Veritas NetBackup Reviews

We are a solution provider company and we have several support contracts with our customers. We try to select the best solution for each. In smaller environments, we prefer using Veeam Backup. For our larger enterprise customers, we use Veritas NetBackup. This solution is very stable and flexible for experts who wants a feature full backup solution.

Veritas NetBackup is implemented as a primary tool in the organization for making backup a huge landscape of Aix, Unix, Virtualization, and Windows machines. This includes Oracle, DB2, and SQL Database, and etc.
We mainly looked at a trusted long-timer in the market to be able to invest to ensure the solution is proven to be trusted.

In my view, it's been a reliable backup solution for all of our enterprise customers. Our maintenance cost has been reduced and we were able to have more time to service more customers.

As one of the best data backup and recovery solution worldwide, NetBackup gives enterprise IT a flexible and powerful way to ensure the integrity and availability of their data from the edge to the core to the cloud.

The main feature Includes:

Flexible Deployment: Support for any workload, any cloud, any architecture at any scale.

Operational Simplicity: Orchestrate and automate discovery, protection, and recovery.

Enterprise-Grade Resiliency: Ensure recovery of business-critical data with near-zero RPO and RTO.

Veritas integrates well with the cloud, all databases, all operating systems, all hardware, and all software. Veritas also has solid malware and ransomware protection features. From time to time, we face a new kind of attack, and Veritas has always proven to be the best protection solution for some of my customers. Our customers who have faced ransomware attacks were able to recover their data in less than one day without any stress. Veritas is ransomware resilient and because of its implementation, it is not dependent on the operating system to work. Most of the functions of the Veritas software are isolated from the operating system and it's not dependent on the operating systems involved. This is very important. When some of our operating systems are infected by a virus, Veritas still works perfectly and protects our data. This feature is very well implemented in Veritas NetBackup.

Main features of Veritas NetBackup are:
Log management and truncation.
Third-party integrations.
Hypervisor aware.
Physical and virtual protection.
Cloud system security.
API integration.
Database consistency preservation.
Integrated appliance.

Like the other enterprise solutions, Veritas NetBackup isn't easy to implement. It's a little bit hard compared to other solutions like Data Protector for HPE. You have to struggle to learn a lot of features that Veritas NetBackup offers to customers. I don't think it's impossible to simplify this solution. Some solutions like backup solutions are mandatory solutions and they are inherently complicated because you have to integrate them with other services. We have a lot of services and each service has its own conditions. After several years, every engineer can learn most features of this solution and in some companies, they could use support from the source company. As such, I think it's not challenging for all customers. 

I have been using this Backup solution for more than 15 years.

In Veritas, I'm hoping for a better price. Veritas NetBackup is very expensive, and I think price is the main reason which some customers don't want to use this solution. 

When evaluating and choosing a solution, it depends on the situation. We choose the best solution for our customers, so it's hard to say if I would recommend Veritas over Veeam. In many ways, Veritas is a unique product. It has advantages when you want to transfer your data over SAN. SAN backup solutions are very important in some environments. Where window time is very limited for them and a huge amount of data needs to be transferred in less than five or six hours a day, we have to use a SAN backup feature. In this area, Veeam is not good compared to Veritas NetBackup. When you want to use this feature, you have to share the mainline of your storage with Veeam Backup, and many customers refuse to adopt this method of SAN backup. Many customers don't want to compromise their source of data, so they prefer Veritas' SAN backup in this area. I think it's one of the best, like IBM TSM.

I would rate Veritas NetBackup nine out of 10. I can't find any problems. I think it is the best. I think it's perfect.

The primary use case of Veritas is generally for protecting data and storing it at a secondary site. Use of the solution is sometimes dependent on compliance requirements. Depending on the client, the solution can be deployed on-prem, on cloud, and sometimes using a hybrid option. I'm a solutions architect and a reseller of Veritas.

I like the NetBackup Appliance form factor, where your data is 99.9% safe because unauthorized people cannot log in and execute commands. It requires an admin password and includes IDS and IPS features. I also like the integration with third parties and third party applications, like instant recovery and instant access of the VMs and SQL data.

I'd like to see some simplification in the solution. They currently have the Java concept and it should be less intensive and take less load. The integration should be simple, not a script-based backup with minimum input and maximum output. The solution also needs more integration, even the infrastructure has become more complex. They currently have integrated containers and Kubernetes for backup but they could include backup of SQL or Oracle, or performance in the visualization process. All those things could be improved. 

I've been using this solution for six years. 

There are no issues with the stability. I haven't had any problems with it. 

As a cloud structure, the solution is scalable. The only issue is that data size is more than 20 PBR and requires multiple media servers and an increase in LAN or CPU, to absorb the load on the master media servers.

The technical support has improved and is much better than it used to be. 

