Veritas NetBackup Appliance Reviews

We have a library attached that we back up and store off-site, on a weekly basis. 

It only offers NDMP backup capabilities, we follow a traditional method. Mostly, we are creating backups of NetApp's shares.

We think the latest products and hybrid solutions are great, but considering the amount of data backup we have to perform — hundreds of BB data —, the hybrid model is not that efficient if we want to off-site data; it takes a lot of time to upload the data on a regular basis. 

The reporting is very good compared to other tools. Even though Commvault has some better features, the Veeam/Veritas center is a very good feature; it's really helpful for our reporting purposes. To clarify, I am referring to Veeam and Veritas NetBackup, as we have applied them both.

Because Veritas NetBackup Appliance is integrated with the cloud, it's hard to say. The block-level backup features could be improved.

I have been using this solution for three years.

This solution is both scalable and stable. Everyone in our company uses it and there are no issues.

The technical support is very good; I would give them a nine out of ten.

They have a standard two-hour response time but sometimes the response times vary. That needs to change.

We have been using Veritas NetBackup Appliance for a long time and never switched. Initially, we were using NetBackup. 

The integration was easy.

Overall, Veritas is a good solution; the problem is the cost. For a large enterprise, it's great.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give this solution a rating of eight.

We are using Veritas NetBackup Appliance to save data and for data backups.

The most valuable features of Veritas NetBackup Appliance are the ease of use and the familiar interface.

Veritas NetBackup Appliance could improve by having a site recovery feature.

I have been using Veritas NetBackup Appliance for approximately four years.

Veritas NetBackup Appliance is stable.

We have administrators that use the solution. We plan to increase the usage in the future.

Veritas NetBackup Appliance's initial setup is simple. The full implementation took approximately one day.

The reseller did the implementation of this solution for us.

There is a license needed to use Veritas NetBackup Appliance and there are not any additional fees.

This solution is very useful and stable.

I rate Veritas NetBackup Appliance a nine out of ten.

For me, the main use case was as an on-premise data center backup, mainly in the Unix space with Oracle. That was the main reason to use it. I know it's got a capability in the cloud, however, we haven't used it in the cloud.

The consistency of using it over a long period of time has been excellent. The big one for me is when you're dealing with database backups, particularly. I’ve used it for Oracle and SAN, and I’ve used it a lot. It’s been great.

The solution is stable.

It’s quite scalable.

Depending on the setup structure, it can be complex to implement.

In my case, it's an enterprise environment, and they're always complicated. There's no way to get around there. With Backup Exec, everything is on Windows, and you don't have to worry about it. However, if there's going to be a critical Oracle database on the Unix system and then you're going to have new Windows and the Linux, it is going to be complicated. There's no way around it, particularly with the customers.

I’ve used the solution on and off for 20 years. It’s been a very long time.

I'd say it's very stable. I use it specifically for enterprise customers. Small customers use Backup Exec. There are no bugs or glitches and it doesn’t crash or freeze.

The product is extremely scalable. Expanding is not an issue at all.

We’re a large SME. 1,000 people or more are using it.

In my new role, I have no plans to increase usage.

Tech support has usually been good when we've had disasters, or we need to do recovery. Support has been good and we’ve been able to get access to them. We’ve been satisfied with their level of assistance overall.

With NetBackup, just setting it out to different server times and nothing else is okay. Other things are a bit more complicated.

That said, it’s been eight years since I’ve done a live deployment. We got the appliance and had to set everything up.

I was working with a consultant on the last setup I did.

I’m not sure what the latest pricing models are.

I mainly use the on-premies version of the deployment. I don’t typically deal with cloud deployment.

We’re always using the latest version of the solution.

I would recommend the solution to others for enterprise on-premise.

I would rate the solution seven out of ten.

I mainly use NetBackup Appliance for daily routine backup.

NetBackup Appliance's most valuable feature is the duplication encryption standard feature. Its interface is also intuitive and easy to use.

I've been working with Veritas NetBackup Appliance for three years.

NetBackup Appliance is stable.

NetBackup Appliance is scalable.

Veritas' technical support is good.

The initial setup was easy, and it took a couple of days to onboard all my private cloud work resources that needed to be backed up. 

