Well I have been working an issue with their support for 2 weeks now and it seems there is a bug in 5.9 that casues backed up data to get lost when you migrate to 6.1. Their answer is "opps sorry, we had a bug and your backup data is loast, nothing we can do!". Typical Commvault crap. Their software is buggy and quirky and their support is weak. These guys should not be playing in the Enterprise space.
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Galaxy Losses data... 2
- Thread starter kluken
- Start date
- Thread starter
- #22
Well it looks liek the data is gone for good. Great job Commvault! This bug was in 5.9 until late 2005. We have had several con calls and e-mails with upper managemtn in Commvault and basically thei don't care and have written us off, I beleive they could care less if switch vendors. We have a con call and bascially I get sales team and support team, no one from product team that cares about their product or the crappy QA. Opened another call yesterday to find out they still have pruned jobs/ aged media issues with jobs that completed with errors. Their answer: just delete the jobs manaully! What a quality company and quality product! NOT! We have Vertias coming in late this week to look at a migration to NetBackup.
digital128
IS-IT--Management
kluken it seems that you are on a mission to destroy CommVault. Thread Name: "Galaxy Looses Data"
Have you had better success with Backup Exec, NetBackup, Legato, Tivoli....?
As a VAR with 10 storage engineers in Atlanta we represent all of these products and more. I have been watching this thread with interest to see where it was going.
Perhaps you should hop on the NetBackup 5.4 to 6.x upgrade forums. Even the Veritas/Symantec engeers are recommending against it.
Reading the information above it begs to ask if you applied all the service packs that the vendor informed you of? My understanding of Galaxy is that the data is not lost if it is still on Tape! It can be recovered!
Please inform us all when you migrate to another platform. We will be interested in hearing about your conversion of data from Backup Exec to NetBackup. Information I have heard is that 90% of it failed last time you tried and that is why you selected CommVault.
Note: I don't discredit the information that kluken has provided.. I do chalenge us all to improve our vendors.
Have you had better success with Backup Exec, NetBackup, Legato, Tivoli....?
As a VAR with 10 storage engineers in Atlanta we represent all of these products and more. I have been watching this thread with interest to see where it was going.
Perhaps you should hop on the NetBackup 5.4 to 6.x upgrade forums. Even the Veritas/Symantec engeers are recommending against it.
Reading the information above it begs to ask if you applied all the service packs that the vendor informed you of? My understanding of Galaxy is that the data is not lost if it is still on Tape! It can be recovered!
Please inform us all when you migrate to another platform. We will be interested in hearing about your conversion of data from Backup Exec to NetBackup. Information I have heard is that 90% of it failed last time you tried and that is why you selected CommVault.
Note: I don't discredit the information that kluken has provided.. I do chalenge us all to improve our vendors.
- Thread starter
- #24
I am not on a mission to destory anyone, I am on a mission to inform others of the shoddy QA and upport and LOST, yet truly LOST data that Commvault casued. The data is lost, some how the bug in Galaxy casued the data to be over written immediatetly. They conceded that 70GB is lost and to get any of the remianing 400GB requires a mnaual process and restoring ALL 400GB to get any of it. We have been running Backup Exec at 75 locations for over 4 years and never lost a byte of data nor had even a fraction of the issues we have consistently with Galaxy. At our main location we were Veritas NSE for 4 years and while it was not a great product again, we never lsot a byte of data! Not sure who you are that you seem to think you can quote my past expierience, we never tried to conver BAckup Exec to NetBackup data. We did try a test once and found the process to be difficult, but as with any migration or vendor switch the reality is you need to keep a copy of your old installation around support your old media, in a pinch NetBackup can get BE data it is just not easy. Also for comparison, Commvault took over 4 weeks to work this critical case and finally said the data was lost. When we were looking at NetBackup and found a bug in a cluster restore we had a patch in under 4 days, that surely says something for each companies approach to resolving issues. I have a laundry list of cases with Commvault, at least half of which are confirmed bugs. I don't pretend that any vendor is flawless, but Commvault's atttitude toward QA, sutomser support and lost data is the weakest of any company I have every dealt with. I support 250 servers and we deal with MS, Symantec, etc and have far more products and installation of other products form multiple vendors, yet the number of support cases and bug we deal with in Commvault is far higher than all the others put togther. And since you seem to know me and work for a large VAR we are looking for a VAR to assist in selling us the NetBackup, maybe you shoudl call and try to get our business.
