We use Backup Exec to perform backups of all of our servers. Although I have restored files/folders back into production with no problems, I have never performed a full system restore to ensure the backups are working correctly. I can’t even think of how I could actually do this. Since we only have one Backup Exec server, I’d need to restore to a system that the Backup Exec server can see. However, I can’t obviously test restoring a system into the same network where the production system is running.
How do you handle this? Assuming you have a separate test environment, how do you get your production Backup Exec server to restore data to it? Also, from my understanding, in order to do a full system restore with Backup Exec, the target server has to be identical hardware. Do you have a spare physical machine for each type of server you backup?