Autonomy Connected Backup - anyone using it on Mac clients?

I tested their Lion client and had no issues. i liked it quite a bit, in fact, but we were forced to go with another solution for non-technical reasons.

@jarednichols and @nkalister Thanks for your responses, this is good news.

We ran a test with a test user (Mountain Lion) and the backup completed overnight. It was a full backup, I'm certain incrementals run going forward.

I don't have admin access to the Connected Backup server (yet; request put in today), so in the mean time I asked my colleague who does have admin rights to restore only the MUD folder to the user's ~/Desktop folder.

Will post results once restore is completed (hopefully backup won't fail if the user has Outlook open).

Many thanks for the responses, very helpful. :)

Don

We are currently using it and I am not to happy with it. Out results so far is it will usually complete with errors though if outlook is open. However we are testing a new version now and it seems to be better It did finish my backup this morning with Outlook open. I am using version 8.6.2.2 HF4

I wonder how this is going to effect support... ;)

http://www.forbes.com/sites/danielfisher/2012/11/20/with-autonomy-h-p-bought-an-old-fashioned-accounting-scandal/

BUSINESS | 11/20/2012 @ 10:44AM |48,771 views With Autonomy, H-P Bought An Old-Fashioned Accounting Scandal. Here's How It Worked.

Huh interesting article. I think it's a shame that Iron Mountain let their Connected Backup go. It's actually a good product once you wrap your head around it. I think they really just want to be in the physical document business.

I finally got full admin access to the Connected server. I created a Rule Set for Macs, with a Rule to backup only /Users/*/Documents/Microsoft User Data folders, excluding the Database file. We're excluding that file since we've had problems in the past restoring MUD, the file goes south and we end up having to rebuild it anyway - this way the user launches Outlook after a restore and it rebuilds automagically. We submitted a correction for page 125/126 of their admin guide (since there is no need to trigger rebuild after restore).

Surprisingly, once we set things up on the server end and generated an agent installer, it validated fine (kudos to the developer for proper MPKG installer following Apple guidelines - no surprises!).

Tested on Mountain Lion, agent was unable to communicate with server (not officially supported but wanted to test anyway).

Testing on Lion today, hope we get successful backup, testing the same way with test user logged in and Outlook open.

Once we're done testing we hope to be able to provide the agent via push, as well as Self Service (if it's not installed)...not sure yet if the agent updates itself when the server is updated (hoping it does).

PS, we also plan to test backups with computer logged off...seems to support this as the Users/*/Documents/Microsoft User Data path is hard coded into their Rules Library templates, so hoping all users are backed up.

Don

So far I have not had any issues with it running the latest version and on Mt. Lion.

@ctangora Hi Chris, that's encouraging...have you tried restoring Outlook 2011 yet?

Also are you on 8.6.2 or are you on a higher version like Mike (@MikeF)? The reason I ask, Autonomy told us 8.6.2 is the latest version, but there appears to be newer versions out there.

Don, dumb question:
Why even bother backing up their MUD folder if everything is on Exchange? We specifically excluded all local mail stores for Mail, Outlook/Entourage and Thunderbird.

@jarednichols That's actually a good question. Users have limited Exchange mailbox space, so they archive locally when their Exchange mailbox gets full. All that data is in the MUD folder so the client wants us to back it up. There is an Exchange offline (server based) archiving system in place for PC's, I'm looking into testing to see if we can get it to work with the Macs (apparently there was some testing with an older version that was not successful).

Oh god. You're relying on users?! Lets hope the archives is Symantec Enterprise Vault. There's no Mac client plugin, but the web interface isn't terribly bad for the times you need to go back into the archive. My last job archived things over a year old and that seemed to be a good balance to keep the exchange boxes small enough and users not needing to go back into the archive very frequently.

We're not - the client is. Let's just say we're changing the client's perception that Macs are not compatible and therefore "out of scope" when it comes to integrating with existing infrastructure... ;)

There are a few errors every backup, but everything appears to be saved. The server side reports back unknown OS for Mt. Lion. We're on 8.6.0.2.

Sorry, should have qualified. The user can setup specifics on the backup. I have chosen to not backup the MUD as everything should be on the server.

Getting some warnings about saved.state files missing from initial scan to actual backing up. But no show stoppers yet.

Strange our Autonomy support said that it was support on MT. They even said that they would support the previous agent on MT. After I had it running on beta MT.

@gachowski Wow, that's actually good news. If you don't mind my asking, what version are you on?

So, the about box says 8.6.2 but if you get info about the app. 14.2.0.0061

I don't know if they version it, but you may be better doing a get info on /Library/Application Support/Connected Backup/AgentService

That's the actual agent binary.

So I got in touch with our Exchange group, they told us we are using Autonomy EAS for archiving email.

Kind of ironic, we're testing Autonomy Connected Backup for Mac, but according to our Exchange group, the Autonomy EAS is not compatible with Mac?!

Can someone verify what version they are using, and if it supports Mac clients?

PS, Jarred, it's OK to say 'I told you so'...LOL

external image link

I told you so... again. :)

I'm taking an educated guess that the reason Autonomy EAS isn't compatible with OS X is because of Microsoft and not HP/Autonomy. From what Symantec has said with their Enterprise Vault product, Microsoft has not exposed any APIs that developers can use to create equivalent products on the Mac.

I'll open a ticket with Autonomy to get a firm answer on Mac support.

Hopefully these Autonomy products will survive once the dust settles...

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-11-20/fbi-said-to-be-looking-into-hp-s-allegations-on-autonomy

Does it work with FileVault 2?

Israel,

We have not seen any issues using it FileVault 2, beside that you have to use the CLI to install it.

I will admit that we are not really looking for them : )

C

I believe the user has to be logged in for backups to occur, so File Vault 2 shouldn't be a problem?

Don