OpenText Data Protector Reviews

We have two different systems. We use Microsoft Azure Backup for VM machines and Micro Focus for our file server, database, and cloud backups, like Exchange Online and so forth.  

The online backups of Office 365 have room for improvement. This is now available for the Exchange Online part of Office 365, but we're still waiting for SharePoint Online, Teams, etc. We know that it's coming, but it takes time.

We have been using Data Protector for more than 20 years. We started using it when it was an HP solution, but then Micro Focus acquired it. It was always the same product.

Data Protector is highly stable.

Data Protector is scalable. 

I've never heard any complaints about Micro Focus support, so I think it's okay.

Data Protector is quite simple and easy to deploy. The deployment is always the same. It's on a server, and the agents are deployed to the machines in a straightforward way. We have two engineers who deploy and manage all our backup solutions. 

We switched from device licensing to volume-based licensing for Data Protector.

I rate Micro Focus Data Protector eight out of 10. We chose Data Protector years ago because it supported all the systems and databases we needed. Other software packages covered a special range of products but didn't offer broad support. This was a long time ago, so I don't know the situation in the market today.

Typically, our clients utilize OpenText Data Protector for Oracle firewall backup NDMPs and, more recently, for HANA. I have undergone training where OpenText explicitly stated their support for SAP HANA. Thus, we have a client base for whom we provide data protection using the Data Protector tool.

Every feature is important in data protection. Every feature plays a vital role. There's nothing particularly about it. 

It is easy to understand and implement. It is also easy to upgrade. These are the main challenges that we face, but OpenText Data Protector makes it quite simple.

In SAP restoration, we faced issues with changing the SIDs and changing the path for every backup object. It is quite a lengthy process to do that. We have to change that individually on every object. We have also provided an enhancement request to the OpenText team.

The backup process for SAP Oracle could be improved. When restoring, the need to alter SIDs arises, particularly in scenarios involving server changes or out-of-place restores. This leads to a requirement for modifying remote checkpoint settings and initiating the restoration process. The situation becomes more complex and time-intensive when dealing with a large number of files.

So, improvements are needed for the backup of SAP Oracle, especially for situations involving CPR codes

Another area of improvement is support. There's room for improvement in terms of the support we receive from the OEM or the technical support team.

The reason for seeking improved support is mainly due to extended response times. Mostly, I've encountered situations where an engineer has to wait until the end of their shift before passing the issue to the next level of support. This process takes too much time to resolve any issue. Unfortunately, we frequently do not receive dedicated support from the Micro Focus team.

Another area of improvement is stability of the application on Windows.

I have worked with this solution for more than two years. We currently use the latest version.

The stability is poor, especially the application which we run on Windows. It is not that stable, so we do some issues with the application. 

I would rate the stability a four out of ten. 

Our clients are normally enterprise-level businesses. So, we have approximately 30 clients using this solution.

There have been instances where Micro Focus helped us resolve cases, but most of the times, we handle the issues ourselves due to the prolonged response time from their team, sometimes taking several days.

Neutral

I would rate my experience with the initial setup a nine out of ten, where one being difficult and ten being easy. 

It is very easy. 

The deployment process typically takes around one or two hours.

To deploy the solution, you initiate the process by right-clicking in the admin interface. The deployment can be done manually or set up for automatic deployment. Information confirmation is a key step, and the solution is then automatically deployed. 

The pricing falls somewhere around seven out of ten, where one being cheap and ten being expensive. It's neither too expensive nor very cheap.

Usually, I work with the standard license rather than a capacity-based one.

I recommend it because it's simple to use, easy to understand, simple to operate, and simple to implement. The backup stability is commendable, even when dealing with NDMP and SAP Oracle backups. Based on my experience, I would suggest Micro Focus Data Protector to our enterprise clients.

Overall, I would rate the solution an eight out of ten.

We use the solution for backup data protection of on-premises, in-cloud, and virtual environments. Also, we use it for the features such as production tab and recall tool.

The solution is easy to use.

The solution's customer support service needs a lot of improvement. Presently, they take a long time to resolve simple issues.

I rate the solution's stability as a four. We face challenges with it, and the support team has not been able to fix them.

We have 2000 users of the solution in our organization. I rate its scalability as a six.

The solution's customer support service for setup and ongoing issues could be better. 

The solution's initial setup was easy, but it took two months to complete the process because of its poor technical support.

The solution's support team executed the deployment for us. It was a time-consuming process.

The solution's price is more reasonable than the other vendors.

If the solution's customer service improves, it will stand out as the best product compared to other vendors. I rate it as a five.