NetBackup Appliance's pricing is reasonable, but it could be lower.

If you're considering implementing NetBackup Appliance, initial capacity sizing will save you a lot of hassle. I would give NetBackup Appliance a rating of eight out of ten.

We use the solution as a media server and for storing data.

For traditional setups, you need to have one separate media server plus you need maybe a data domain or some kind of storage. If you use the NetBackup Appliance you do not need to have separate media servers and hardware. You can configure the same storage as a media server and master server as well as a storage port. This helps to reduce the hardware costs of the media server.

We've only been using the solution for one year, and since we've installed it, it's been running fine, so I don't have any complaints about it so far. It could be improved if it was easier to run some command items on the GUI. If they could make it a bit more user-friendly then it would be helpful.

In future releases, it would be helpful if there was something to help make recovery easy and the process faster. They need some sort of restore related feature similar to what VMware offers, in which you can directly use the image of a backup. For example, they could offer to make it so you can create a backup that can sit in your storage that you can use to send an image map via email or somewhere convenient.

The stability of the solution is good.

We've just reached the point where we'll be able to see how flexible the scalability is. We haven't tested the scalability just yet, so I can't say exactly if it is scalable or how scalable it can be.

With technical support, it feels like they aren't well trained and it takes forever to get answers out of them. We've had many complaints about them. Usually, we end up fixing it in house, since it feels like technical support is just running out the clock.

I would rate technical support at six out of ten.

We previously used EMC Data Domain. We switched because we required an additional media server, and were using new hardware which was isolated for media server purposes. Since this solution could also work as a media server, I didn't need to buy another hardware license and support for another server, so we switched.

The initial setup was simple. It was straightforward and there weren't too many complications. In terms of maintenance, one person is always managing the backup infrastructure. It's the operation team data center operator who monitors the backup during the night shift.

We have a partner in Dubai that consulted with us on the implementation.

I don't know anything specific in regards to pricing, but I do have friends that say there's an IBM solution that's less expensive than NetBackup.

We only ever made an evaluation between EMC Data Domain, our previous solution, and NetBackup.

If you are using NetBackup software on the same appliance you can expect good performance. In terms of the solution, you may need to log cases with different vendors if you have a different storage solution. However, if you have the NetBackup appliance and it doesn't need backup software you can create logs with the same technical support. It makes it easy for coordination. You can eliminate redundancies if you have a single vendor.

I would rate this solution eight out of ten.

Veritas NetBackup Appliance's most valuable feature is information backup. It works fast to back up and restore the data using snapshots.

There are a few people in Veritas NetBackup Appliance's community support. In case of technical issues, it becomes difficult to find solutions from other users. They should improve this area so that customers can resolve issues correctly. Additionally, an auto command feature could be included in it, similar to Rubrik.

We have been using Veritas NetBackup Appliance for one year.

The product is stable compared to Veeam.

It is a scalable platform. We have less than 20 users for it in our organization. At present, we are evaluating the virtualized infrastructure. Based on the report, we will decide on expansion.

The technical support services could be better. 

Positive

The product's price is high. Although, we need to buy appliances, which makes the pricing competitive compared to Rubrik and Veeam.

It can restore data in case of any crisis. They should improve security features for ransomware attacks similar to Rubrik. I never encountered any event of malicious activity using Rubrik.

I rate Veritas NetBackup Appliance a seven out of ten.

The primary use case of this solution is to manage the backup of our very large infrastructure. We have five thousand servers on virtual machines used for several applications such as Oracle database, SAP, SharePoint, and other enterprise software. 

Our experience is in the manufacturing industry. The workload includes lifecycle management, manufacture execution, and software to support the manufacturing processes.

The most valuable feature is that the backup and restoring process is very fast. It is very resilient and it is quite easy to manage. I only have an architectural perspective, but another feature is the new multi-tenant feature available on the Flex system with the Veritas 5340 Appliance. This is a very appreciated feature, and we are required to maintain segregation between tenants.

We had some problems with the backup of the physical server. With the virtual machine field, the virtual server area was very strong. We had some difficulties with the physical server, the IBM Power, and the AIX operating system. The problems were with both the server-side and the storage-side. There were also issues in doing the back up for a physical server with others, like Windows server.

