Channel Insider, with the help of Christopher A. Furey, managing director of Imaginamics, took SPN for a test drive to see if Symantec’s venture into SAAS is all it’s cracked up to be. To get started with SPN, users will need a valid account and access rights to the service. The initial setup of the product occurs by using a Web-based portal to access the client installation software. The first step is to download the agent installer, which took about three minutes on our broadband connection. The actual install, which consisted of launching the downloaded client applications, took about seven minutes to complete and required a reboot. For the first part of our tests, we used a Dell Inspiron 1501 laptop and installed version 1.0.2.869 of the SPN agent.

Installers will need to keep in mind that SPN uses port 443 to authenticate between the agent on the PC and the portal server, and may have to make changes to firewalls or other security devices to ensure that the application works.

SPN installs as three windows services on the desktop PC, the SPN Backup Agent, the SPN Communications Manager and, if you're an administrator, it also installs the SPN Platform Agent Administrator. The Backup Agent sits in the system tray to let windows users know that the service is running and offers some minimal status reporting.

The SPN service, though agent-based, is completely operated from the online Web portal. The service supports multiple users and multiple systems, so an administrator has a convenient single tabbed interface to keep an eye on users, assets and reports. The SPN portal also provides access to the Backup Exec Online functions if you're authorized to use that feature. (BE is now configurable to point erstwhile tape-bound data to the SPN portal, extending the BE functions into offsite data vaulting while still supporting the enterprise customer's investment in BE software and licenses.)