OpenText Data Protector Reviews

People who work with it know it. We cover a lot of solutions with this backup solution.

The benefit is integration with HPE 3PAR storage and with other HPE equipment.

We didn't know exactly where this solution would go a few years ago. It was in a storage department and then later in a software department. There was some kind of confusion about that, but now it is better. I would like to see integration with hypervisors.

It is very stable; no problem with that.

It is quite scalable.

I have used technical support and I would give them an 8/10 rating. It's normally not direct support, but rather via emails and telephone calls.

If others have a similar environment like we do, then I would suggest this solution for them.

When selecting a vendor, I look for local presence and good partner support.

We rely on generating daily reports on our stocks for auditing purposes. Those reports are useful; so I would say they are the most valuable feature.

It is also very good that you can use it either from the command line or from a GUI. It depends on who is using it, what they want to do with it, and on their preferences.

Our data footprint was constantly growing. We couldn't back it up according to the backup schedules we had, so we needed a solution for this.

We have used Data Protector for as long as I have been at the organization. We're a huge HPE house, so all of our technology for backups is HPE. We were hoping to leverage as much of our current HPE technology as possible by keeping all our technology and software within one software house. Over the years, the ratio of capabilities in terms of what we wanted compared to what it was able to give us has changed.

A couple of years ago, I said that the reporting wasn't sufficient. There should be better reporting within Data Protector, rather than making you turn to an additional HPE software application.

I think that no company can get reporting right. Whatever software I use, we are always looking for reports that they just can't provide.

Our data footprint has grown massively, and we're asking a lot more of it than it can do. When I started back in 2012, it was perfectly fine. It was the hardware that was not capable of providing us with what we wanted, not the software. Now it seems that the hardware is providing us with what we want, but the software is not.

If I base my evaluation on the conversation I had recently with my SME for backups, the software is not very stable. Maybe that's because it is integrated with the hardware layer. I would say that it runs, but there are always a lot of errors. The software's stable, but the actual components are not stable for doing what we want.

We have scaled out and, therefore, needed the software to scale with that technology. We have a global backup solution, so it has been scalable in that respect.

Based on a recent conversation, technical support has been working to fix a problem for six months, but still haven’t actually fixed it. With the process that he says he had to go through, they need to look at it, and start getting their third-line engineers working directly with the customer much faster.

The professional services department is excellent in terms of the setup and configuration. We updated the hardware technology to work with the software. I definitely couldn’t fault them in that respect. The issues are with troubleshooting and when you need support.

We are looking at other vendors now. With the announcement that the software layer is leaving HPE, we need to make sure we can protect our assets; so, unfortunately, we will be looking at other backup vendors.

• We had a chat with Veritas because we are already a Veritas customer. We are going to check with them first because we already have that relationship with them.
• We looked at an offshoot called Navigator. We felt this was going to give us everything that we wanted from a reporting point of view. I had to provide reports for our stocks, but I also wanted to provide reports for our CEO on how our data footprint was changing. Navigator was incredibly expensive.

If you’re looking to move from one software to another, you need to understand how well it can be integrated with your legacy information and be backward compatible. If it’s not backward compatible, you must be given a clear strategy or process to follow.

From an auditing point of view, or a needs discovery point of view, the most important thing to look for in a vendor is the capacity to understand your environment; and provide you with the right solution and a process to follow.

Go out to your network and ask people. If you've worked in IT, I always say it is worthwhile reaching out to old colleagues. If you're still in contact with them, ask them what they are doing, why they are using that software, and what the benefits are of using that software. You're going to understand more from someone’s first-hand experience.

A company can come in and say, “We have all these customers that can be references for us; but they just pick really small customers who it has been easy working with. They're not going to tell you about a customer like us who has been currently having lots of difficulty. So I'd say: Use your network and ask them if they can help answer your questions.

The best thing I find with Data Protector as opposed to other products was the inter-compatibility with all different OSs. It's very OS agnostic; doesn't matter whether it be Linux or Windows or AIX or whatever. It just seems to work. That's useful, very useful. The GUI interface is very intuitive as well, I find. It's very easy to use.

The centralization of all the backup data is a valuable asset, and the ability to recover data quickly. It doesn't happen very much these days, to be fair. It's not very often we have to recover. We don't use Data Protector for data recovery. It does have that functionality, but because we're a 95% virtualized company, we use VMware replications for DR. But there is DR functionality within it. It needs work. It's not a simple thing to roll out. Of course now, it offers de-duplication which is big. The backup functionality is very, very good.

