Veritas NetBackup Reviews

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.

I mostly use it for disaster recovery and secondly for compliance reasons.

The reliability is valuable, especially for the appliance solution. Additionally, the resilience features help guard against threats such as ransomware.

The ease of use needs improvement. Specifically, the interface poses a challenge for newcomers, and the support used to be good, but it has declined in quality.

I have been using it since 2012, which makes it 12 or 13 years.

The upgrade process used to have issues, mainly a couple of years back. Because of that bad experience, I rate them a nine out of ten. They have made efforts to fix those issues, and during my last upgrade, we did not have any problems.

Their support quality has declined. I would rate it a six out of ten now, whereas it used to be a nine out of ten about two or three years ago.

Neutral

I would rate the initial setup a ten, but I have sufficient knowledge of the solution. Typically, I can have it up and running in a day. For the backups to reach a stable state, it usually takes two weeks since NetBackup runs at night, and I have to address any issues the next day.

I would  recommend it to other users due to my thirteen years of experience. It delivers every time when properly configured. It performs well during crises.

The documentation available, especially on YouTube, is sparse compared to other vendors. 

I give the solution an eight out of ten.

The tool fully integrates with the other products.

The tool provides recovery. The support for their legacy software is very good.

The pricing could be improved.

I have been using Veritas NetBackup for five years.

The product is stable.

The tool is easy to scale.

We need to wait until the other support center is open. We have to stay outside the working hours to get a support.

Neutral

The initial setup is straightforward and requires two engineers to support it. 

We have achieved 60% ROI.

One should find a stable backup solution within budget.

Overall, I rate the solution a seven or eight out of ten.