This is not a very complex problem in a Virtual environment, but we are facing a Legacy infrastructure, and we had some problems with Veritas and integrating with the Legacy hardware.

The interface is very poor. Currently, they are working on implementing a new web interface that enables the multi-tenancy directly on the user. The new features that they are implementing are faster and in terms of functionalities, they cover a lot of enterprise challenges.

This solution is stable, and we haven't had any problems. We have experience with other back up solutions such as IBM, DOT rep-storage manager, now known as the IBM Spectrum Scale. These are quite similar in terms of stability. It is also very reliable and it's not difficult to implement or to deliver an availability solution or a disaster recovery solution.

This solution is scalable. We can add a storage shelf to scale the storage capability. You can scale the master server to give you more computation of resources. The management of the infrastructure is scalable. We currently have a multi-tenancy limit where you can manage a maximum of eight tenants. If you require more than eight then you have to scale out. We have not yet been faced with this issue but there is quite a bit of mutation of this product.

We have ten users as backup administrators.

We have a relationship with backup support. Any engagement with technical support is very easy and quick. I have had good experiences when I have been faced with any problems. I have never had to call the help desk directly or the support team. I have always gone through the account manager for a solution.

The setup was not complex, it was straightforward. We had a delivery team very specialized in it, so it was not at all difficult. 

The deployment took about two to three weeks from the shipment of the hardware to the release of the solution in the production system. We are currently phasing another project stream in September. We were supposed to plan two weeks of activity to set up and configure the solution. I am currently the project manager of the project.

This is an available and reliable solution, which is very good to set up for enterprise systems. We had some issues with the management of delivery where we were only provided with a technician to implement the solution, which delayed the planning of installation. However, the technician was highly qualified.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

The intelligent policies feature is used in order to protect the VMware infrastructure. One of the things that makes a big difference for our company is the usage of these intelligent policies. The system automatically provides extra protection for any VMware server application or service. From a backup administrator's point of view, this is what we call peace of mind. It reduces the workload and therefore reduces resources needed from the company.

The backup administrator always tends to be combined with all other administrators and tries to find if there is any new application, service, or server. With intelligent policies, this has been resolved. I create one policy for VMware because it has a very good integration when we pair it up with the API. With this intelligent policy, anything that is changed into the VMware is automatically led back to NetBackup protection and NetBackup covers it.

The other great thing for the company is that this kind of application is fully encrypted so it gives us full compliance for issues. That's the greatest benefit.

One of the best features is the VMware integration with NetBackup.

The cloud-based backup is also an excellent feature. 

The ability to establish many plans for long term retention, especially using some of their appliances is very helpful. We're not using paid backups for long term retention. It's our business procedure. Instead, we use new apps for storage. There is a type of storage they offer in which they give us member shared space and we can establish a parent point of the primary appliances in order to comply with the long term retention.

One of the other features of NetBackup is that it gives you Granular Recovery Technology for three major applications, or services: SQL, SharePoint, and Exchange. That means that you don't have to deploy an agent on Exchange servers or a DAG server. It also supports Office 365, and Cloud-based services. You don't have to deploy agents in a SharePoint environment, a SharePoint file, and you don't have to deploy an agent in SQL because when you create the VMware policy and you activate Granular Recovery Technology, the VMware technology that is used gives you the ability to restore with GRT, without the obligations which have an agent on the server. That is a great feature.

The only drawback for NetBackup, and of course for Veritas, is that they have stuck to the same environment and to the same user interface. This needs to be improved in future releases. It needs to be more dynamic.

I would like to see more prepared, pre-configured reports and higher integration with other leading-edge products. I'm not talking about backup solutions. I'm talking about other services like ticketing systems such as ServiceNow. 

They need to offer more integrations because of the convergence of the demands on the system these days.

The solution is very stable when there is no major change that actually requires corresponding changes to the policies of the NetBackup protection environment. If there are no more major changes from protected areas, like the VMware infrastructure, like the application of services, the solution is stable.

It's even stable with the patches that Microsoft releases from time to time, that can cause so many problems.