One of the things that they need to look at is the scheduler. At the moment, there are two ways to schedule a backup. There's a simple scheduler and an advanced scheduler. You have to do one or the other. Using the advanced scheduler is the only way to prioritize the backups. I'd like to see that merged into just one single scheduler that allows you to prioritize the backups. At the moment, backups come in and they queue with no priorities. For example, if you have four backups queuing, you can't say I want backup one to run before backup two before backup three. If they're in the queue, you can separate them with start times, but if they're all in the queue and all their start times have passed, any of them can start in no particular order. So that's one thing I would like to see.

I haven't looked at the VMware integration yet, but I'm just about to. I understand the VMware integration is quite good. That's obviously an essential thing for us.

We have been using it for about 7 or 8 years. We started at version 6. We're at version 9 now. Version 9 is very stable.

It's very stable. It wasn't in its earlier guises. But now it is.

It is scalable. It's not as scalable as HPE would like to think it is. I think the biggest problem we have with backups now is network utilization. Most backups will throttle your network, because you're shipping a lot of data around. Because of that, I've had to break up the whole service into smaller segments in order to back it up more easily. You've only got 24 hours in a day, ultimately, so you can only backup so much data in that time. That was a problem we were having, where backups were taking more than a day to run. As we scale, the backups are more challenging time-wise. Now, there are ways around that. I'm just about to start a new project on Data Protector to look in at the VMware plugin because we are virtualized. I believe that will help a lot with my network throughput.

The technical support for Data Protector is good actually. I have no problems with that. We log calls, and they get back to us straightaway. I've had a couple of P1s that have moved around the world with the time zones, so it's always been worked on. That's been good.

At various companies that I've worked for, I've used different backup solutions. I've used Veritas NetBackup and Backup Exec. That was a proprietary backup. They're the two main ones that I've used recently.

The most important criteria to me when selecting a certain vendor is not so much the vendor as the product itself.

I've been involved in redesign and all the upgrades, not the initial setup. It's quite straightforward.

I know that Veeam is becoming a market leader in backup software. But, I haven't recommended anybody else but HPE. It just works for us at the moment, so no need to change.

The most important criteria to me when selecting a vendor is not so much the vendor as the product itself.

I would recommend it, absolutely. Just check your network can cope with the product and the backup throughput.

The valuable features are the ability to:

• Backup data
• Write to D2Ds
• Utilize D2D compression technology

We write TBs and TBs of data to backend HPE D2Ds. It then dedupes all the information so we get a 10:1 ratio of deduplication. This means we can store a heck of a lot more data on less storage. It saves us time and money.

The benefit is that we've got data retention and we can store data for people. We are a financial services organization, so we are audited on the level of security of our data. This solution allows us to prove that we are storing it correctly.

I'd like the ability to search backups a lot easier. I'd like the ability to search for a particular server within a backup because people come to you and ask for the backup of a server. They talk about it in those terms. You end up trying to find out where that server is located for a particular job that you might have set up months ago. It would be good to have a search feature where you could ask, "Server X, what backup job is that?" That would be helpful.

It would be good if it worked properly and it actually gave you usable error codes.
A large percentage of the time, you get very vague messages, or it just turns off, and it never tells you why. It's very difficult to decipher what happened and what has gone wrong.

The problem with HPE Data Protector is when it goes wrong, it's very hard to fathom why it went wrong.

It's pretty scalable. Now we're on HPE Data Protector version 9.0, so you only have a single Cell Manager. We roll out globally so there's no issues with that side of it.

We have to raise support tickets and that's an extremely painful thing. It can take five to seven weeks. That's the bad side of it. It is difficult to get decent support and to get to the people who know what they're talking about.

Initially, the technical support is terrible. You raise a call and then you are asked for log after log. What you want is someone who knows what they're doing who can help you right away. When you finally get through to those people a month later, they can normally resolve your issues within an hour. However, getting to them is very difficult.

We were already using it when I came to the company. I was more involved in the decision to upgrade.

I was involved with the setup and it was reasonably straightforward. You install Cell Manager, then you create distribution servers, and then you roll out to a virtual machine. It's a pretty straightforward process.

We're probably going to have to start thinking about alternatives. Our data footprint is growing so rapidly that we're going to need to look at new solutions anyway. We have backup jobs that are over ten TBs for a single server. We need ways in which we can restore that data quickly.

