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Integrating Symantec Backup Exec with Microsoft® SQL Server® Deployed on Dell™ PowerEdge™ Servers and Dell PowerVault™ Storage A Dell Technical White Paper
Database Solutions Engineering By Anthony Fernandez Dell │ Product Group October 2008
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THIS WHITE PAPER IS FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY, AND MAY CONTAIN TYPOGRAPHICAL ERRORS AND TECHNICAL INACCURACIES. THE CONTENT IS PROVIDED AS IS, WITHOUT EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND. ©Copyright 2008 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of Dell Inc. is strictly forbidden. For more information, contact Dell. Dell, the Dell logo, PowerVault, and PowerEdge are trademarks of Dell Inc; Microsoft, Windows, and SQL Server are either trademarks or registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. Other trademarks and trade names may be used in this document to refer to either the entities claiming the marks and names or their products. Dell disclaims proprietary interest in the marks and names of others. THE INFORMATION IN THIS DOCUMENT IS SUBJECT TO CHANGE WITHOUT NOTICE AND IS PROVIDED “AS IS” WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND. THE ENTIRE RISK ARISING OUT OF THIS INFORMATION REMAINS WITH THE USER OF THE INFORMATION. IN NO EVENT SHALL DELL BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, PUNITIVE OR OTHER DAMAGES, EVEN IF DELL HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
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Executive Summary Designing and implementing a business continuity plan for today’s complex datacenters is a colossal task and one which should be designed meticulously. Maintaining business continuity at every level of the organization in the event of any planned or unplanned downtime is a critical and complex task, from power redundancy to server and application redundancy to datacenter site redundancy. In today’s enterprises, databases hold one of the most important asset for the organization. Any disruption at the database layer will affect the end user; the consumer of the data. Organizations today face a tremendous and complicated task of evaluating different type of solutions to implement in their datacenters to ultimately protect their core assets, database management systems (DBMS). Service Level Agreements (SLAs) are put in place as ways in which organizations can define the availability of each type of system in the organization, with production systems being the highest priority with more stringent SLAs. Often times, in order to meet these SLAs, administrators are faced with evaluating multiple technologies from various vendors that can meet those requirements. These solutions range from a myriad of technologies such as software and hardware, disk and tape, on-site and off-site, and short-term to long-term archiving to name a few. Dell and Symantec have partnered to offer a simple solution to help protect datacenters and their valuable information. Symantec Software Solutions coupled with standards based Dell Servers and Storage, offer a cost-effective way to run, manage, and protect datacenter environments. With the rapid adoption for Microsoft Windows® SQL Server® 2008 in the enterprise, Symantec Backup Exec 12.x offers a rich set of new features that provide a complete solution for maintaining data protection in complex environments while providing low cost of ownership and ease of use. This paper covers, from a customer’s perspective, how to protect SQL Server databases in a datacenter environment using the latest release of Symantec Backup Exec 12.x. This white paper documents and explores these key areas:
Database backup strategies Restoring databases to a point in time Archiving methods Centrally managing and scheduling tasks
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY .......................................................................................................................... 3
INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................................................ 5
INDUSTRY-WIDE CHALLENGES .......................................................................................................... 5
PLANNING BACKUP STRATEGIES FOR SQL SERVER ................................................................... 6
HOW TO BACKUP AND RESTORE SQL SERVER DATABASES ................................................................... 6 Data Loss versus Recovery Time .......................................................................................................... 7 High-Availability Strategies .................................................................................................................. 8 Challenges of Database Sprawl ............................................................................................................ 9
