Veritas NetBackup Reviews

It enabled Telecom Fiji Ltd to backup the Unix-based OS. Backup Exec 12.0 was only able to backup the Windows platform.

Deduplication is the most valuable feature as it reduces the backup time and provides backup of a single copy of data as opposed to multiple versions of the same file.

GUI needs to be more user-friendly.

The product has been stable from day one. The only issue was on Telecom Fiji Ltd's side, i.e., when the tapes are not rotated per cycle and the data is not transferred to it for clearing the storage pool. This caused the pool to fill up and affect the backup jobs.

We did encounter some stability issues. We could not read the LT04 media on the LT05 drives. The majority of our old data was on LT04 and we could not transfer/read it. There should be interoperability on these drives.

Technical support is excellent.

Previously, we were using the Veritas Backup Exec 12.0. We changed to this solution because we needed a backup solution that could back-up the Unix-based OS.

The setup was complex, considering that we have never worked on an Unix-based OS before.

The software and license are very expensive.

We looked at CommVault and Veeam.

This product is very robust. Be prepared for the cost.

Six months ago, I recovered several dozen TBs of production data after our storage failed. I recovered Enterprise Vault, Exchange, Oracle, and SQL DBs and VMs. We did not lose any production data and immediately after recovery, the business ran smoothly.

You can construct a comprehensive robust backup solution based on NetBackup. Management of such a solution will not be an ultimate challenge. I can rely on this product if I need a restore.

The last releases introduced a simplified backup of MS SQL and Oracle. I'd like to have a more user-friendly interface for recovering MS SQL. It would be nice to have native support for MySQL and PostgreSQL. Veritas should increase the number of supported storage options.

To be more specific, NetBackup has the user interface and if you need to restore DB instead of failed one - it's OK. But if you need to restore DB to different location or another server you need: find required backup copy via the user interface, create *.bch file with restore parameters, edit this file to adopt it for the new DB destination, open this file in the user interface. For beginners, these steps are not something obvious.

Netbackup can backup MySQL via Oracle policy, to be honest, this is not completely native support and this method has a few limitations. In fact, you can buy from Veritas (or Zmanda) clients for MySQL or PostgerSQL from Zmanda to backup MySQL or PostgreSQL on Linux. But sometimes this is not convenient.

Currently, as far as I know, for Replication Director has support snapshots and replication only for Netapp storage (ONTAP) and support of snapshots for EMC VNX and EMC Celerra. Despite the fact that for my environment this functionality was enough, I think that Veritas should develop Replication Director and add more storage devices. I believe that now, as data grows really fast, backup software should not only copy data in a classic way, but should be able to manage snapshots and replication between storage devices. In fact, this applies to any enterprise backup software.

Any large products have their issues. I cannot say that the stability issues were unacceptable in comparison with TSM, Commvault, or Veeam, for example.

I would give technical support a rating of 8/10. They are good.

In the organization where I was previously, NetBackup replaced Backup Exec because Backup Exec did not have enough flexibility/scalability for the current environment.

I've implemented several NetBackup installations and all of them run smoothly. However, if you are going to implement it for the first time, I really recommend you run some tests before doing so.

If you have a complex environment with dozens of different servers and apps, I recommend you look for TB licensing. We decided to convert our per server licenses to simplify the license management.

We did not evaluate other options.

My recommendation is the same for any product. Decide what options you really need, and then test the required options. If the required options work fine, then implement the solution.

By reducing the backup window the organization has more time to run batches.

The client side deduplication reduces the backup window.

So far I can only say that the license structure could be looked at to be aligned as either capacity-based or traditional.

We did not encounter any issues with stability.

We did not encounter any issues with scalability.

I would rate the technical support at 10/10.

We did not use a previous solution.

Start on a capacity model. You can't go wrong as it covers all the requirements for backup.

Our only other frame of reference is switching from BE to NBU. We got more advanced control of backups and restores by switching to a full-fledged enterprise solution.

Its most valuable feature is probably the variety of features it has. You have the ability to perform a lot of actions with a single software solution. Specific features that I could not do without are SLPs for replication and duplication control and AIR which makes DR easy.

The code base in general could use an overhaul. The base of the product is very old. It gets a lot of new features, but improvements in basic functionality are often sacrificed for a shiny new bullet point to put on sales presentations. It is one of the best solutions available, but it certainly has its shortcomings.

