Using Best Practices to Install and Upgrade Arcserve Backup › Best Practices for Upgrading Arcserve Backup from a Previous Release › Upgrading Multiple Servers Using a Central Database › Recommended Configuration - Arcserve Backup Domain with a Primary Server and Member Servers

Recommended Configuration - Arcserve Backup Domain with a Primary Server and Member Servers

If your current configuration consists of multiple Arcserve Backup servers sharing a centralized database, the best practice is to upgrade to a centralized management environment containing a primary server and one or more member servers. A centralized management environment lets you host the Arcserve Backup database on the primary server or a remote system. You do not need to install Arcserve Backup on the system that hosts the Arcserve Backup database instance.

Note: Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Express Edition does not support remote communication. When you install Arcserve Backup using Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Express Edition, the installation wizard installs the database application and the Arcserve database instance on the primary server. To host the Arcserve database instance on a remote system, you must use Microsoft SQL Server.

To upgrade to a centralized management environment, you must upgrade one of your current systems to a Arcserve Backup Primary Server and then upgrade all other systems to Arcserve Backup Member Servers.

The following diagram illustrates the architecture of a centralized management environment with a remote system hosting the Arcserve Backup database.