About storage devices

Device management in Backup Exec simplifies how you organize and allocate the storage devices recognized by Backup Exec, including the following:

Tape drives or robotic libraries physically attached to a media server.
Backup-to-disk folders, which are storage devices that you create.
Shared devices used in a SAN or CASO environment.
Removable storage devices shared by applications through the use of Microsoft's Removable Storage Feature.
Simulated tape libraries that you create with the Symantec Tape Library Simulator Utility for the Remote Media Agent for Linux Servers.
Storage arrays that you configure with the Backup Exec Storage Provisioning Option.

You can find a list of compatible devices at the following URL:

http://entsupport.symantec.com/umi/V-269-2

You can use the storage devices as they are configured by Backup Exec at installation, without making any changes. The default device pool, All Devices (Computer Name) is the default destination device when you create a backup job. By default, the All Devices device pool contains all locally attached devices. If you have installed Backup Exec for the first time, along with the Storage Provisioning Option, the All Virtual Disks device pool is the default destination device pool. The All Virtual Disks device pool contains all virtual disks on all storage arrays.

If you have installed the SAN Shared Storage Option, both locally attached and shared storage devices appear in All Devices (Computer Name). If you have installed the Backup Exec NDMP Option, you can add an NDMP server as a storage device. If you have installed the Backup Exec Storage Provisioning Option, storage arrays and their components also appear.

In addition to device pools and cascaded drive pools, Backup Exec provides other device management capabilities.

You can do the following:

Identify and monitor the current status of all storage devices.
Change physical tape devices without rebooting the Backup Exec server.
Monitor device usage statistics and track hardware errors. Backup Exec keeps track of the device's age, hours of use, mounts, number of bytes processed (written and read), errors, when the device was last cleaned, and so on.
Manage the physical devices attached to the media server and perform operations on these devices and the media contained in them.

Note:

Most of the benefits derived from Backup Exec's device management functionality are realized when using more than one storage device. However, users with only one device can still take full advantage of Backup Exec's device monitoring to help make sure their devices are working properly.