Arcserve ? good - better - best Solution ? 5

[FISI]

Hallo, we use ARCserve2000. But we have to decide a new StorageSoftware (-Solution) soon.
BackupExec, Networker, Arcserve9,IBM .....
Any tip because "that one product" is the best ?
Our Area contains 1500 real Backup-Servers of NT,W2k,W2k3 and about 2000 Clients (also "some UNIX and Linux Servers with selfmade Backup/or Networker&quot.
With the execption of the Handling for the "inHouse-SAN-Fibre-Channel-Area".
Like .... don´t by XXX because .....
Thanx a lot, and every time a good backup (and less Desaster Recovery)
FISI

 

[comtec17]

When coming up with a new backup solution, it shouldn't be for just for the ease of backup, it should be for both back and recovery. I would suggest contacting a consultant and having them do a walk through of your environment, get the specs, get what you are looking for, and let them give you the best solution.

I would recommend going with

http://www.salemgroup.com

They have a very good reputation of not siding with a specific vendor and will give you multiple solutions that will work.

 

[FISI]

oh yes - we have Consultants, Support, Studies and so on ...
But i just want to know, the opinion from some technical users. Some "real professionals".
Thank you for your answer.

 

[NickFerrar]

I've only ever used ARCserve - given a choice I'd use something else given all the flaws in it. Trouble is, from what I've read, most other backup software solutions seems to have a number of flaws.

 

[lzcwsq]

hi

i have used Backup exec, tivoli storage manager, and Arcserve v 6.61, v7, v9.

It comes down to a few things ,

Backup exec is simple easy to install less features but handles all the main databases etc, and the cheaper of the 3, but lacks features, reporting is sometimes too simple making problems difficult to resolve, and has a habit of hanging causing files to be corrupted, suffers from RAM memory gobble (just like nt). if requiring manual tape changing locks files E.G e-mail databases etc until second tape is loaded

Arcserve is good and my prefered option of the 3, uses good compression so on a restricted or busy LAN will utilise the bandwidth the best, the pain is the clients and maintaining all the patches and updates V9 is best to go for as it handles the different versions of NT & many current database versions ( BUT warning if the backup server is not a win2000 box, it will not backup system state and you will not be able to easily DR a win2000 server) other difficulties are configuration, with so many features what seems a simple default settup can cause issues later.

Tivoli the most expencive very reliable very good some problems with notes backup and Oracle database backups) very heavy on hardware specification (requires large amounts of hard disk space 5 times the total backup capacity) hence expencive but can be configured to do continuous backup.

We are looking at Vback but i think for a smaller organisation this is an out sorce option.

These are my experiences don't know if it helps

 

[gwichman]

good post by lzcwsg but i have some differing opinions then he. I'd say of all the products i'm most knowledgable on Tivoli Storage Manager. I've used it since 3.7 and for approximately 4-5 years now. I hold multiple certifications for it and I have to say it's my favorite solution by a landslide. However it's certainly true that it is the most demanding in that you have to have experience with it to truly be able to comment on it and make effective use of it. It is not true as lzcswg says about that it requires large amounts of hard disk space (5 times the total backup capacity). In fact you can use it with ZERO hard drive space (or disk pools) and backup directly to tape, optical, or any other media if you like. There are some advantages to having a disk pool though and so it's generally "recommended" that you have one. It certainly isn't required. It's also untrue that it should be 5 times the total backup capacity. Truth is it should be slightly larger (say 20) then a single night's worth of incremental backups. Thus on a 20GB server if at night it backups up only 500MB incrementally (fairly typical) you would want to size the disk pool to about 500MB + 20% or 600MB. That isn't much by most people's standards.. The disk pool essentially cache's the backups when they run until TSM can write it out to tape, optical, etc.. I also haven't experienced any real problems with notes or Oracle personally. I've found both can be quite easy if you have a very knowledgable DBA on hand that know's their product. It can be similarly a big headache if you don't. e.g. iwth Oracle you want someone who knows the recovery manager well.

TSM in my experience has excellent support, documentation, and a knowledgable userbase that's easy to acess an get help from without ever having to call tivoli support at all. The only glaring thing that comes to mind that TSM does poorly is NDMP support. I really dislike how TSM NDMP support works (network attached storage protocol for backing up those devices).

Anyways i also have used Arcserve extensively for the past couple years. BackupExec 8.6 and 9 to a somewhat lesser extent. Netbackup 3.4 for about 2 years. Legato only very lightly. Of the various packages one key distinction that i think seperates one product over another and helps a great deal is support. Arcserv support is absolutely horrendous as are their admin guides and documentation. Some things like database maintenance is almost completely omitted from the admin guide and yet is core functionality that an admin needs to know how to utilize. I wouldn't personally use or recommend Arcserv to anyone.

BackupExec as a product is similar as mentioned above, but i actually prefer it over arcserv because i feel that Veritas has better support then CA. That alone is worth enough to me to use it, provided the features i was after were supported in both. Unlike legato, tsm, and netbackup you don't need years of experience to use it.

Netbackup i'm not a huge fan of. I've yet to see a feature that i think makes it a better product then TSM, though i've read many of the gartner reports and similar comparisons that claim it edges out TSM somehow. I just don't see it. The tools and GUI's are lousy.. They're not particularly intuitive and often differ from one platform to another (native GUI vs java, etc). I'm also not a big fan of the standard GFS rotation. I'd like to see 4.5 to see whats changed but for now i'll withold judgement. At least support is decent and lots of people use it. But like TSM and Legato you definetly have to learn to use this product.

 

[lzcwsq]

hi

gwichman comments are probably more accurate on TSM

yes my experience with TSM is nowhere near as extensive as yours, i think the disk space issue is probably more to do with how we have configured the system having a mirror backup server , for possible failure,and using the SAM options extensively and the permanant archiving of tapes end of every week which requires large databases. One thing to add TSM needs very good bandwidth in my experience to work.

I agree with the CA support aspect very true. But sites like this and making use of a direct contact in CA, (who for me is one of the programmers so i probably get more direct advice). But even at this level they do tend to need the needle to thread discription of the problem.

 

[Mruazi]

I have used TSM (previously called ADSM) for almost 5 years. The product is good and flexible in terms of configuration - especially in the definitions of storage pools (in general - how to handle the media - both tapes and staging area - disk storage pools). The weakness of the TSM is how it handles the number of versions. The more versions you keep - say for longer period recoveries up to 6 months, the longer the restore time. Also TSM has poor performance when dealing with many small files. Also, TSM cannot backup Windows files with longer names or longer paths more than 256 Characters, however is Windows problem and not TSM. TSM can backup MS-Exchange, Oracle DBs, SAP R/3 and ESS using Tivoli Data Protection clients.

I know about Legato and Veritas as well. However, I think overall TSM is a better product.

AVOID MANY VERSIONS OF FILES when using TSM.

Regards,
AHH

 

[Knutern]

The product that I the least enjoyed working with is ARCserve. As gwichman says, documentation is poor, if you end up with problems, you're stuck pretty quick. Their support web site (ARCserve) is poor too. I have not used their telephone support so I cannot grade it.

Veritas BackupEXEC is my favourite. Documentation is good as is their knowledgebase. Their telephone support is quite good.

Contrary to other statements made, i think the debug tools from Vertias help you quite good in locating the problems. But that my humble opinion.