HOW MUCH DATA NEEDS TO BE PROTECTED ......................................................................................... 9 HOW LONG TO STORE BACKUPS ............................................................................................................ 10 WHERE TO STORE BACKUPS .................................................................................................................. 11
IMPLEMENTING THE PLAN ................................................................................................................ 12
SYMANTEC BACKUP EXEC 12.5 FOR WINDOWS SERVERS ....................................................... 12
SYMANTEC EXEC BACKUP STRATEGIES ................................................................................................ 15 Disk-to-Disk Backups .......................................................................................................................... 15 Disk-to-Tape Backups ......................................................................................................................... 16 Disk-to-Disk-to-Tape Backups ............................................................................................................ 17
CONCLUSION ........................................................................................................................................... 17
REFERENCES ........................................................................................................................................... 18
CONTENTS
IntroAs parbusine(DR) a Using DR/HAsmall sgrows First, wavailabBacku
InduWith inmaintabelow:
1)2)3)4)5)6)
In addrespondifficul This pcontex
Figure
Re•M•F•R
Co•S•S
oductionrt of a comprehess data in the and High Availa
a case scenarA plan for SQL startup e-commin size and co
we describe soble techniques
up Exec can ad
ustry-widncreasingly striain business op:
) Server and ) Increase in ) Smaller bac) Shorten Re) Introduction) Silos of disp
dition, Storage Ansibilities with rlt to have data
aper examinesxt of the backup
e 1 Backup Con
ecoveryMinimize RPO &ull Control of Reliability of Da
ompatibiliSupport for muSupport for mu
hensive Busineevent of unfore
ability (HA) as c
rio approach, thServer databa
merce companymplexity.
ome of the indu to protect datadress these co
de Challeningent SLAs, sperations and p
database sprainformation sto
ckup windows covery Time O
n of Virtualized parate technolo
Administrators regards to protreadily access
s some of thesep consideration
nsiderations
& RTORecovery Proceata to Restore
tyultiple Operatinultiple hardwar
ess Continuity peseen downtimcomponents of
his paper explaases using Symy and the chall
ustry-wide challabases, key coonsiderations.
nges ystems adminiprovide data av
awl ored in DBMS
Objective (RTO)servers
ogies and mana
and Databaseecting data. T
sible and prope
e challenges wns described in
ess
ng Systemsre vendors
BaConsid
plan, strategiesme. Companiesf this plan.
ains the considemantec Backupenges and dec
enges customeonsiderations fo
strators face a vailability. Som
) windows
agement conso
e Administratorshis overlap, if n
erly protected.
when evaluatingn Figure 1.
Protec•Online B•Security•Granula
Manag•Ease of •Unified technolo•Reportin
ackup derations
s need to be in s should consid
erations and st Exec 12.5. Th
cisions they hav
ers face today.or backup and r
growing numbe of these cha
oles
s (DBA) often hnot orchestrate
g Backup Exec
ctionBackups/Snapsy and Encriptioarity of Protect
geabilityUseManagment Cogiesng and Schedu
s
place to protecder both Disaste
teps required tohe case scenarve to make as
. Then we discrecovery, and h
ber of challengellenges are sum
have overlappied properly, can
c and its functio
shotsnion
Console for mu
uling
ct critical er Recovery
o develop a io describes a their datacente
uss the how Symantec
es in order to mmarized
ng n make it
onality in the
ltiple
5
er
c
PlanAs thebackinserverthe baare, anand re ConsidcommThey aTheir ddaytimwell. If the dquestioDependuring In ordeServer
Figure The foComp
How Backinstrateg(RTO) There the Narestoreoperatbackuconsis Table types f
nning Bace number of datng up locally dors, one would thackups. Howevend how long to
eliability concer
der a scenario erce applicatioare a small stadatabase usag
me hours. The
database serveonable, their a
nding on the sizg the day would
er to design a Br databases, X
e 2 DR Plan Qu
ollowing sectionany XYZ imple
to Backup ng up the SQL gy is essential ).
