Let us know which you go for, I did a bit of reading on the AppAssure stuff a while back, whatever was in it didn't sway us from Backup Exec, can't remember the reasons now, but a big one might have been because it's from Dell. :C
They've have also taken over ScriptLogic, and made their site a bastard to navigate.
I went from Backup Exec 11d (which was clunky as fuck, but at least I understood it) to Backup Exec 2012. I detest this newer version, it just doesn't ever seem to backup properly and I have no real way of telling why.
Let me know if whatever you end up with is any good. Only reason I stuck with Backup Exec was a "better the devil you know" reasoning. Wished I'd gone elsewhere now. We're Dell'd up to the nines too.
To be honest, I used Backup Exec 2010 after ARCServe and the difference is impressive. In that ARCServe has one of the most awful, confusing, complicated and difficult GUIs on the planet. After that, BE felt like a breath of fresh air! Not tried the later versions mind you...
I've just looked at the screenshots of Backup Exec 2010 and it looks like a slightly polished version of 11d, so yeah, that GUI is pretty easy to use. 2012 pretty much changed to match the likes of Microsoft's ribbon menu system. I hate it.
So, dragging this out of its comfortable grave, any further ideas on what to use for a handful of servers? Might end up having to implement something at work too.
I don't know if you've taken the plunge with a backup solution yet, but I've just had an email from Symantec about a trial for the upcoming release of the new Backup Exec (2012 R2). I've been telling people on here that I don't like 2012, as it sucks and works completely differently to the old versions. Well not only do you get to trial the new version before it's out, they list some of the features which include them adding the "Job Monitor" section back in and also you can now back-up multiple servers with just one job. That's pretty much going back to ways of the older version and would probably stop me hating it as much.
You might not have to go and tell your Symantec reseller to go and fuck himself now, Symantec have made Backup Exec 2012 R2 more like the older versions. See my post above.
I just surfed in when googling on AppAssure. We're a support company in Scotland and are moving all our customers over to it. We like it because it pretty much just works. There are a couple of gotchas to avoid, but nowhere near the headache of other products - I wouldn't class BE as a competing solution - just a problem that seems to lingering like my current manflu. Any questions on AppAssure let me know.
Appassure has certainly put the ass in our apps, for sure!
(Actually, turns out that we're already one of Certum's customers, and they've mostly been OK, as far as I'm aware - I have nothing to do with the bits that they do.)
Further interactions with spammers - they dropped a Christmas gift basket of goodies (food goodies, not networking and virtual server goodies) into our office yesterday, and I've just had a cake from it for my breakfast (hey, it's Christmas!). It was a big Black Forest French Fancy thing, and very nice it was too.
Therefore, I totally endorse this product or service.