I've also used CloudPoint which is integrated with NetBackup in the 9.1 version. With NetBackup, I can take a VM level backup and file level backups; in CloudPoint you can take  volume level backups. Currently there is no file level backups in the cloud whereas with NetBackup you can do that. In comparing NetBackup with a backup platform service controller, the PSC is great because it's simple to use, simple to install and the integration is very easy. NetBackup is for enterprise clients and therefore takes longer to learn. 

The initial setup is very easy and there's no similar service. 

NetBackup is a little costlier compared to other products and backup PSC.

I rate the solution nine out of 10. 

We primarily use the solution for backup purposes.

The backup and restore functions are very valuable aspects of the product. We use those features the most.

The solution is very stable.

The scalability is very good.

I'm not fully satisfied with the product. 

It's a little bit complex to manage. 

The user interface is not user-friendly. It's a bit complex, and it's dated in appearance. It needs a much simpler, cleaner update.

The reporting is too complex. There needs to be a way to customize it in a simple and straightforward manner.

The solution has extra features, however, you need to pay for them.

Occasionally, technical support cannot find the root cause of issues.

We've been using the solution for about four years at this point. It's been a while.

The solution is very stable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. it's reliable. 

The scalability of the product is very good. A company can scale it with relative ease if it needs to.

While technical support is responsive, we have found that sometimes they just seem can't find the actual root cause of the issues we present. Sometimes they can't fix our issues. That's why we aren't 100% satisfied with the level of support they provide. They need to be more knowledgeable and dig deeper to resolve issues.

I can't speak too much about the installation process. 

My understanding is that the installation is simple as it has an appliance that's installed. The usage is a bit complex and there needs to be extra licensing to customize the reporting - however, that's a different issue.  

It is not an all-in-one solution. Some features come at an extra cost and need extra hardware or software.

I can't speak to the actual pricing of the product, however.

We are casually looking into alternative solutions. We are looking at Commvault, Rubrik, Cohesity, and Dell. Mostly, we are interested in enterprise-level products.

We are not using the latest version of the product. The NetBackup version we are using is 8.0. We use a NetBackup Appliance. The NetBackup version is a bit older as it's integrated with the backup appliance. That's why we cannot upgrade to the latest version. The latest version is 9.0.

I would warn other potential users that, in my experience, it's a bit complex and may be difficult to achieve some requirements compared to other products. Rubrik or Cohesity may be a bit easier, for example. It's a little bit traditional in terms of architecture. However, the features compared to others are really quite amazing.

In general, I would rate the product at a seven out of ten.

We primarily use the solution for backup and recovery.

Overall the solution is very good. It's a lovely appliance.

They are among the top in the world for backup and recovery. 

The solution is very robust. It covers most of the features that I need and it's able to back up legacy items efficiently.

Technically, it's quite good.

We've found the scalability to be very good.

The stability and performance are excellent.

The solution costs too much. They should work to make it less.

The licensing needs to be improved.

I've been using the solution for ten or 12 years or so. It's been about a decade. We've used it for a long time.

The stability of the solution is very good. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable and the performance has been excellent.

The scalability is okay. It covers a lot of areas that other backup solutions are not covering - such as Unix.

We're using the appliance. It's based on size and not on users.

Support wise, we have local support and it is quite strong. We've very satisfied with them overall. They are helpful and responsive.

The initial setup is pretty straightforward. It's not overly complex. We have a PC. We are familiar with everything as we have 10 years of experience using it. It's not an issue. A company shouldn't have too much trouble with the process either.

The solution is quite expensive. It's like buying a normal car for the price of a Rolls Royce.

I'm a customer and an end-user. I don't have a business relationship with Veritas.

If you have money to spend, I would recommend the solution. If you have a unique environment, it's the best option.

I'd rate the solution at a nine out of ten. Aside from the high cost, it's an excellent solution.

Veritas is one of the leaders in terms of backing up any type of server. We have been using it for backing up our AIX servers, Windows servers, VMs running on VMware, and even our Linux servers. Everything is backed up using Veritas.

This is a product that has been on the market for a while and they have mastered the backup process, especially when backing up to tape, for most environments.

You cannot tell what your costs are going to be by using the dashboard, which is something that should be improved. If you overuse based on your FETB licensing, you run the risk of getting fined.

I have been using Veritas NetBackup for the past 10 years, starting prior to the company that I am working for now.

This is a scalable solution. We are using it to back up approximately 30 servers.

We have not needed to use technical support.

I have some experience with different backup systems including Commvault, as well. The installation of Commvault is somewhat easier to do.

The initial installation is more complex than that of Commvault.

We did not complete the installation in-house. Instead, it is was done by a company with which we work. The deployment was done by two people and there is one person to maintain it.