We use 3PAR, so we're going to start looking at deduplication on it. We need snapshotting, and that sort of stuff. We've got to start looking at how we do things and how we can do them differently and faster. It may or not be with HPE.

When it works, it works well. When it doesn't work, it can be very frustrating.
I would look across the whole marketplace and see what's out there.

Originally, the benefit from Data Protector was that it fitted in because we buy HPE storage. So as an ecosystem, it was quite easy and smooth.

Although the ecosystem is good, development of Data Protector isn’t as fast as other products.

Actually, we're moving away from Data Protector due to lack of support on newer operating systems and latest products. For example, it takes time to support new products such as Windows 2016. Since we want to move faster, we're moving towards Tivoli Storage Manager. The reason being our infrastructure partner is IBM.

Improvements should be brought about in regards to the support for VMware. There is limited support for VMware, but it's not as good as other products.

We're running quite old versions. We're now running unsupported versions.

However, when it was relevant for this kind of work, the product was fairly stable.

The technical support was pretty good from HPE; better than usual. They're not bad.

It was more on the development side and that is why we are moving away.

We have not used any other solution and started off with Data Protector. Our company started using Data Protector from day one, as it was a free solution.

It was very much cross-platform. We run H-DOX, Solaris, Windows and Linux and it fit in.

Originally, we did have a vendor shortlist. We were looking at NetBackup, Veritas and similar products. We also looked at IBM and since we use them a lot we decided to go with their solution. That was very easy.

Globally, TSM is a well-known product. It is another old legacy product that has been used for decades.

You need to look at the applications that you're backing up. For integration, it's case by case. The integration piece is the key. As a piece of technology, it's good.

From a data protection standpoint, HPE Data Protector reduced our and our customer’s recovery time. It also gave them an advantage in the industry in that they are able fall back quicker.

Reduced backup times, and it helped with security mitigation from a data protection standpoint.

I don't use it today on a regular basis, but there are always feature improvements that our customers are looking for, such as more integration from an API perspective with different applications and cloud platforms. Also, broader integration to the ecosystem as it relates to the cloud and the application API.

We didn't have too many problems. It was fairly stable.

We contacted technical support a couple of times during upgrades, but I wouldn't say that the issues were anything out of the ordinary or systemic.

The initial setup was fairly straightforward. We did not have any difficulties.

There's always a bake-off process between competing products regarding feature sets, like Symantec. Customers typically go through a list of criteria as they relate to applications, and how they're trying to protect data, such as how it's encrypted at rest and in flight. These are decisions we all have to make. Other issues are whether there was encryption inflate, was it encrypted at rest, how many GO's did I need to protect that data, and what the replication scheme looked like.

With respect to HPE data protection, you need to do the mapping with respect to what you're looking for. From my own personal experience, HPE was a pretty seamless install from an operational perspective.

But, I never want to be involved in data protection again. It's a thankless job, but a necessary evil.

I can rely on this backup and recovery software, if we have a disaster, to recover the data.

The number one benefit of the solution is that our hardware is HP, so it makes sense to keep standardization, as far as backups are concerned and obviously ease of use.
We can rely on it if we have to get into a disaster situation, so it has absolutely improved how my organization functions from that perspective.

I would like to see it incorporate all of the new forms of cloud backup and similar items, absolutely. With the transition from on-prem to obviously cloud solutions, our backups need to be more cloud-ready, so to speak.

It is extremely stable.

With scalability, there are a few limitations. However, the product is pretty fair in terms of scalability.

It's limited to certain platforms. It could cover a wider variety of platforms more easily and not be so cost-intensive.

We have logged calls with technical support. We've had a few challenges, but they've managed to overcome them. Technical support has been good.

I've been involved in a few iterations of upgrades and that seems to have gone quite seamlessly.

We conducted three comparisons and HPE were one of the top. There were better ones, but at a higher price. HP seems to be the most fit for purpose and the most cost effective.

We looked at solutions like Redstone, we looked at a product called Veeam and obviously the third product being Oxove.

Obviously, standardization played a big role in the decision to invest in this solution; the fact that we’ve got an HP house, so obviously, from that perspective; as well as the reliability of the software.

The reason why we chose this category of solution is that we're an enterprise, and Data Protector is an enterprise DLP solution.

When we chose the solution, reliability was absolutely the most important criteria, and we’re absolutely satisfied.

I recommend the product, based on my experiences, obviously; being able to recover when we're required to get some data back; it is extremely reliable; and obviously the scalability and transforming the business as well.

