Backup Exec 2012 v14.0 Rev. 1798 (64-bit)
Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard (Backup Exec Server)
Windows Server 2012 Standard (Agent Server)
I'm in the process of properly configuring and licensing my Backup Exec 2012 installation. I have a Server 2012 Standard physical server that is running Hyper-V and currently has 2 virtual machines on it. Right now, there is an Agent for Windows installed on the physical server. This works, but I know this isn't the correct way to do it. A full backup is about 1.6TB and every time the vhdx files of the VMs change, which is pretty much instantly, the incremental backups will need to backup +300GB of VMs and I know that there are only minimal file changes based on the roles of these VMs. As I understand it, I can get an Agent for VM/Hyper-V license and install this agent on the physical server, then this license will allow me to install, at no extra licensing cost, an Agent for Windows on each VM.
This proper licensing configuration will allolw me to do GRT on the VMs, but will it improve (reduce) the quantity of data I am backing up on a daily basis? Or will the incremental backups still need to backup each vhdx file in its entirity, since, at the file level of the physical server, the files have changed and need to be backed up. The reason I ask is that I do a full backup every weekend, along with daily incremental backups. Rounding a little bit, that makes roughly 4.6TB of data per week. The time to do this backup is not really of concern to me, but the storage space is quite large and will only continue to grow as we take advantage of more virtualization. Any suggestions to help my situation?
Thanks.
--Mark