Nightwatch
MIS
Well after a year of trying to manage BrightstoreS Ver. 9 we've replaced it with Back Up Exec. 9
Since we purchased and installed Brightstore we have been plagued endless performance problems: Extremely low performance on Full and Incremental backups, database crashes and software failures.
We approached CA technical support with these problems shortly after. They asked us to perform a series tests to rule out network problems. When nothing suspect was found we were then told to look at the operating system configuration, again nothing suspect. CA‘s response was that it was something in our network. We explained to them that each server was multi-homed and all of the back up traffic was configured to go over a dedicated segment and that are network was not showing any bottle necks. Server to server copies of large data blocks was great. We went as far as connecting a cross-over cable between the back up server and a file server ran a back up job and found it was just as slow. CA asked us to verify the cable! I was, however, able to improve the through put on my own by resizing the TCP window sizes on each server. CA then offered some registry changes for the agents which made no difference.
Left with the current state of affairs we made the best out of a bad situation. Budget constraints did not allow for us to change software right away. We had to settle with 70hrs to back up 430GB of data and 21 hours on daily Incrementals. If that was not bad enough we then experienced a series of inexplicable database crashes, four in all, two in one month. We were spending 60% of the week just managing the back ups. Finally we had enough and called CA directly in New York hoping they could help us.
To my surprise the CA rep seemed to have already heard most of what I told her. Then she instructed me to write a strongly worded e-mail to her explaining our troubles and lack of help from technical support. She also told us that she would get back to us very soon. That was 2 months ago. We then approached our software vendor with the problems. They mentioned to us that their own engineers had received numerous complaints from clients using Brightstore. They suggested we try an evaluation version of Back Up Exec
With all of this information we decided to evaluate Back Up Exec. V.9. We selected several test servers, of which four showed the poorest performance with Brightstore; we installed the agents, rebooted and ran a back up job. We were amazed at the through put! Servers that backed up at 100mb/per minute with Brightstore were now running at 300+mb/per min. Our Exchange jobs including Brick Level, which are generally slow, showed a dramatic increase in speed: with BS Brick level was 30mb/per minute. BE produced speeds between 60mb/per min to 100mb/per min!
The big test came when we created a full GFS rotation job that included all of our production servers and a couple development servers, about 30 in all. We started the job on a Friday evening. From the start the speed was incredible. The job completed in just under 24 hours! We actually cut 45hrs off the time were getting from Brightstore. The second test would be the Incremental job. The following Monday at 5PM the Incremental job started. Again the speed was incredible. We saw 450 mb/per min on servers that showed 30 to 60 mb/per min with Brightstore. While there were fluctuations in the through put, all servers generally backed up 3 times faster using Back Up Exec. The Incremental job finished in 4 hours, instead of 17hrs with Brightstore.
In conclusion I have nothing but praise for Veritas. Their technical support is excellent, Help menus and knowledge base entries are exact and very detailed. The reporting functionality alone sold the product. I wish I could say the same for CA’s Brightstore. From everything we’ve experienced it seems that Brightstore is a defective product. Contrary to their ads this product is not designed for every environment. While others have reported good performance using Brightstore a majority of the people I’ve talked to have experienced the same issues that we have had in varying degrees. The technical support for this product is a disaster. We never had a sense that any of the help we were getting was based on research. We were dealt a slew of excuses ranging from antivirus to faulty network equipment.
In closing the only advice I can give is the fllowing: if you are planning to upgrade or invest in a back up solution avoid Brightstore.
Since we purchased and installed Brightstore we have been plagued endless performance problems: Extremely low performance on Full and Incremental backups, database crashes and software failures.
We approached CA technical support with these problems shortly after. They asked us to perform a series tests to rule out network problems. When nothing suspect was found we were then told to look at the operating system configuration, again nothing suspect. CA‘s response was that it was something in our network. We explained to them that each server was multi-homed and all of the back up traffic was configured to go over a dedicated segment and that are network was not showing any bottle necks. Server to server copies of large data blocks was great. We went as far as connecting a cross-over cable between the back up server and a file server ran a back up job and found it was just as slow. CA asked us to verify the cable! I was, however, able to improve the through put on my own by resizing the TCP window sizes on each server. CA then offered some registry changes for the agents which made no difference.
Left with the current state of affairs we made the best out of a bad situation. Budget constraints did not allow for us to change software right away. We had to settle with 70hrs to back up 430GB of data and 21 hours on daily Incrementals. If that was not bad enough we then experienced a series of inexplicable database crashes, four in all, two in one month. We were spending 60% of the week just managing the back ups. Finally we had enough and called CA directly in New York hoping they could help us.
To my surprise the CA rep seemed to have already heard most of what I told her. Then she instructed me to write a strongly worded e-mail to her explaining our troubles and lack of help from technical support. She also told us that she would get back to us very soon. That was 2 months ago. We then approached our software vendor with the problems. They mentioned to us that their own engineers had received numerous complaints from clients using Brightstore. They suggested we try an evaluation version of Back Up Exec
With all of this information we decided to evaluate Back Up Exec. V.9. We selected several test servers, of which four showed the poorest performance with Brightstore; we installed the agents, rebooted and ran a back up job. We were amazed at the through put! Servers that backed up at 100mb/per minute with Brightstore were now running at 300+mb/per min. Our Exchange jobs including Brick Level, which are generally slow, showed a dramatic increase in speed: with BS Brick level was 30mb/per minute. BE produced speeds between 60mb/per min to 100mb/per min!
The big test came when we created a full GFS rotation job that included all of our production servers and a couple development servers, about 30 in all. We started the job on a Friday evening. From the start the speed was incredible. The job completed in just under 24 hours! We actually cut 45hrs off the time were getting from Brightstore. The second test would be the Incremental job. The following Monday at 5PM the Incremental job started. Again the speed was incredible. We saw 450 mb/per min on servers that showed 30 to 60 mb/per min with Brightstore. While there were fluctuations in the through put, all servers generally backed up 3 times faster using Back Up Exec. The Incremental job finished in 4 hours, instead of 17hrs with Brightstore.
In conclusion I have nothing but praise for Veritas. Their technical support is excellent, Help menus and knowledge base entries are exact and very detailed. The reporting functionality alone sold the product. I wish I could say the same for CA’s Brightstore. From everything we’ve experienced it seems that Brightstore is a defective product. Contrary to their ads this product is not designed for every environment. While others have reported good performance using Brightstore a majority of the people I’ve talked to have experienced the same issues that we have had in varying degrees. The technical support for this product is a disaster. We never had a sense that any of the help we were getting was based on research. We were dealt a slew of excuses ranging from antivirus to faulty network equipment.
In closing the only advice I can give is the fllowing: if you are planning to upgrade or invest in a back up solution avoid Brightstore.
![[nosmiley]](/data/assets/smilies/nosmiley.gif "[nosmiley] [nosmiley]")
my company to choose the CA's BEB 10.0 for a 10-site, 180+ server / 10-library backup solution (still implementing by a SI).
.