Veritas NetBackup Reviews

We are an IT company that provides solutions to end users. Most of our end users come from the banking sector, the government sector, and other government-linked companies. When I say that we use Veritas NetBackup, I don't mean to say that we use it internally, but rather that we propose it and use it in solutions that we offer to clients.

Most of our clients use Veritas NetBackup to protect their highly critical workloads, which are often situated in virtual machines with Hyper-V or VMware. The primary workloads are databases ranging from Exchange, Oracle, MS SQL, and IBM Db2. And then it goes on to the application sites such as with SharePoint, NFS data, and all those things. Our users require this type of workload data protection on a full-time basis.

For backups, we use Veritas NetBackup and Veeam, and for virtualization we mostly use VMware. This covers our environment for all disaster recovery and replication scenarios. At times, we also rely on the default replication tools from either Veeam or VMware.

About 70% of our customers come from government agencies, and there are regulations from the Malaysian government that don't allow any data to be transferred to the public cloud. However, that doesn't stop the cloud backup initiatives in Malaysia because the regulation only states that it's not allowed when it goes to a cloud of which they don't know the location. Thus, many of the backup vendors work with local cloud providers to enable cloud backups.

We are quite satisfied with the performance and reliability of the NetBackup product. When it comes to specific features, the most valuable is the Instant Recovery feature, which we call "short-term IR". Instant Recovery allows users to spin up backup images and bring back any VM instantly.

It is called a short-term recovery option because once the backup image has been spun up, the end user can extract whatever data is needed from the image and bring it back into production. This is definitely the most-valued feature for our customers.

Veritas NetBackup has been in the backup and recovery market for quite a long time, but somehow, from my own observations and from feedback from end users, its user interface is lagging behind other comparable solutions such as Veeam.

Our end users are more accustomed to better user interfaces and NetBackup still has a way to go in this regard. The features are great, but the user interface needs improvement, especially when you're looking at the web-based user interface. Most of the operations in NetBackup must be done using their base client user interface, and the feedback from our end users is that it isn't the most user-friendly interface.

Another area where we hope to see improvements is on the integration side. Nowadays, people aren't just looking at strictly backups and recovery features alone. They're now expecting more integration features along the lines of enhanced visibility, dashboard integrations, AI integrations, and so on. The users desire these integrations so that they can make the whole process of backup and recovery less complex, without having to perform any level of scripting.

We've been using Veritas NetBackup for almost 12 years. 

I believe NetBackup is very stable. The only drawback is the subpar operation of the user interface, but apart from that we are very happy with the stability and reliability of the product.

It's quite easy to scale. For every additional workload that you want to protect, you just add it on top of your server as needed. So it's easy to understand how to scale it, and it's easy to actually do so.

I think their technical support is very good. Everything from their level 1 support up to their engineering support is on point.

The complexity of the initial setup largely depends on the client's infrastructure. If they want to protect VMware workloads, then it's quite straightforward because we just integrate it directly with their workloads. In this case, the implementation is simple.

However, if we are required to protect SAP HANA or some Oracle cluster, for instance, that requires a lot more work. It's much more complicated because it's not based on a user interface, and we need to have a high level of perspective and understanding. So, ultimately, it depends on what needs to be protected.

At our company we normally provide end-to-end solutions in terms of the product, for better product absorption. So we'll start early by going to the customer, preaching the positives about the product and the technology, talking about how it will solve their problems, and how it will protect their data. And then from there, our team provides installation and configuration services, as well as after-sales service comprising support and warranties.

When you compare NetBackup's software licensing system with Veeam's, which is simpler and based on instances (or how many physical machines or virtual machines you want to protect), NetBackup isn't that competitive for smaller scale companies. However, if you're running many large workloads, then NetBackup may be the better option.

About seven or eight years back, Veritas and Commvault were considered the de facto leaders in the backup landscape. During that time, there were no major alternatives such as Veeam, and many customers relied solely on Veritas and were loyal to the product.

But nowadays, new customers have options, especially when it comes to smaller scale backup solutions for the small-medium type of companies. With us, we now see a multitude of different clients, from small companies to the enterprise.

The average company that is using multiple virtualization platforms, or physical platforms running Unix systems, will typically go with Veritas NetBackup rather than Veeam because Veeam is still in its infancy period when it comes to supporting these kinds of platforms. However, it does depend on the environment. Some of the smaller clients that we see will only have 4-5 VMs, and in that situation NetBackup typically won't be a good match because it's oriented towards a more sophisticated environment, especially concerning licensing.

When we do pre-sales with our customers, we tell them that they need to have back-to-back support from their executives, and we always teach them to allocate their reports to the OPEX budget, because they will need to have at least the latest supported version at all times running alongside their production servers. Unfortunately, somehow, there are always one or two customers who are still using unsupported machines.

I would rate Veritas NetBackup an eight out of ten. 

The most valuable feature is its stability.

Lots of features are in need of improvement.

The SQL Server backup features are not up to date. I would also like to see the Exchange server and Cloud backup handled better.