- Thread starter
- #25
Oh and forgot to mention, we are very vigilant at maintianing all our products, we put Galaxy service packs on fairlyquickly after release. Same with critical patches, the problem with this bug is it exisited int he product for about 10-11 months before they fixed it. Was in 5.9 from day one and was not fixed until October or November.So it is hard to blame patching when the patch did not come out for 10+ months.
I agree with Digital here - If data was written to the tape and my understanding is that it was from what has been posted here - that data is written to the media and chunked.
I have pruned jobs manually from my CommVault DB and recovered using media explorer without issue, therefore if you still have the tapes you should still have the data.
Kluken - you also come off very abrasive in this thread and it seems you were an experienced with a legacy product (BE) and do not like CV as your backup solution. Was CV shoved down your throat?
This post is also questionable - as the only contribution you have made to this forum is this single thread which lacks any helpful information such as the patch that fixes the problem you have encountered.
I have pruned jobs manually from my CommVault DB and recovered using media explorer without issue, therefore if you still have the tapes you should still have the data.
Kluken - you also come off very abrasive in this thread and it seems you were an experienced with a legacy product (BE) and do not like CV as your backup solution. Was CV shoved down your throat?
This post is also questionable - as the only contribution you have made to this forum is this single thread which lacks any helpful information such as the patch that fixes the problem you have encountered.
- Thread starter
- #27
I'm being abrasive for being accused of assaulting Commvault. I am basiclly trying to watn others ot the issue. the data was written to tape, but for some odd reason the bug casued Galaxy to prunt the jobs and then reuse the tape immediately, thus the first 70GB of a 500GB data set are gone! Commvault took 4 weeks to determine this and even then bascially said opps, data gone so sorry. We did a face off Net Backup vs. Commvault and at the end of the day Commvault edged out NBU, it was not forced. The reason the thread lack meaningful info is we have been fighting with Commvault to get the details. I only last week found out the bug was in 5.9 since day one, they have danced around prociding any meaningful info. They tried to blame us for not applying fixes, which we do regularly, and we lost the data in October 2005 and they say Critical Update524 was released on Nov. 7th, 2005 to fix this issue, so tell me how that is our issue. It took them 2 weks just to esclate the problem to engineering. In the end you can think what you wnat, I posted a quick blurb to warn peopel that this product can loose data form a bug that exisited for a long time. We trip over their bugs almost monthly and they basically dance arounds them with manual workarounds and to priority to fixing them. IF you call in with a LOST DATA buig and are a Data Protection company you should take it very seriously and they did not, even when escalated. Also Media Explorer while a nice saftey net is cumbersome, you have to do a full restore, in this case 400GB of the remaining data which is not a quick restore. And while you question my motives it appears digital logged in just to respond to this thread. i have provied information, and sure others have different expieriences, but in all the time we used BE and NSE we never lost a byte, twice in 18 months on Commvault we have lost data, and I mean lost, either never on the tape or rewritten by Galaxy, both time due to bugs.
- Thread starter
- #28
mybackupfailed
MIS
give kluken some slack, CV has driven him to the point of exasperation and he needs to blow off some steam. you'd be abrasive too if they gave you the run around for this long and then told you to kiss off because they can't help you. if all jobs get pruned off a tape due to a bug, it will be put in the scratch pool and get reused. when the tape gets reused your stuff will be overwritten and media explorer won't help. how could they let this stuff out the door with pruning bugs that result in data loss? and if you are not in a small shop you have no decision what backup software the company uses until you get the to point kluken is in.
- Thread starter
- #30
cursivehandle
Technical User
I have used commvault since 5.0 and have had no major issues. We are not that big (approx. 50 clients) and we have been on 6.1 for about 2 months. You should look at your emails, if there are any critical patches, I get a email and apply them. The only issue we ever had was an OML overwrite situation where we had rsm enabled on a window's 2000 computer on the SAN that had visibility to the fiber attached library. That was not a Commvault issue. Someone like you would blame Commvault and cry like a baby. The support is OK. When I first received the product, I called support a lot and never had an issue with there attitudes. I would recommend Commvault to anyone as long as you keep up with the updates and learn the product just like any software. If Microsoft had a patch for an IE security issue and you did not install it, then your computer got hacked, do you blame Microsoft because you didn’t install the update? We have done major restores on mission critical machines and have never run into an issue.