Restarting the failed session, where you don’t need to run a whole selection list backup.

Newer DP versions even have a resume feature, which should allow you to continue from the point of failure, instead of ruining the whole partition in case of a “restart failed objects“ error.

There are lots of bugs around; inability to downgrade version, issues with version upgrades, etc. For example, Data Protector version 8 didn’t have a properly working restore feature; the next upgrade came within week. All kinds of small things required workarounds and support engagement to find some tweak within the config files.

When comparing other backup software, such as BackupExec for example which I have used at the same time as Data Protector. For BackupExec our backup team did raise one vendor case throughout four years, while for Data Protector, we had three to four vendor cases opened every month. That is just in general, as I really do not remember all the details for all those, I dont know, but hundreds of cases opened with HP Data Protector support. What I remember we didn‘t have a single patching/upgrade of Data Protector version without issues, which could only be solved by HP Data Protector vendor support. While for BackupExec it was always smooth and any issues we encountered we were able to solve them on our own.

I have been using it for 4+ years.

I have not encountered any deployment, stability or scalability issues.

Customer service is great.

Technical support is great.

We switched because of company policy, the tapes aged, etc.

Initial setup was straightforward.

I was within the support team, which did implement as well as support the solution.

Huge. Simply eliminating the need for tape changers returned the cost of the hardware within less than half a year.

Get an expert who knows the products, so you can get the best prices possible for both DP and StoreOnce. Because there are some things that can work for the same solution in different ways, hence they are differently licensed as well as priced.

Make sure architecture is planning properly, e.g., centralised or decentralised HPE DP Cell Managers give you some quite different options and etc.

The ability to run multiple jobs to multiple devices and systems is the best part of this system. The limit is the hardware that the software runs on.

In recent years, I would say this product has held us back rather than improving us. However, I would say also that the biggest improvement is its ability to back up the ESXi hosts over the SAN fabric as long as the disks are presented to the backup host.

This product is lagging behind most of its competitors. It is still expensive to add features and the ESXi integration is terrible -- you have to restore a whole VMDK to then get the ability to restore a file. There is no library of ESXi servers and the plug-in fails most of the time.

The integration into core products -- Exchange, SharePoint, and VMware, being some -- is just not as good as other vendors.

We've had no issues deploying it.

The database is vastly improved and it's much more stable. Rarely does it get corrupted like in the older versions.

We haven't had issues scaling it.

HP moved the support and, with it, any faith of any resolution to most tickets. It takes days to get something solved as you battle with the automated emails from the tier ½ support people.

It's expensive to add features.

The product is very stable and will work. However, it has lacked serious funding over the years and other products have overtaken it.

My advice to HPE is to start investing as you are letting this great product slip away.

• Backup to Disk with StoreOnce software catalyst
• Disaster Recovery
• Zero downtime backup

Data Protector helps us to maintain data consistency and recover data with minimum downtime. We can recover the user-specific data when there is data loss, such as a mailbox or file server.

Having dual-cell manager in the environment at primary and secondary sites, data restoration and services can be made up in case the primary site goes down completely.

• Technical Support
• Troubleshooting
• Restore using multi-path
• Restore for Microsoft Exchange
• GRE

I've used it for more than seven years.

I've had no issues with deploying it.

There isn't much instability as the product has been stable with the exception of a few bugs during upgrades.

There have been no issue with scalability until now for mid-level datacenters.

4/10

Technical support is very poor and I would rate it as 1/10. The response from L1 is very slow and there is no handover when the engineer finishes the shift. There's no direct interaction with the L2 or L3, which makes the case take more time. L1 basically behaves as a mediator for transferring the information from the customer to L2 or L3, and they don't perform any troubleshooting.

I haven't migrated a customer with different solution to Data Protector, but I have seen a customer move from Data Protector to Avamar, Veeam, and Commvault, who had better product offerings.

The initial setup is straightforward if you understand the architecture correctly.

We implemented it with out in-house team.

Licensing is categorized for each sub component rather than on the basis of services which is what we would like. For example, there is one license for all GREs, and similarly one license for all zero downtime backup products.

No other options were looked at.

It's easy to learn for new users, not complicated, and has a simple backup and restore procedure. Last but not the least, it's easy to recover in case of disaster. The drawback is that there is some inconsistency and bugs with the level of technical support.

I would recommend the product to others keeping in mind the ease of implementation, maintenance of software, and easy backup and restore steps.