BackupExec 12.5 support for Windows Server 2008 R2

Symantec has finally released a hot fix for BackupExec to add support for Windows Server 2008 R2, unfortunately this is only Remote Agent support and not Media Server Support.

The hotfix can be downloaded from:

Symantec BackupExec 12.5 64-Bit  http://seer.entsupport.symantec.com/docs/334938.htm
Symantec BackupExec 12.5 32-Bit  http://seer.entsupport.symantec.com/docs/331998.htm

Even tough I patched and rebooted my Media Server, I still got an error when pushing out the remote agent, so I had to manually install the agent from the Agent\RAWS64 catalog by using the command setup.exe /aofo .

After the agent was successfully installed, I tried to do a test backup, but encountered the following error message:

V-79-57344-65225 – AOFO: Initialization failure on: “\\MyServerName\System?State”. Advanced Open File Option used: Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS).
Snapshot provider error (0xE000FEC9): A failure occurred accessing the Writer metadata

To solve this, I found an article that said that I had to assign a drive-letter to the “System reserved” partition on the Windows Server 2008 R2 server. So I just started Computer Management and assigned the partition the drive-letter b: and then it seems that everything worked out just fine!

Hopefully Symantec will release the delayed BackupExec 2010 Beta soon, I think I got a new invite for the webinar that should be now in October, so in the meantime we’ll just have to wait patently.