DataDomain, Backup Exec 2014, DD Boost and Replication comp.

I would be happy if someone could answer at least some of the questions

First; is there anything special or best practice how to use DD and Backup Exec WITHOUT DDboost?

Without DDBoost, your only option to write to the DD is via NFS/CIFS shares.   You will need to have the appropriate FC or VTL licenses to use those features.

Second; is it recommended and is there a good integration with DDboost and Backup Exec? Benefits?

Using DDBoost, you get the added benefit of reducing the changed blocks that are written across the wire.  For backup applications that leverage DDBoost, only the changed blocks are written to the DD.  This reduces the network bandwidth consumed and the amount of time to transfer changes over the wire.

Third; They have two old systems and two new one, we would like to repplicate from an old DD620 to the old DD610 in another site and the new DD200 in the other site. Is this possible with replication license? The old system is using firmware version 5.4.2.1 - 423209 and the new one ist 5.7 I assume. I though there are only 2 minor release update differences allowed to be able to repplicate? To which version would we need to update the old? Resp. is this a big deal to update a DD? Never did that? Am I able to upload and install by GUI or is this something like CLI, TFTP, WinSCP??

You can only replicate between DD arrays within 2 minor releases, i.e. 5.4 can replicate to 5.6, but not 5.7.  Your best bet is to confirm what version is in fact on your new DD.  If it is 5.6, you should be able to replicate without much difficulty.  If the new DD is on 5.7, you must upgrade your old DD arrays to 5.5 or later.  Upgrading isn't difficult - you can upload the image via the GUI or the CLI.  You can find the necessary documentation on the EMC Support site.

In addition to that....

- With the usual replication license does it also only send delta blocks or how is the usual replication different from the DDboost replication?

This is covered in detail in the EMC documentation.  DD Replication (collection, mtree, directory) sends delta blocks over the wire.  DDBoost managed file replication is managed by the backup application.  Basically, the backup application controls the replication on a file-by-file basis.  It hands off the heavy lifting and file movement process to the DD, instead of controlling the copying of files directly.

- They are using shares from the DDs at the moment and with backup exec they are backing up systems with logical tape drives? On the files there are only image files no data files? What do you think about this? Shall we just save it as files on the new shares?

I don't really follow what's going on here.  I'm guessing Backup Exec is writing backup files to shares on the DD?  BackupExec is probably set to write img backup format files,  These files are read by Backup Exec for restores.

- How do we integrate the 2nd DD into Backup Exec? We would like to be able to use backups from the 2nd if the first system fails? Whats the process to that manual? Is there a way to automate restore if the first target fails? OST or DDBoost, does this fix this request as well?

Unless BackupExec has some functionality to automate this, you'll have to rely on an external source to move backups from one DD to the other, probably mtree or directory replication.  There's no method that I know of to automate retrieval

from a second array, but smarter people than I can chime in.

Let us know if that helps!

Karl