are two fundamative SQL Serve databases sitions are fully tp operations as
stency of the da
1 summarizes for which they
ckup Stratabases increaoes not providehink that a file er, keeping trakeep them intr
rns in backing u
in which one don for a companrtup company ae patterns shocompany upda
er were to go dpplication woulze of the databd incur a loss of
Business ContiYZ needs to an
estions
ns examine theements a Disas
and RestorServer databato meeting the
mental ways inver engine backnce they have racked by SQLs scheduled taata by detecting
the native bacare best suited
Howbackup
DBs
WherStore data
ategies foase, so does the a DR solutionshare on a thirck of all the baroduces a chalup databases t
database serveny called XYZ and cannot affo
ow that their cusates their inven
own for any reld cease to tak
base, the restorf revenue.
inuity plan thatnswer the four
e key consideraster Recovery s
re SQL Servse is at the heair SLAs, Recov
n which to protekup/restore captotal control ov
L Server for latesks through thg potential corr
ckup methods, d:
w to p SQL s?
re to the a?
or SQL Se complexity o. In the case o
rd server wouldackups being pellenge from a mto a file share.
er is hosting oneInc. Companyord downtime astomers usuall
ntory of mercha
ason during thke in new orderre could take fr
t will focus on abasic question
ations for each strategy to prot
ver Databasart of a DR plavery Point Obje
ect a SQL Servpabilities. This ver the backup/er reporting. Ne SQL Server Aruption errors d
which recovery
How muchdata need
to be backed up
How longdata need
to be stored?
erver f backup and rf a small datac
d provide a cenerformed on th
management pe
e user databasy XYZ sells meras it would direy purchase the
andise on an on
e day, or if the rs and a restorerom minutes to
a Disaster Recons in Figure 2.
of these questect their SQL S
ses n for XYZ. Sele
ective (RPO), a
ver database. Tis the way DB
/restore procesNative backup aAgent. In additduring backup o
y models are a
h s
p?
g s
estore operatiocenter with two ntral location onat share, how oerspective, as w
se that supportrchandise on thectly affect theireir merchandisengoing basis du
integrity of thee would have tohours. Closing
overy strategy
tions and addreServer databas
ecting a SQL Sand Recovery T
The first methodAs prefer to bass, and becausallows for scripttion, SQL Serveoperations.
vailable, and th
ons. In additiondatabase
n which to storeold the backupwell as security
s an e-he internet. r bottom line. e during uring the day a
e data was o take place. g shop for hour
to protect SQL
ess how se.
Server backup Time Objective
d is by using ackup and se these ting and runniner ensures the
he workload
6
n,
e ps y
as
rs
L
ng
7
Recovery Model
Backup Method Simple Bulk-logged Full Workload Type
Full backup Little to no data changes Full backup with differentials DSS/OLAP File group backups Large DSS/OLAP
Full backup with transaction logs
OLTP
Full backup with differentials and transaction logs
OLTP
Database Snapshots* * Only Available SQL Server Enterprise Edition Read-Only Copy of Database
Table 1 SQL Server Native Backup Methods The second method takes advantage of data protection features provided via the Storage Layer. Each storage vendor offers capabilities and tools to clone and take snapshots of storage LUNs, volumes or Virtual Disk Groups. Some of these tools are freely integrated into their products, such as with Dell Equallogic PS-series arrays, while other vendors offer these tools as additional software bundles that may have to be purchased by the customer. Taking advantage of data protection features at the storage layer to complement a DR strategy plan provides extra benefits against unexpected failures. However, typically DBAs do not often have direct access to the underlying storage infrastructure to manage and create snapshots and clones of the volumes in which their data resides. This task is the responsibility of the Storage Administrator. Storage administrators are tasked with taking advantage of storage features that allow capabilities to perform local snapshots and clones, or replication across enclosures or across datacenters. A complete DR plan should include both methods. However, coordinating efforts between the two groups can be challenging. In later sections, we’ll show how orchestrating backups at the database layer and storage layers is possible with Symantec Backup Exec from a central management console.
Note: Taking snapshots or clones that contain databases while they are being accessed is not recommended. Either the database has to be detached or placed offline prior to executing a storage level copy or the use of the VSS capabilities needs to be enabled in order to ensure the database is not executing a transaction at the time of the copy.