We use the solution mainly for backup and recovery of all our infrastructures. Also, we are using Veeam for this purpose.

Regarding features, the solution is highly stable when it comes to taking backups of our enterprise infrastructure, such as Linux, Oracle, and SAP.

If I compare products from HP to Micro Focus, I do not see a lot of development in Micro Focus like before. The product can be developed by including functionalities like DR, CDP, and SureBackup, which are currently unavailable in the solution. However, one also needs to consider that Micro Focus is used by enterprise-sized businesses that don't care about many features. The solution's data protection features and scalability could be improved.

I have been using Micro Focus Data Protector since March 2020. We are using Micro Focus Data Protector 10.03 and 11.03. My company is a consultant who provides the solution to its customers

It is a stable solution. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

Micro Focus is not as scalable as Veeam. Also, I have many customers working on Micro Focus Data Protector.

I remember that many of the cases of our customers that were highlighted to the customer support team remained unresolved for a week. Actually, Micro Focus needs to invest more resources because the product is sold from company to company.

The initial setup process for the solution is easy. 

The time taken for the deployment depends upon the infrastructure. If you have a lot of servers and storage, a lot of effort is needed to take care of the integration part of the solution. Veeam's deployment process is easier since it has a better user-friendly GUI. But, again, it depends on what the customer exactly needs.

Our company only needs staff members while carrying out any upgradation or migration processes.

The license for the solution is very expensive compared to the other products in the market. There are two types of licenses. Now, they are forcing all the companies to go for their capacity license, which is very costly. If a company is growing, it will require more of the solution, and the company will have to pay more.

I would recommend Veeam over Micro Focus Data Protector. Overall, I rate the solution somewhere between six to seven out of ten.

We use Micro Focus Data Protector for taking backups throughout our entire data center, which includes backups for our SAP HANA, Oracle, and SQL databases, as well as for the Windows virtual instances which also require file-level, user data, and database backups.

Data Protector's granular recovery features make it easy for us to create and restore backups in an understandable and user-friendly manner. With granular recovery, any database or even just a database table can be restored at will.

The new dashboard that has been introduced is also very good because it allows us to easily visualize how many backups have been performed, showing the total number of TB used as well as useful information on our backup schedules.

Also, in terms of basic backup features, it has everything that most other backup solutions provide and the pricing is very competitive for what it offers.

Micro Focus are improving Data Protector with every new version and since we began undergoing training with the latest version we have not faced any real challenges yet. However, their support does need to be improved, in my opinion. In certain critical cases that we've had, they did not provide a satisfactory level of support.

I have been using Micro Focus Data Protector for the past ten years.

It is both stable and easy to maintain.

In terms of scalability, we're already using it throughout our entire data center. There are no limitations when it comes either host or data backups; you simply need to buy the appropriate licenses and scale up as required.

For any issues that we encounter, we escalate to Micro Focus' tech support. Unfortunately, their support does need some improvement because, in critical cases we've had in the past, I don't believe that they have provided adequate support.

Neutral

For me, setting up Micro Focus is straightforward when it comes to the Windows platform, but somewhat more complicated on Linux because I am not very accustomed to Linux. 

It will generally take one month for the planning phase, then another month for testing, after which we can implement it and move it into production.

Everything in terms of implementation is done in-house.

We are indeed getting return on investment from this solution.

Data Protector's pricing is very competitive and we have no issues in this regard. I would give it an eight out of ten in terms of pricing.

There are two main types of license, one being a perpetual license with a one-time charge and the other is a subscription license where you pay every year. With either type, scaling up is not a problem; you can just buy the appropriate license that is in compliance with your needs, and there is no limitation here.

We are currently evaluating similar backup solutions in the market such as those from Veeam and Veritas (NetBackup). 

At the end of the day, Data Protector is a user-friendly backup solution that is easy to integrate with any OS or database. Its main strengths include granular backup functionality and a well-implemented dashboard that tells you all the essential info such as how many backups you've run, how many have succeeded or failed, and how much space the backups are taking up.

I would rate Micro Focus Data Protector a nine out of ten.

I provide Data Protector as a solution to my customers, but I have fewer clients using the product these days. 

Data Protector's GUI is the most useful feature.

The GUI could be updated. The GUI hasn't changed since version 6. It's on version 10 now. The reporting could also be better. Also, while Data Protector is excellent for backing up physical hardware, it needs more features for backing up VM images because many environments use hypervisor. 

It's not as good as some of its competitors. One image backup job should be able to restore the file or database level, but Data Protector has to create three separate jobs.