Our primary complaint about this product is that it is too expensive.

There are some issues with the product and the Front-End Terabyte (FETB) licensing model that have changed, and we are considering changing products in part because of this. Once the current license expires, we may be phasing it out.

The problem is that previously, we had licensing for our processes, whereas now it is only FETB. It means that we are now forcing our clients to go to the cloud.

We are using an older version of Veritas, so we have been looking at the market to see if there is a cheaper alternative.

In summary, this is a good product but we do have a complaint about the price. They are very good at what they do but they are very expensive, and it can get even more expensive if you are fined for overuse.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

We use it for pretty much all of our backups.

It allows us to back up our data. That's really the only feature we really use. I like that it's enterprise-capable. It can handle multiple operating systems. It can handle multiple database types. It can handle a lot of different backup use cases. It's flexible.

The database integration could be better. That would probably be a feature we look for the most.

I have been using Veritas NetBackup for at least 15 years.

NetBackup is very stable. It's a very mature product. It's probably been around for 25 years or more.

NetBackup is very scalable. 

The initial setup is pretty straightforward, but it's just very, very detailed. There's a lot of different things you have to do to set it up. It's not difficult. It's just a lot of steps, but that's how it should be because NetBackup is so flexible. You do have to go in and select your different options based on your environment.

I think a complete license costs some $70,0000 a year. I wouldn't know the breakdown of what each feature costs.

We're currently looking at other solutions that could replace it. We have some additional needs that NetBackup can fill, but it may not be the cheapest option, so we're looking at other solutions.

We are looking at Dell and also at maybe build our own solution. If we chose the later route, we would keep what we have with NetBackup but our own addition to it.

We are currently phasing it out, and we've gone to Rubrik. At one point, we were backing up everything with it, which included physical and virtual NAS. We moved the virtual first and then we started packing the physicals to move them.

I used to have a lot of respect for Veritas NetBackup, but over the years, they've lost their focus, and they're just not doing much to improve the product.

It has been around for so long, and it is very in-depth. It has a solution for everything that you can cover.

It was very complicated, and it required a lot of work in terms of management. We have moved to Rubrik. One of the reasons for getting rid of Veritas NetBackup was the fact that at one point, we had the support staff with 12 to 15 people to manage Veritas NetBackup, whereas, with Rubrik, I'm the only one managing Rubrik. There is one more person who works with me mostly due to the fact that in case I'm not around, someone else knows what to do, but I'm the only one who is a full-time manager of Rubrik. The complexity of Veritas required a large staff to manage it.

We had daily issues that had to be looked into and resolved. A lot of these issues revolved around Veritas' handling of VMware, which is why first we moved VMware off Veritas. After we did that, we were also able to reduce our staff count.

Their licensing is a disaster. It is extremely complicated. In most cases, Veritas themselves can't understand their own licensing.

I have personally used Veritas NetBackup for 15 to 20 years. In my current organization, it has been ingrained for quite some time. They have been using it for quite some time, but I have been here for only three years.

Dependability was lacking quite often because we were not getting the support for the support cases. 

It has scalability.

We were not getting proper support for the support cases that we were opening. Some of that came down to the fact that they knew we were leaving. It was more like, "Yeah, you're already on your way out the door. So, we'll look at that when we look at it." It wasn't like, "You're a happy customer, and you're going to be staying around. We need to make sure we keep you happy." Typically, you need to escalate before you get to anyone helpful.

It had been installed long before I joined.

At some point, it did provide ROI, but over the years, Veritas has not continued to put enough effort into research and development. As a company, they're focusing on other products and really not managing the backup software very well.

It was on a yearly basis. During the annual review, when we asked them about our licensing, they couldn't explain it. For example, we had reduced by a factor of 40%, but our license only dropped by 5%. We would then ask Veritas people if we've reduced this much and shut down these servers, why has our license changed so less? They were never able to give us a straight answer. They weren't able to say, "Well, you're using this, and this is more expensive." In many cases, as we reduced our capacity and what we were using with Veritas NetBackup, our licensing actually went up, and they were often unable to explain why. 

We also looked at Cohesity and decided to go with Rubrik. Rubrik was just simpler and easier to manage. As a result, we went from 12 to 15 members staff to 1 member.

I honestly don't feel that Veritas NetBackup is forward-thinking. There are a lot better options to implement at this point. I would not suggest Veritas NetBackup to anyone at this point. It is not being managed properly.

Veritas needs to come out with a completely new product and break away from the old. They've basically been continuing to update the same product since the eighties. It is time for them to more or less move to a more forward-thinking. They need to be more in-line with how the environments work today. It has outlived its usefulness in all honesty. They would honestly be better off by re-inventing Veritas NetBackup than trying to fix what's broken.

I would rate Veritas NetBackup a three out of ten.

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.