Note: Microsoft SQL Server also offers high availability features such as Mirroring, Log Shipping, and Replication. For more information on configuration and best practices, visit http://www.dell.com/sql
Data Loss versus Recovery Time Based on the workload type, and the amount of lost data XYZ is willing to tolerate with the tradeoff of restore time, they need to decide which backup strategy better suits their needs.
Figure Basedminuteevery in the The Rshowsapplica
At this
High-Microsserveraccessdownt
The sethird osharedindivid
For mohttp://w
Figure
e 3 RPO versus
d on the nature es. XYZ decide10 minutes. Thdatabase that
RTO would varys that during thiation would no
s point it is appa
-Availability soft Windows Sr configured to s the shared stime by restartin
Best Practicdatabase fil
econd option isoptional server d-nothing approdual databases
Best Practicfrom the Mi
ore informationwww.dell.com/s
Highe
More reco
e 4 Log Backup
s RTO
of Company Xes to implemenhis means that was added wit
y depending onis downtime, if t be able to use
arent that XYZ
Strategies Server Failoverstart the SQL Storage device wng the databas
ce: Store databe groups resid
s to configure Sthat acts as a woach, where thparticipating in
ce: Taking backrrored server.
n on best practisql and http://w
er RTO.
time to over.
RPO = 10Mi
p Restore
XYZ’s e-commet daily full backin the event ofhin the 10 minu
n how long it takno other mease the database
needs to have
r Clusters are oServer instancewhere the datase on the stand
base backups oe.
SQL Server Mirwitness and en
he stand-by sern a mirror relat
kups from the P
ices for Mirrorinwww.dell.com/h
Less R
Low tolefor data
n System R
erce, they decidkups with differf a system outaute transaction
kes to bring thesures are in plae to continue op
e a high availab
one viable optioe in the event obase resides.
d-by server.
on a different s
rroring, using anables automatrver is configureionship.
Principal serve
ng and Microsoha.
PO.
erance loss.
Restore Time
ded that their Rrentials every 4age, they couldn log backup int
e entire systemace to provide hperations.
bility strategy in
on. This solutioof system or daA failover clus
torage enclosu
a primary and atic failover capaed as a stand-a
er is not suppor
oft Clustering, p
= 1 hr. Total
Lo
RPO should be4 hours and trad potentially losterval.
m back online. Fhigh availability
n addition to the
on requires a satabase crash. ster helps reduc
ure than that on
a stand-by mirroabilities. This malone SQL serv
rted. Backups m
please read mo
l RTO = 1:10M
og Backups e
e less than 10 nsaction logs
se any new data
Figure 4 below y, the
eir DR strategy
second stand-b Both servers
ce the server
n which the
or server with amethod uses a ver with
must be taken
ore on
Min
every 10 min
8
a
w
y.
by
a
9
Challenges of Database Sprawl In the previous example, restoring a single database in the case of failure was accomplished in a reasonable time. However, DBA’s are faced with the task of managing and protecting tens or even hundreds of databases across a multitude of servers spread throughout the organization. Protecting each individual database from component failures, server crashes, and human errors becomes more difficult as additional databases and database servers are added throughout the company. Figure 5 illustrates a non-optimal datacenter with no central mechanism to manage and perform backups. Each backup storage space is used to backup individual databases, thus creating management overhead for both storage administrators and DBA’s. Such an environment arose at XYZ during a period of rapid growth and expansion.
Server 3 Volume
Backups
Server 2 Volume
Stor
age
Laye
rD
atab
ase
Laye
r
DB Server 1
DB Server 6
Backups
Server 1 Volume
ISCSI (SAN)
Direct Attached Storage (DAS)
Fibre Channel (SAN)
DB Server 4DB Server 5
iSC
SI E
ther
net N
etw
ork
DB Server 2
DB Server 3
DB Server 7
FC F
abric
Dire
ct A
ttach
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Data
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Server 5 Disk Group
BackupsData
Server 4 Disk Group
Data
Logs
Backups
Dire
ct A
ttach
ed
Server 7 LUN
Data Logs Backups
Server 6 LUN
Data
Logs
Backups
Figure 5 Non‐optimal Database Backup Infrastructure In this example, we have seen that many variables such as a system crash, or storage or network outage could potentially affect the database restore and halt operations. Alternate strategies need to be defined in order to provide high availability at every layer in the event of failure.
