Netbackup training - feedback

[hannahsh]

Unfortunately I have to accept defeat, this app is almost impossible without professional help. We have a number of robot libraries I have inherited.

Anyone been on a Netback course that would give their feedback on whether its best to go on the course or get someone from Veritas onsite?

I would prefer to learn it properly, but the docs are almost as bad as Microsofts and no one else appears to have even attempted to write their own version - I wonder why?

 

[johnny99]

When we started with NBU 4.5 just after i was GA a Veritas course was not an option.
We had a little help from the people who sold us the NBU licenses but not much.

We had our problems but after a while we got it to run without any problems.
For me the beginning on NBU was hard (as I would expect it for most people) but now I wouldn't want another product.

If you have a fixed budget I would go for a consultant (but it doesn't have to be Veritas). It will get you running a lot faster and if he/she is good you should learn a lot.
Getting a consultant and the courses would be best.

I am taking a 5 days course next month from Veritas basicly to get what I already know into the "right frame"

By the way we are what I would call a smaller Windows only shop. We have around 60-70 servers and our daily backup is around 1,5 TB or so.

/johnny

 

[Stumpr]

Consulting is the way to go. First, clear your calendar, then bring someone onsite for a few days. A good consultant will not only teach but also help tweak your existing backup environment. Then give yourself some time to play with the software and read the usergroups daily.

Bob Stump
Incorrigible punster -- Do not incorrige

 

[hannahsh]

Netbackup

I have played a lot with it and slowly falling in love? But I did say slowly, now I need to find out how to add more media pools to each device, especially the Neo400 as it has 50 tapes way too many for one pool group.

I still dread a big restore though.

 

[creakyjoe]

must admit the way i got into NetBackup was via the deep end. Amazing how quickly you learn something cus it's broken and there's no-one to help you
Shedloads of troubleshooting, a few calls to Support (to Sun, not Veritas in those days, thank god), shedloads more troubleshooting, and a working/improved environment. Finally went on a Netbackup Enterprise course 6mths later to find there were only 2 minor things i hadn't taught myself up till then. Anyway i digress, great course, but plenty of hands on beforehand were the key for me. We're quite a small firm so in a bigger environment i would agree with the other posters.

Rich

 

[lenski]

Well we had a consultant in to set up our inital build which was good as there is no way I could have done the job in the short time scale after only 5 days course. But After a couple of months it became clear the consultant had not done such a fine job, okay it worked but it was clearly a set up he had cribbed and bodged to try and fit our enviroment. He also must have got bored as he only load balanced one side of the system. That said they were not Veritas sourced.

The veritas courses can be good, but you might have to keep the sessions focused as it does seem easy to side track some of the teachers. Make sure all the bit are covered to your satisfaction, as there are often people with differant skills and expriance on the course. Some realy should not be there, but thats not Veritas fault.

One guy on the last course thought he could go contracting after one week course and no hands on experiance.

 

[RustyMajor]

I would recommend the NetBackup courses, if you have time. I have attended the 3 day 'basic' course and the 2 day 'advanced' course for 3.4. Most of the info learned there still holds true with the newer versions. If you've used it for a while, I'd recommend going straight to the advanced course, or maybe even the new troubleshooting course that they have.

When I first started with this product, we did hire a Veritas consultant to help implement it and we had a fair share of growing pains. If you have the money, this is probably the best way to go about it as it will be tailored specifically for your environment and you'll learn the most from this method. Support is also a good way to learn things, as long as you can remember and/or document them for next time.

Good luck!
Rusty

 

[hannahsh]

10 days hands on experience

As it happens now that I have 10 working days playng with my robots, (I have 3 of them 2x16 ssl1016 and a Neo4000 50 taper) I have everything working 100% !! on my own.

I would go so far to say I have sussed it out and proud of it!

Still need the bare metal rebuild to have 100% confidence though.

As regards teachers, I have always found them useless, thats why there teachers and not consultants - goes for the people on help desks as there all thick too.

 

[Flave]

Hi

I was working as a VxNBU consultant for over 5 years, and I will again in near future. At the moment I'm working as a VxNBU user.

So I'd like to say the VxDocs are very good compared to others. But anyway, I'd prefer to take training on this.
If you don't know exactly what you're doing, sooner or later you will run into serious troubles with index-DB or media-catalog issues. You need to understand the application, since it is quite different compared to others.

I often saw above mentioned problems at customer sites.

Cheers
Flave

 

[lenski]

Most of the Veritas teatchers are also consultants and some have a lot of experiance. They do know their suff, the weakness if they have one is that teaching may not be their strongest point and they can have trouble understanding how little some people know. That said there would less of a problem if people read the course pre-recs. As somebody mentioned there are some prelim courses. But check out their training web site as there is a big range of options including in office web link training.