How happy are you with NetBackup? 1

[flood0]

My company is switching backup products. We are finally dropping CA ARCserve (I've been screaming about this for years) and we are moving up to a full sized, grown up backup product. Veritas NetBackup is in the front running along with Legato. How happy/comfortable are the veterans here with NetBackup?
We're dealing with 100-150 Windows 2000/2003 servers with about a dozen SQL severs and another dozen Exchange servers.

Thanks in advance for your opinions!

 

[lenski]

Well untill 5.0 came out I was very happy. It has allowed me to manage a huge set up almost on my own. Slick and smooth almost hands off, lights out setup. My problem with 5.0 is the way it is now coded to deal with Domino Lotus Notes. I'm not very happy with the atitude of the support people when trying to get a solution. Which I'm still waiting for if you are listening mr veritas.

 

[Stumpr]

ditto on the support.

except for the Australia bunch.
They are pretty good but unavailable until about 5PM EST

I've requeued support jobs just so I can work with them.

Bob Stump
Incorrigible punster -- Do not incorrige

 

[bonehead56]

I have managed veritas systems for 3 companies now. I am in a very similar setup. I am very happy with the software, but there support is lacking. We dropped $97,000 a year in support because they couldn’t solve the problems before I could. Day to day operation are smooth and uneventful, like they should be.

 

[flood0]

Thank you for all of your opinions. I appreciate each one of them since this is exactly what I was looking for...people who use the product in a production enviornment. Veritas (of course) says their product is the greatest thing ever...but we are still on the pre-sale side of the deal and haven't pulled the trigger yet so I would expect them to say those things.

I'd love to hear more form any and all who have opinions!

Thanks again!

 

[YouEnjoyMyself]

Veritas Support as said in past posts is poor. You are better off diving head first and reading up on Netbackup as much as possible. Also this forum provides mroe help than Veritas ever has.

 

[xxx01]

Veritas support is definately not what it used to be. Apparently, they have further divided up into different groups during a reorg earlier this year.

 

[day88]

Legato NetWoker it highly customizable...

 

[goace]

RE: Legato Networker; you *are* joking? Same as support is lacking. Australia is good. I can't understand the Indian techs. I forward my questions to my local SE and he's better responding.

 

[flood0]

India is one of the problems we're having with ARCserve.
Do you get India when you call Veritas for support? The sales team from Veritas swore up and down that India would not be used for anything except for problems opened over the web. Supposedly, from what they told us, all phone suport is either US, Australia or England.

Any other opinions? Keep 'em coming...they are great reading!

 

[lenski]

No I never get India, the main the product is good and the people fine in the UK. But when you do have a problem that they can not solve stright away there is a certain amount of sholder shruging

 

[goace]

I guess that's what I get for opening web tix. I don't have time most of the time to be on hold for support, so I open a ticket via the web and wait for them to call me back. Thx for the tip!

 

[RSXVMS]

I am new to Veritas and old with OpenVMS Archive Backup System (Very good) but only runs on VMS. Before this week I was thinking of using Veritas to hand my VMS systems (client) since we are using it on the Windows side. But trying to get NetBackup 5.1 to work in our windows environment has been a gussing game. Veritas support is very weak. I don't think I will be looking to them as a total solution.

RSXVMS

 

[tbiller]

Veritas Support is either UK, US or Oz, depending on the time you call.

Over the years I've learned which of their support engineers actually do have a clue about NBU, so I try and requeue jobs for those individuals as Bob says, and have their direct numbers if I have a fast query.

Legato Networker? Hmm. Supported that myself for two years. Never again...

One tip for NBU. Master server on Windows or *nix, (my preference is Solaris) not much to choose for the brains of the operation but on no account have a Windows Master server control any hardware! (Robots, tape drives etc.

Media servers should ALWAYS be *nix. And should be BFO boxes too!(Bitter experience talking from nightmares with Windows (SAN) Media servers and tape drive re-ordering ...)

Of course if you are a 100% Windows house then it will all work - just be prepared for some frustrations along the way if you go with Windows Master and Media servers.

Have a dedicated backup network whenever possible (separate NIC in clients and switch) and MAKE DAMN SURE the network is 100/Full Duplex (or GigE according to your data space)

Just my two pennorth.

