Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery 8.5 Server Edition enables you to restore complete Windows servers in minutes. The really nice footnote here is that this can be done to different hard hardware and/or virtual environments. Under the hood BESR 8.5 comes equipped with new functionality to automate physical to virtual conversions for immediate system recovery.

The installation is straight-forward, and the product is easy to use. The product is very flexible and will allow users to create customized recovery disks, and backup sets utilizing granular restore technology.

In addition, the latest version allows P2V (Physical to Virtual) to perform on an automated schedule. Physical servers can and should be backed moving forward up using BESR 8.5 to VMDK files. In the event a physical box fails - just power up the virtual machine (VM) minimizing downtime, the off site backup copy feature can be utilized to backup server images to FTP locations or secondary disk drive for enhanced disaster recovery capabilities. This is a great advancement in DR planning and should really reign in business' recovery time objectives (RTO).

All in all, BESR 8.5 is great product and should be utilized moving forward in 2009.

Travis Baird, eGroup