There are no features for cloud backup in my on-premises environment, which limits me when it comes to managing them.

The performance is poor on our system and it takes too long to complete a backup.

I have been working with Veritas NetBackup for more than ten years.

The stability is very good.

My environment is not growing very quickly, so I haven't had the opportunity to check scalability. My understanding is that it is expensive to scale.

We are typically in contact with technical support two or three times a year to deal with issues that arise. They're brilliant, fast, and professional.

The setup was completed before I joined the company.

My licensing model is based on capacity so as we grow, the price we pay increases and it becomes too expensive.

We are currently looking for another solution. One of the reasons is that we know that we can get more for less money.

This backup and recovery product is good, although looking at my current environment, it is pretty old. My advice for anybody who is considering Veritas NetBackup is to assess the feasibility of it in their environment.

I would rate this solution a six out of ten.

Our primary use case for this solution is for storage and backups of VMs on-premises to tape.

The Dedup and file storage is great and very valuable.

The licensing costs could be more affordable.

We have been using this solution for approximately ten years.

The solution is stable.

The solution is scalable. About 20,000 users use the solution in our organization.

I rate customer service and support an eight out of ten.

Positive

Implementation was in-house.

We have seen a return on investment.

I rate this solution a ten out of ten. The solution is good but can be improved by making the licensing costs more affordable.

We are extensively using this as a single backup solution.

We rely on the certainty of the data recovery. Also, if you want to replicate something, it gives us a very good option to replicate the application or server into different enrollments. So it saves a lot of time for us.

It covers all kinds of different architectures. Plus, it's very user-friendly and it is very reliable. Reliability is the most important thing because once the backup is done, if it is successful, then we're sure that it was successful and we will be able to restore it.

They need to work on the GUI. It has been the same for the last 10 years.

I have been using Veritas Software for about ten years. 

It's a very stable solution compared to other solutions. We faced some issues in the past, but this one runs very smoothly. 

It's quite scalable. We can extend it to more capacity if needed, and licensing also is available, so we are happy with it.

Support is excellent. We found that they were giving proper support. They really work to help you in resolving your issue.

Before switching to Veritas, we were using IBM Spectrum Protect, but it was quite difficult to manage it because it was mostly command based and it did not have the GUI features. 

The initial setup was straightforward. You will not find much difficulty in setting up clients.

The pricing is good. You need to pay an additional cost if you want to fully utilize it. Like we are having virtual enrollment, so we go with the enterprise one. It has more features compared to standard license.

We evaluated other solutions but nothing else fulfilled our need for hybrid enrollment. We were not confident that other solutions would support other architecture. So we went ahead with this solution.

I rate this solution a nine out of ten because there is always room for improvement.

We use NetBackup to protect our data.

The most valuable feature for us is the NDMP.

I've been using Veritas for around five years, but the bank has been using it for longer. They started migrating to NetBackup almost eight years ago.

NetBackup is highly stable. We have more than 1,800 policies that run every day. So the product is stable, but it is challenging to get support when we have a problem.

We scale NetBackup, but it's never so much that we need to add a media server in our environment.

They need to improve their support. In the beginning, their engineers had trouble understanding the issue we were presenting. It took a lot of conversations for them to start troubleshooting the problem. 

The complexity of the deployment depends on the data we are protecting. It's a bit complicated if we're working with databases, but it's simple to back up a file system. We can do everything ourselves, but we open a case with Veritas if we have a problem. Two full-time IT employees are enough to deploy, maintain, and manage NetBackup. 

We only pay a yearly license for support.

I rate NetBackup five out of 10. To anyone implementing NetBackup, I suggest hiring a consultant because the product can be tricky to configure. If it's misconfigured, you won't get the results you want. 

We are using NetBackup for our file server. It is not being employed by end-users for their backups. Rather, it is being used for infrastructure.

The most valuable feature is the ease of use. It is very easy to back up and recover files compared to other products.

Technical support is somewhat slow and is in need of improvement.

We have been using Veritas NetBackup for the past ten years.

I can say that NetBackup is 95% stable. There are positives and negatives, with 5% here or there.

From a scalability point of view, it is fantastic. It is even possible to scale up in the newest version of this technology.

The technical support has had a major impact on us. Sometimes, they do not support us properly. Support is available, but it is not immediate.

Our last problem was approximately one year ago. They were slow to respond so I continued to research the problem, found the solution, and implemented it myself.

Since my last contact with them was about a year ago, I don't know if things have improved or not. These days, I am more familiar with the product and don't need any support.

We are also using Veeam, although it is for a different scenario. Veeam is what we are using for virtual server backup, whereas we are using NetBackup for physical servers.

The initial setup is straightforward.

Price-wise, most of the backup products are similarly priced, and NetBackup is the same. There is perhaps a 10% difference in price between solutions.

I received the most recent version one week ago, and it seems that they have covered all of the loopholes. This is a very competitive product because all of the latest features and technology is in there.

Product-wise, this is a good one and I recommend it.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

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.

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.