape library—it's all there ready to go. To back up SANs, you would go through the GigE network to a machine on the SAN.
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17. How is onsite maintenance done in Europe?
- Currently we have Breece Hill onsite support for customers in the UK and continental Europe. We also have 24 hour telephone support.
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