Symantec Backup Exec Migrate Data and catalogs to a fresh server or upgrade version of server

This week our backup server had to be replaced. We currently run Backup Exec 11d on Server 2003.  We are in the process of upgrading our servers to server 2008. At this point since there we are two versions behind would it be recommended to just wipe the server and start from scratch with 2008 and BE 2010 or upgrade BE 11d to 2010 and then upgrade to server 2008.

So there will be two options

In place upgrade:
1  : Upgrade BE11d to 12.5 and then to BE2010
2  : Upgrade W2003 to W2008

New Server upgrade: (With Same Name)
1  : On W2003 Server upgrade BE11d to 12.5 and to 2010
2  : On W2008 install BE2010 and migrate BE Databases from W2003 to W2008.

7-Zipping multiple folders to separate/individual zip/archive files

The problem was I had several folders I wanted to zip into individual 7z archives.  7-zip lacks a ‘Add to “*.7z”‘ explorer context for multiple selected files or folders (even though it does include a ‘Extract to “*\”‘).  Nor does this option appear within the application itself or via the command-line.  I seem to recall this feature being available in the Explorer contexts for some ZIP program I once used (I think it was TUGzip), but I wanted to choose quite aggressive compression settings for the archives and I didn’t think this would be achievable except via the command-line.

So using a bit of Google skills I discovered the ‘for… in… do’ batch command.  Which is quite powerful and I’m sure will come in handy again now that I know about it. Coupled with the 7-zip manual I arrived at a batch file with this line in it:

For 7z archive files

for /d %%X in (*) do "c:\Program Files\7-Zip\7z.exe" a "%%X.7z" "%%X\" -mx=9 -ms=on -md=26 -mfb=256