The product itself is very stable. Most issues with stability come from running too many parallel operations and the hardware itself can’t handle it.

Price is a major issue with scalability. In big environments with lots of servers, this product is quite expensive. When a single backup environment gets large, the backup catalog gets large and then your catalog backups for DR production begin to take a very long time. The database performance begins to suffer. I find a 500-700GB catalog will give the highest performance, but I wouldn’t want to get much larger than 2TB.

Technical support runs the gamut depending on where your call lands. US based support out of MN or FL is generally the best I can find for frontline people. India is about what you would expect. They push off a lot of work and assign busy work when they don’t know the answers. US backline engineers are some of the best technical people in the business.

I previously used Backup Exec, NetBackup's little brother. We switched as our environment grew large enough to justify a more robust backup solution.

The initial setup was very easy. It has a lot of "next, next, next," and basic functions that just work. Setting up advanced features can be complex, but the documentation is readily available. If you read and follow the steps in the documentation, you will be fine.

Smaller virtualized environments will want to stick to a traditional licensing model if possible. It will likely be cheaper, but it is a pain to manage all the individual licenses for each client. Once you get to a thousand or so servers to backup, the capacity model starts to make more sense. Again, it is not what you would call cheap.

We did not evaluate other solutions before this product, but while this product was in a smaller environment, we evaluated EMC solutions, Rubrik, TSM, and HPE Data Protector. The solutions that offered robust feature sets like NBU were more expensive or more complex. They either lack features or they are too new, such as Rubrik. Some are very expensive for the same feature set with EMC's solutions.

The top level solutions all have similar features, but find what you do most and choose the product that makes that the most efficient. Remember that in the end, you have to spend your days managing this. You want to make the day-to-day stuff you do as straightforward as possible. Build redundancies into your backups systems and split out backup traffic from the production network.

Managed to control all backups centrally across the environment and ensure correct and multiple retention periods were in place based on the business requirement.

Management interface was simple to use once understood.

Updates were not always consistent.

Early releases did seem to cause issues. Once a stable version was found then we generally stayed with it for an extended period, as it just worked.

Very scalable. Started with 20 machines, within two years, scaled to over 250 and management was just as easy.

Customer Service:

Good. Logging of tickets was very difficult and complicated but once logged, very helpful.

Technical Support:

Very good. All issues were resolved in a timely manner.

Yes, switch was prompted by IT Manager; due diligence report from external company concluded existing product was not suitable for needs.

Complex, as was unsure how the product worked at the beginning. But after several months of using, became very simple to use as everything is within the single agent install and understood what was required.

Initial implementation was via a vendor team. Upgrades were in-house, as had relevant experience.

Vendor did seem to know what they were doing on implementation but usage of the product seemed limited.

Licensing was very expensive and did not scale well if needed to move between license models. But you get for what you pay for.

No.

Very expensive product, learning curve is very high but once understood and working correctly, is a fantastic product.

It offers everything I need from a backup system. I am completely sure that all my data is backed up.

We now have a reliable backup system. Also, it provides us with great integration possibilities for different products, e.g. Informix, Oracle, MySQL, VMware, Linux, Unix, and Windows. It also helps with deduplication and the backing up of flash systems.

Technical support needs to improve, especially with the appliances.

It's the best and most reliable backup system I've used.

Stability, easy troubleshooting

10 years (discontinuously)

No particular issue when deploying on Unix and windows master servers

No

7/10

7/10

I used alternatively networker, TSM and Netbackup

Straightforward, both on Solaris, Linux, and windows servers. Easy client installation (local or remote)

On the various missions i was able to use netbackup, the solution was installed, I participated to different upgrades and migrations.

Easily integrated with Claude

Netbackup is useful for providing dedicated backup services.

From a technical point of view, all EMC products have to improve the troubleshoot feature like, log should be in human readable format.

Past 5 to 6 years.

Easy to deploy.

Wrong integration is always the

Not yet.

4.5/5

4/5

I used Sympana commvault and CA arc serve. Both the products are good for small organisations but not up to the mark for enterprise level.

Through vendor team; try to just know how to fix the hardware and plug the networker cable. Rest of the things we had to do remotely.

For enterprise level backup solution – No.