Tim

 

[630111]

We went from Legato Networker in March of 2004 to Veritas NetBackup 4.5. It was very painful and Veritas' way of doing things seemed very backwards.

Forward almost a year later and I must say that NetBackup is a much superior product. I remember jumping through lots of hoops to get things done in Legato that barely require a second thought in NetBackup.

NetBackup may seem a little intimidating at first because of all the features, but there is lots of documentation on Veritas' support website.

You'll be glad you switched!

630111

 

[birky]

At my previous employer we too switched from Networker over to Netbackup & it was a huge learning curve but, we were impressed with NBU when we got to grips with it.

Switched jobs and now using CommVault Galaxy which I think is even better

 

[devfsadm]

A comparison of both IMHO:
Legato support is always lacking unless you have an inside track like a SE you can call ($upport). A lot of the features do not work as seemless as Legato says they do ie.. NDMP, staging, the indexing sometimes flakes out. The documentation is silly it seems to be written for the typical end user not for an admin and not very detailed.
Legato command line features are very powerfull. Legato gives you full control to tweak on anything you want. However the documentation will not explain much. I ended up buying these books to become better with Legato

http://www.drenpress.com/

they cost company $$ and using the this site

http://www.tek-tips.com

along with other online sources to find solutions to problems.
Legato is OK not very impressed with the product.

Veritas Netbackup I think is a better product it's command line is very strong and they GUI is easy to work with. Once you get used to the command line you rarely touch the GUI. The documentation is very good they have ftp, http, knowledge base that is easy to use. The documentation is as complex as you want it to be. They GUI has built in online help for trouble shooting. I typically found what I needed in the documentation so support calls were minimal.

To be fair I would go to both Legato and Veritas docs sites and start reading the installation and then the adminstration guides and compare both.
Veritas

http://support.veritas.com/

Legato

http://legato.com/resources/downloads/networker.cfm

 

[johnny99]

I moved to NBU 3-4 year ago.
We are a "Windows only" shop so master and media servers are also Windows. (2003 now)
3 weeks ago we migrated from 4.5 FP7 to 5.1 MP1 without any problems.
We have around 65 servers running most of the MS product line, like Exchange 5.5 and 2003, SQL 6.5, 7.0, 2000, SPS 2001 and 2003, BizTalk, IIS etc. etc.
Our daily backups are around 2TB.
We also have a bunch of WMware ESX servers where we use the linux client to backup the WMware server.

Support to the cases I have had has been good and I think I have got the support in the UK every single time.

I have recomended NBU to a lot of people, and basicly one of the few cases I have told people to look elsewhere is to TSM because they have also had IBM mainframes or when they needed to do "incrementals forever"

/johnny

 

[flood0]

Thank you all for the great responses. I've been reading them all and it is fascinating indeed! I'm glad I asked the question because it has given me some ammo during the pre-sale talks we are currently having with Veritas.
What's everyone's take on the Symantec buy-out?

Many thanks again to everyone who has replied with their 2 cents.
Keep the responses coming...they are great reading!

 

[goace]

Very odd couple -Symantec and Vrts.

I've been using Netbackup for about 20 months and nothing catastrophic to report. Yes it is a big learning curve but friends at Ticketmaster, Motorola, big companies use this product. They have a larger research dept than just me at my company so they can't all be wrong with going w/Netbackup.

I agree to stay away from Windows, especially SSO Shared Storage Option. TWO things that SUCKS on Veritas is:

1. NDMP support -NO NDMP DRIVE SHARING, they've been promising that for years. Legato has it but I know a big company that stopped using NDMP Legato drive sharing because it caused so many problems. I got rid of Veritas SSO in my Windows environment for the same reasons.

2. NDMP restores are SLOW! Even with DAR enabled.

I tested Bakbone, CommVault, Legato, NTBackup (don't laugh) and of course Veritas. Veritas-everyone in Networking and Security groups hate it, but I've seen what is out there. From an admin and engineer perspective, u can't go wrong w/Veritas Netbackup. I'm using 5.0 mp1 and 5.1 mp1. I've done upgrades with minor issues, nothing is perfect. The database is solid, knock on woody, no crashes. I screwed up a media server during an upgrade but was able to restore from tape/catalog and was up and running less than an hour. Solid.

I'm out!

p.s. no i don't work for the evil vrts/symantec