How Much Data Needs to be Protected While designing and implementing a SQL Server backup/restore plan, organizations must also determine the amount of data that needs to be protected and backed up. The volume of data directly affects the choice of products XYZ would have to select. As the amount of data continues to grow, companies are faced with the ongoing challenge and cost associated with backing up and storing databases for DR purposes. As XYZ adds products and services, their datacenter has grown from a single 10 GB database to 7 database servers, each of which contains an average of 3 application databases (Figure 5). Each database is on average of 50GB, with certain databases used for reporting measuring hundreds of gigabytes, and other transactional databases measuring tens of gigabytes. If they were to do daily-full backups on all 21 databases, the daily space requirement would be 1 TB. This number yields a maximum estimate. A typical backup plan would have daily and weekly full backups for some databases in combination with differentials and transaction log backups, and perhaps also some read-
only snrequire
Figure Now thtotal s
How Compincludebusineand sizreadilyto thei Compexercisspace site ba Rotatiorotatiohave b
Figure
napshots for oted to perform b
e 6 Full Backup
hat XYZ has siize requiremen
Long to Stoanies must alse the requiremess controls, anze of databasey accessible spr SLAs.
any XYZ has ase discussed erequirement w
ackups on a we
on strategies von schema showbeen retired fro
e 7 Tape Drive
OA
R
ther databasesbackups would
ps versus Full D
zed their environt, the next que
ore Backupo decide how lent to keep datnd legal or regues that need to pace they need
a requirement tearlier, with thewould increase eekly basis as a
vary dependingws the life cycl
om the long term
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s which would rbe 30 TB per
Differentials an
onment, identifestion is: Where
ps ong they needta readily availulatory compliabe backed up
d, and how muc
o keep 2 monte same numberto 60TB of on-a safe measure
on the produce of tape drivem storage.
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reduce the bacmonth of availa
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fied all database to store back
to keep or retaable for disaste
ance needs. Baon a regular ba
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ct type selecteds where they c
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ckup space reqable storage ar
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ain their backuer recovery, intased on the retasis, companieapacity they ne
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ximum space
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ong term storagestore database00 offers the scquantities of dat
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re their backupns XYZ used ton Figure 8.
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derations thus he total space which to do weeng. The optimailability and throthe capability toess simultaneorequired to restace requireme
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Figure 10 Backup Exec Media Server and SQL Agent Company XYZ selected the Dell PowerVault DL2000 powered by Symantec appliance with the optional ML6000 Tape Library. Based on their capacity sizing audit performed earlier, the DL2000 appliance offers the right fit for a complete backup solution to use in their organization as part of their DR plan implementation. The DL2000 is a complete bundle of hardware and software preinstalled at the factory. The DL2000 appliance contains a PowerEdge Server with one or two processors, depending on performance requirements, and a PowerVault MD1000 directly attached for fast access disk storage. Additionally, it can also be ordered bundled with a Tape Library. For more information on the Dell DL2000 see In order to select the appropriate Agents and add-ons for Backup Exec, Company XYZ performed an inventory of their current database infrastructure to identify software versions and hardware that was in place. Because their infrastructure has evolved over time, the versions of Windows Server and SQL Server are heterogeneous. They are running Windows Server 2003 SP2 R2 i386 and x64, and have also deployed Windows Server 2008 x64 for testing. For their databases, they are running SQL Server 2005 SP2 Enterprise and Standard Edition i386 and x64 and have also deployed SQL Server 2008 Enterprise/Standard Edition x64 on both Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008. During the first phase of their Symantec deployment, Company XYZ had a business requirement to provide a centralized solution for management of backup and restore tasks for their databases as well as providing a long-term archival process that leverages the tape library. All of this should be accomplished through one single interface.