- Thread starter
- #32
cursivehandle,
I don''t think you have really read this thread. You are accusing me of not appling critical updates, did you read my comment that the bug exisited for over 10 months before they patched it, how can I apply an update that did not exisit. 5.9 came oout early 2005, the bug was there since day one and the patch came out in November 2005, we got hit with the bug in September/October. Also I'm glad your expierience has been good, but our expierience with their support has been a nightmare. It took them 4 weeks to identify the data loss problem. all that time we could not restroe the data, in the end the data was lost. If those are the definitions of a cry baby then fine I'll be a cry baby, but I expect a data protection compnay to repsond to data loss issues quickly and nto take 4 weeks to identify the problem, during which the entire time they assured us the data was NOT lost! We constantly have issues with their support if we do not stay on top of them they basically stop responding and following up. They have closed calls without talking to us. While they have a good product on paper, execution and support are weak. I think they do not play well in a large enterprise or misison critical space, sure I bet they have customers in that space, but I beleive most of their customers are small to medium sized companies. And I don't pretend that NetBackup or any other vendor is perfect, but they surely take data loss a lot more seriously.
I don''t think you have really read this thread. You are accusing me of not appling critical updates, did you read my comment that the bug exisited for over 10 months before they patched it, how can I apply an update that did not exisit. 5.9 came oout early 2005, the bug was there since day one and the patch came out in November 2005, we got hit with the bug in September/October. Also I'm glad your expierience has been good, but our expierience with their support has been a nightmare. It took them 4 weeks to identify the data loss problem. all that time we could not restroe the data, in the end the data was lost. If those are the definitions of a cry baby then fine I'll be a cry baby, but I expect a data protection compnay to repsond to data loss issues quickly and nto take 4 weeks to identify the problem, during which the entire time they assured us the data was NOT lost! We constantly have issues with their support if we do not stay on top of them they basically stop responding and following up. They have closed calls without talking to us. While they have a good product on paper, execution and support are weak. I think they do not play well in a large enterprise or misison critical space, sure I bet they have customers in that space, but I beleive most of their customers are small to medium sized companies. And I don't pretend that NetBackup or any other vendor is perfect, but they surely take data loss a lot more seriously.
I am using CV on 344 clients ranging from Solaris to Windows NT/2000/2003 and SQL/DB2/Oracle.
I have 4 comcells and 12 MA's
I have had minimal issues to date.
I do however stay on CV support's case when I do have issues
I call them every hour sometimes and get it escalated.
Our company has had Commvault since v4.2 and the only big headache was going from 5.0 to 5.9.
Going from 5.9 to 6.1 the only issue has been the Virtual file system licensing on Clustered servers.
I have had good response from CV support. You just need to stay on them.
My job is backups...period.
If I cant restore "Savemyjob.doc" I better have my resume ready. This is why I stay on them. I do not give them the chance to be unresponsive. But that is just me.
Though I feel your pain, I do not think it warrants the comment of "they do not play well in a large enterprise or mission critical space". I know of at least 5 different large well known enterprises in my area that use it and have larger installations than mine.
I also would recommend CV and have done so in the past.
I have 4 comcells and 12 MA's
I have had minimal issues to date.
I do however stay on CV support's case when I do have issues
I call them every hour sometimes and get it escalated.
Our company has had Commvault since v4.2 and the only big headache was going from 5.0 to 5.9.
Going from 5.9 to 6.1 the only issue has been the Virtual file system licensing on Clustered servers.
I have had good response from CV support. You just need to stay on them.
My job is backups...period.
If I cant restore "Savemyjob.doc" I better have my resume ready. This is why I stay on them. I do not give them the chance to be unresponsive. But that is just me.
Though I feel your pain, I do not think it warrants the comment of "they do not play well in a large enterprise or mission critical space". I know of at least 5 different large well known enterprises in my area that use it and have larger installations than mine.
I also would recommend CV and have done so in the past.
- Thread starter
- #34
Frbutler,
And you didn't have any issues with 5.9? While they do tell me the bug was rare I would think some one of your size would have maybe seen it. With an installation your size, do you have many different polices? Have you not had issues with tapes not properly aging and pruning?
I just kepe finding it hard that we are having so many issues when we only have 2 MA, 2 libraries and 60 clients. This shoudl be cake for any BU vendor. Do you have extended retention periods? I only BU 3TB a week and know there have to be bigger customers, just find it hard that we keep tripping over all these bugs all the time and otheres either are not or don't realize them as bugs.
And you didn't have any issues with 5.9? While they do tell me the bug was rare I would think some one of your size would have maybe seen it. With an installation your size, do you have many different polices? Have you not had issues with tapes not properly aging and pruning?