Some jobs may fail, but it reports back to the Backup administrator. An extensive loss gives the opportunity to find out what was changed and what is going on and proceed and make all the necessary adjustments to get back on track.

It's very stable also as an environment. After one and a half years we've never had a failure in a hard disk startup and we've never had a failure of NetBackup services. We never had any kind of corruption or any kind of failure, generally speaking.

There are some small issues, as with any product. However, the backup administrator continues reporting daily and checking to see if everything is working fine.

The solution is very scalable.

There are different types of technical support. They offer Gold and 24/7 monitoring, for example. The also offer support where they take the responsibility of monitoring the appliances. Even in cases where the backup administrator is not aware of an imminent hard disk failure, they know about it and send the replacement.

We decided to go with the Essential Support because my knowledge is very good on this product, so we try to eliminate the costs of more premium offerings. Even with Essential Support, their response time is very, very satisfactory. There was no situation where I had to call them or open on the technical support portal and chase them to get answers. Usually, they respond within 4 hours. That's really good especially because it's merely Essential Support, not Platinum or Gold. 

There was one case where we had a problem that needed escalation. The escalation happens after the second or the third action from their side. Usually, they request some logs to provide immediate feedback. They didn't spend too much time investigating the logs, and they responded immediately. They can escalate it as well if they need to.

We used to use Symantec, but it was a very smooth transition because Symantec and Veritas were part of the same company.

We looked at Veeam, which was very competitive in the process but was only software.  

Veritas won out because it offered a solution that also had native hardware and we didn't want to use space from our core storage.

The initial setup was quite straightforward. We use a Linux based backup, and we chose the solution because we are using Veritas appliances as well; it was recommended by Veritas.

It's quite easy for someone who is experienced with backup administration. It might not be as easy for someone implementing for the first time, but for someone who is already experienced, it's very easy.

There is only one server you have to prepare. The configuration is very easy and the integration with VMware was a piece of cake. It's not a complex ATI that you need to strip down, connect, stream, send, etc. It's very, very easy.

Thre are initially only four or five policies that NetBackup uses with Microsoft Windows, SQL, Oracle, VMware and Check Point. That means that you don't have to deploy agents everywhere.

The correlation between the amount that the company spends to start with the infrastructure and the gain that it has seen in terms of work components has been good. For example, the deduplication ratio that NetBackup performs is highly competitive. It's a very, very good thing because we don't have to buy extra storage that creates an extra cost for the company. 

We use the on-premises deployment model.

We've been very happy with this solution. The correlation of NetBackup with a Veritas solution, which gave us the opportunity to dynamically capture the protected data in the two different styles, was helpful. Another Veritas webpage solution works perfectly with NetBackup and gives us a dynamic picture of protected data.

One other improvement we've seen since implementation, from a business' point of view, is that the usage of the new popular technology of Veritas, like the access storage, where the initial configuration is 700 terabytes, gives us long term retention. The company avoids paying for quite expensive robotic libraries. The access storage is outside the company but the backup and the reach hold times are working in tandem. The speed on daily operation, in terms of cataloging, restoring operations, and related things are very good.

The DR (Disaster Recovery) in RPO (Recovery Point Objective) and RTO (Recovery Time Objective) has also improved. Everybody is looking for the best solution that actually gives a balance RPO or RTO. And these two terms are highly related to the DR, the disaster recovery plans. From that point of view, they are a great improvement in contrast with the previous solution that we had. The previous solution was a backup exit. Again, it was the very best, before it was Symantec. We had it for more than five years but when we moved to NetBackup we discovered a whole new world of possibilities and capabilities.

I would advise anyone to use NetBackup. I know the solution well, and I know that they offer very good implication ratio. Of course, I have this opinion because we are also using their appliances, which are pre-configured specifically for this operation.

I don't know if these ratios will be sustained if a customer buys just the software, and uses a third-party storage option to keep the backup. In our case, I would suggest sharing the POC with NetBackup, and even if the POC is without an appliance, I think they can expect to see a big difference. It's very fast.

I would rate the solution ten out of ten. If you would ask me about the software alone I would give it 9, but with the appliance, it deserves a 10.