SQL Agent
•Supports SQL Server 2008•32 and 64Bit systems
Advanced Open File Option
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Symantec Backup Exec Media Server
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PowerVault 114TUp to 1.6TB
SnapshotsFull Backup
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Collection ofDisk Groups
Figure 12 Architecture of DR plan completed
Symantec Exec Backup Strategies Now that we have seen the process to design and implement a general DR plan for databases using Symantec Backup Exec, another question still remains; How to start protecting SQL databases. We will look at three case scenarios: Disk-to-Disk, Disk-to-Tape, and how to combine both in a Disk-to-Disk-to-Tape scenario.
Disk-to-Disk Backups This strategy offers the reliability and performance of storing backup files on a RAID group provided by the MD1000. The performance and reliability is improved as multiple hard drives configured in a RAID configuration. Depending on the raid level, provides the redundancy if one or more hard drive failures. In addition to the performance improvement by spreading the data over multiple hard drives. Another benefit of the Disk-to-Disk solution is that offers the flexibility to have multiple concurrent backup jobs simultaneously without overlapping on the same media device.
Best Practice: Avoid Network bottlenecks, by implementing a dedicated network for backup traffic and multiple NICs on the Media Server.
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Disk-to-Tape Backups This strategy provides a central long-term solution that is widely used in today’s datacenters. Unlike a Disk-to-Disk solution, the restore time objective could be significantly impacted if the backup sets are stored in multiple tape media. Once the database starts the restore, unless multiple dedicated drives are available, it will be a serial process.
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Disk-to-Disk-to-Tape Backups This method offers the benefits of backing up multiple databases simultaneously to disk with the flexibility to move those backup sets for long-term archival on the tape library. This solution offers the flexibility to schedule archival jobs to backup entire volumes that may contain a collection of backups that are ready for long-term archival. Another strategy is to archive individually each backup set. This provides the flexibility to restore a database directly from the backup set to the original database server or to a separate server. However, depending on the quantity of backup sets, it may impose a management overhead.
Backup Volume 3 N:\Backup Volume 2 M:\
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Conclusion Symantec Backup Exec and Dell PowerVault Storage systems provide a robust and cost-effective way to manage backup and recovery for a range of environments, from small to large datacenters. This paper discussed the considerations and strategies customers need to take into account to develop a complete Disaster Recovery Plan to protect Microsoft SQL Server databases using Symantec Backup Exec. In order to develop a complete Business Continuity plan, organizations are required to examine every layer of their infrastructure to implement redundancy at the hardware and storage layers. By developing a Disaster Recovery plan to protect databases, customers can rest assured that their most important asset is protected. Symantec Backup Exec 12.5 for Windows Servers offers a complete and easy-to-use solution to manage, backup, and restore SQL Server databases. With its modular architecture and large set of add-on components, Symantec Backup Exec offers an Agent or Option to fit any need, from protecting Web and file servers to database and tape library management.
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References Dell Symantec Alliance http://www.dell.com/symantec Protecting Critical Enterprise Applications with Symantec Backup Exec 11d http://www.dell.com/downloads/global/power/ps2q07-20070408-Symantec.pdf Symantec Backup Exec and Dell Equallogic PS Series http://www.equallogic.com/uploadedFiles/Resources/Tech_Partner_Solution_Briefs/SB104_Veritas_BackupExec.pdf Dell PowerVault DL2000 – Powered by Symantec Backup Exec http://www.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/storage-dl2000-symantec Simplified Data Protection with Disk-Based Backup from Dell and Symantec http://www.dell.com/downloads/global/power/ps4q08-20080444-Symantec-M.pdf DL2000 Setup Demo http://www.dell.com/html/global/products/pvault/dl2000_symantec/DL2000_Setup.exe