I just kepe finding it hard that we are having so many issues when we only have 2 MA, 2 libraries and 60 clients. This shoudl be cake for any BU vendor. Do you have extended retention periods? I only BU 3TB a week and know there have to be bigger customers, just find it hard that we keep tripping over all these bugs all the time and otheres either are not or don't realize them as bugs.
I use many storage policies
I have policies for every type of OS
and then a policy every application type backups with different retention policies (Exch, SQL, ORA)
I work for a financial company and they require extensive retention Monthly,Quarterly,Yearly.
I do restores quite frequently and have not run into any data loss (Outside of my own operations staff deleting/scratching a tape) I backup about 4TB a night.
I use DASD for SQL/Exch backups and AUX copy it off daily
I use zero spool options on my primary copies.
I have policies for every type of OS
and then a policy every application type backups with different retention policies (Exch, SQL, ORA)
I work for a financial company and they require extensive retention Monthly,Quarterly,Yearly.
I do restores quite frequently and have not run into any data loss (Outside of my own operations staff deleting/scratching a tape) I backup about 4TB a night.
I use DASD for SQL/Exch backups and AUX copy it off daily
I use zero spool options on my primary copies.
- Thread starter
- #36
Frbutler,
I'm impressed you have not had issues. We have found AUX copies to be very convoluted and quirky and it routinely casues retention issues for us if the AUX fails such that we have to kill it. Maybe your size and dedicated staff for backups is a reason, backups are not my main function, it is one of many things I cover. I think in theory CV is a good product, but their product team and deve people seem to be isolated for the real world, some of the usability stuff can drive you nuts, I always question them if their dev people have every really used the product!
I'm impressed you have not had issues. We have found AUX copies to be very convoluted and quirky and it routinely casues retention issues for us if the AUX fails such that we have to kill it. Maybe your size and dedicated staff for backups is a reason, backups are not my main function, it is one of many things I cover. I think in theory CV is a good product, but their product team and deve people seem to be isolated for the real world, some of the usability stuff can drive you nuts, I always question them if their dev people have every really used the product!
1 thing I have found with Commvault is if it aint broke dont fix it.
Do not apply patches to your environment unless you are addressing an existing issue or it is a critical/SP.
Do not install a patch just because it was in the Weekly email from CV of patches released that week and it covers some agent you have.
I still have some 5.0 SQL clients that run great.. I have not upgraded them because they work still. Though I am sure I will need to upgrade on the next release, RIGHT NOW I DO NOT HAVE TO
so I choose not to.
I came from a environment where I was a man of many hats also. Being dedicated to only backups was a change for sure. I had engineering/design issues when I took over this job, and being able to focus on those helped a lot.
My company was ready to throw CV out the door before I got here. Now they are adding more CV clients into the mix.
CV reporting has saved my bacon a few times when Audits occur.
We do yearly DR failovers (Full restores and network failover) at IBM's data recovery facility.
Do not apply patches to your environment unless you are addressing an existing issue or it is a critical/SP.
Do not install a patch just because it was in the Weekly email from CV of patches released that week and it covers some agent you have.
I still have some 5.0 SQL clients that run great.. I have not upgraded them because they work still. Though I am sure I will need to upgrade on the next release, RIGHT NOW I DO NOT HAVE TO
so I choose not to.I came from a environment where I was a man of many hats also. Being dedicated to only backups was a change for sure. I had engineering/design issues when I took over this job, and being able to focus on those helped a lot.
My company was ready to throw CV out the door before I got here. Now they are adding more CV clients into the mix.
CV reporting has saved my bacon a few times when Audits occur.
We do yearly DR failovers (Full restores and network failover) at IBM's data recovery facility.
mybackupfailed
MIS
Frbutler writes:
"I have 4 comcells and 12 MA's"
I write:
Yuck! Talk about not playing well in a large enterprise. Why can't you work with all your clients using one Commcell? Because they can't handle it, thats why!
And you recommend not applying patches and have to harass support for your open tickets every hour. Why is this acceptable to you and why would you recommend them? Because the reports are good?
I'm not trying to start trouble with you Frbutler. I'm just amazed at what people put up with. They force you to roll out four master servers, you don't trust their patches (i agree but this is bad), and you don't get good service from support. Sounds like 3 strikes to me. Again, i use the software too but don't have much choice in the matter.
"I have 4 comcells and 12 MA's"
I write:
Yuck! Talk about not playing well in a large enterprise. Why can't you work with all your clients using one Commcell? Because they can't handle it, thats why!