I have been using Micro Focus Data Protector for more than five years.

Data Protector is stable.

Data Protector can scale up, but I have never used that feature.

I rate Micro Focus support six out of 10. In the past, I contacted Micro Focus support frequently, but most of my customers stopped using Data Protector. I had a good experience with their team five years ago, but their technical support has gone downhill since then.

Neutral

Setting up Data Protector is straightforward. I rate it 10 out of 10 for ease of setup. 

I rate Data Protector six out of 10 for affordability. I don't know the exact cost, but the Micro Focus license is expensive compared to other products like VM. You can back up VMs for free.

I rate Micro Focus Data Protector six out of 10 overall. I would recommend something besides Data Protector. It isn't competitive with other products and doesn't support replication features. So it's less competitive with other products in the market. So I wouldn't advise.

We don't use Micro Focus widely. It's used as a backup-to-tape system. Overall, we have about five users because a couple of our clients use it as well.  

I like that Micro Focus keeps a separate catalog of our data. 

Many of our users complain about the GUI. You still need to rely on the command line interface. Because it originated as a Unix system, Data Protector is still a command line-driven solution, which makes it seem rather dated compared to systems that are built around a GUI from day one. It doesn't affect the functionality, but some people don't find it user-friendly.

I have been using Micro Focus for almost 20 years. 

Data Protector is stable.

Data Protector is highly scalable.

We don't use Micro Focus support often, but it has been pretty good when we needed it.

We also use Acronis Backup, but it's hard for me to compare because I don't have as much experience with Acronis relative to Data Protector. It's also one of those difficult situations because we haven't really pushed Data Protector to its limits. It has a lot of functionality that we don't use. We tend to use more of Acronis' functionality, so it would be unfair to compare them.

The initial setup is fairly straightforward because it was historically a Unix system. It takes about half a day to install. 

Data Protector has an annual license, and it's reasonably priced. 

I rate Micro Focus Data Protector eight out of 10. It's a highly stable solution that does the job. To use this product, you must comfortable with a command line interface, and many people today can't deal with anything that's not GUI. You need to be in control of the command line to use it properly. 

file backup and VM backup 

Nops, MFDP Solution is outdated in termes of current backup and protection requirements and we are forced to move to another solution 

The world has changed, growth is happening towards cloud capabilities, and this product is not that developed. If you were to ask me what I like about Micro Focus Data Protector previously, I would say that this product is a single platform manager. At that time there was not any competition. You got the backup guaranteed even if it took some time, but in the they recovered the file. It was a really strong backup solution which contained a single license for tender services. But now the world has changed. There is instant recovery available but they're still an application based backup model. They didn't evolve.

Micro Focus Data Protector must improve its overall evolution record. They need to focus on hardware-based instant recovery, client recovery, and cloud abilities. Now there is no cloud ability.

Another thing they need to work on is that they still lack bare-metal VM and bare-metal recovery models.

The third issue they need to improve, and at the top of the list, is that with the RTO and RPO, we cannot come to a customer as an industry best. Because what happens when you sell is that recovery takes the longest time. This is the pain point in the solution, that it takes time compared to instant recovery.

In terms of additional features I would like to see included in the next release of Micro Focus Data Protector, I will be looking for instant recovery features and for better reporting. To sum up, instant recovery and cloud ability (backup to cloud, return to cloud and restore).

I have been using Micro Focus Data Protector in my current environment for about one and a half years and almost seven years total.

Currently, I can only give negative feedback because my experience in its current state is not up to the mark.

It is a traditional backup model. If you talk about file server and the official Windows database, it's a stable product.

But in the VM, nobody is looking for backup for the sake of backup, you are looking at backup for the sake of recovery. It's not frequent, but it happens, so any backup solution should not be focused just on what to backup but focused on how fast they can recover the data. That is the idea of Rubrik. The other competitors don't focus on backup, they focus on recovery. They talk about the instant recovery in backup, the RPO and RTO. When you talk about relation, the focus is towards stability and client complaints. And they still don't have their own dedicated hardware for the backup.

Nops

So I went from the Omni Backup to HP Data Protector to Micro Focus Data Protector. I have seen all three transition products. They have stopped developing. I don't know why that happened.

High in SA renewal cost for not future development 

Yes, at that time they are leaders in the backup

On a scale of one to ten, I would give Micro Focus Data Protector a three or three point five at the highest. If somebody wants to argue, I can go up to three point five, otherwise, three. It is very simple - they have not adopted the latest technologies. Micro Focus Data Protector works, but it's very slow and for the environment I'm running in there are better backups.