And you recommend not applying patches and have to harass support for your open tickets every hour. Why is this acceptable to you and why would you recommend them? Because the reports are good?
I'm not trying to start trouble with you Frbutler. I'm just amazed at what people put up with. They force you to roll out four master servers, you don't trust their patches (i agree but this is bad), and you don't get good service from support. Sounds like 3 strikes to me. Again, i use the software too but don't have much choice in the matter.
Mybackupfailed,
"I'm not trying to start trouble with you Frbutler" heheh dude, this is a forum... a place for healthy debate.
4 commcells are in different states and were in existance prior to my arrival.
I harrass support by choice, I have opened 2 tickets in the last 3 months both were non critical. I still called them on it to make sure I did not fall through the cracks. Not that it would.. but I do not give them the chance.
I recommend them because I have used CA's Brightstor, Legato Networker (Prior to EMC) and Backup exec.
Cv is by far the easiest to work with/configure.
I run Veritas NBU 6.0 MP3 for my unix landscape also.
We do a lot of B2B and other tasks with Fidelity and Fannie Mae, They use Veritas so we are required to also. We have the same issues with veritas.
We upgraded from 5.1 to 6.0 and ALL of our backup scripts had to be rewritten (Veritas stated "Sure they will work") Veritas chooses to put out MP's after they have gathered enough patches that they issue as fixes to support calls.
CV issues patches when they are made and rolls them up into a SP on some unknown timetable.
I am running 198 clients on 1 commserve and still have capacity to add more.
I also know it may not be the best but it is what I like and what I think to be the easiest to work with based on what I have been exposed to.
It may not be for everyone. But it works for me.
"I'm not trying to start trouble with you Frbutler" heheh dude, this is a forum... a place for healthy debate.
4 commcells are in different states and were in existance prior to my arrival.
I harrass support by choice, I have opened 2 tickets in the last 3 months both were non critical. I still called them on it to make sure I did not fall through the cracks. Not that it would.. but I do not give them the chance.
I recommend them because I have used CA's Brightstor, Legato Networker (Prior to EMC) and Backup exec.
Cv is by far the easiest to work with/configure.
I run Veritas NBU 6.0 MP3 for my unix landscape also.
We do a lot of B2B and other tasks with Fidelity and Fannie Mae, They use Veritas so we are required to also. We have the same issues with veritas.
We upgraded from 5.1 to 6.0 and ALL of our backup scripts had to be rewritten (Veritas stated "Sure they will work") Veritas chooses to put out MP's after they have gathered enough patches that they issue as fixes to support calls.
CV issues patches when they are made and rolls them up into a SP on some unknown timetable.
I am running 198 clients on 1 commserve and still have capacity to add more.
I also know it may not be the best but it is what I like and what I think to be the easiest to work with based on what I have been exposed to.
It may not be for everyone. But it works for me.
mybackupfailed - I have 9 Commcells / 27 MA's and so many clients I had an MR created in v5.0 for the client group feature you see in v5.9 and I am easily able to manage all of them with QNET.
Your question "WHY!!!" they are geographically located in different parts of the world.
I am able to provide weekly data protection updates to my senior management on our recoverability and our storage needs all with the advanced CV reporting featues. Anyway you slice it when managing an enterprise a centrailzied application is key.
I dont know the size of your shop mybackupfailed or your data mangement responsibilities but I perform monthly DR drills where my team is strictly audited by an outside consulting firm.
This firm examing over 15+ T's of restored data - compares it to thier expected results and has a compliance list longer then my arm - we do this EVERY month and have passed each and every time.
You can't argue with that kind of success and I have 100% confidence walking into DR, but I do my dilligence as Frbutler has said it is MY but on the line.
Why don't you report that you do not like the software to your management? Why is it you don't have a choice - your bitterness is astounding......
Your question "WHY!!!" they are geographically located in different parts of the world.
I am able to provide weekly data protection updates to my senior management on our recoverability and our storage needs all with the advanced CV reporting featues. Anyway you slice it when managing an enterprise a centrailzied application is key.
I dont know the size of your shop mybackupfailed or your data mangement responsibilities but I perform monthly DR drills where my team is strictly audited by an outside consulting firm.
This firm examing over 15+ T's of restored data - compares it to thier expected results and has a compliance list longer then my arm - we do this EVERY month and have passed each and every time.
You can't argue with that kind of success and I have 100% confidence walking into DR, but I do my dilligence as Frbutler has said it is MY but on the line.
Why don't you report that you do not like the software to your management? Why is it you don't have a choice - your bitterness is astounding......
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