We performed a comparison between Veritas Backup Exec and Veritas NetBackup based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Veritas NetBackup wins out in this comparison, as it is a robust and high-performing solution. Veritas Backup Exec seems to be more suitable for smaller environments, since its performance slows down during big jobs. In addition, Veritas Backup Exec lacks direct integration with the cloud.
"Backup Exec 2012 R2 is a very good product for the Windows file system and SQL backups. It is very user-friendly, but the next version Backup Exec 2014 that is released and the other next versions of Backup Exec product is not so friendly."
"We have never had any problem with storage and backups. It works very well and is a user-friendly solution."
"It has good stability. Its interface is very good, responsive, and easy for restoring data. I use it for backup, encryption, and restore operations, and it works. I am using many agents from VM to LMDP. I also use an agent for SQL Server, which has advanced options because it is the Enterprise version."
"One of the valuable features is the instant recovery for VMs. It reduces the RTO (Recovery Time Objective) drastically."
"The flexibility is very good."
"It is a good backup tool."
"Setting up Backup Exec is straightforward. It took less than two weeks to get it up and running. You need maybe two people at most if you have a Veritas-certified engineer."
"This is a very flexible product, which allows you to back up not only the physical environment but also the cloud environment."
"AIR and duplication, overall management and troubleshooting."
"Specific features that I could not do without are SLPs for replication and duplication control and AIR which makes DR easy."
"Veritas NetBackup is a scalable solution."
"Logs are very easy to read, parse, and use for diagnostics."
"The client side deduplication reduces the backup window."
"The solution has been very good over the years at fine-tuning various aspects of the product so that it is continuously made better."
"The documentation is good."
"The backup and restore features are helpful."
"They can work on the issue of the job timing out when it is unable to reach a selection item. It sometimes hangs up on the selection item, thus preventing the job from continuing."
"The integration with SaaS applications like Office 365 needs to be improved."
"The pricing is an area of improvement and the mode of marketing it."
"This solution does not support image-level backup of a physical server."
"There's one common issue with tape backups: the tape might have some space left, but Backup Exec says it's not writable and needs replacement. We've encountered this with multiple clients, so it doesn't seem environment-specific. It's likely related to the software. We usually just format the tape and use it again without much investigation."
"Currently, the solution does not have the capability to restore a single mailbox, so you lose a lot of time having to restore for example ten mailboxes just to recover one."
"If you keep it for too long and the catalog gets really big, the application tends to move slowly."
"The one thing which could be improved, which we have informed Veritas about, is the ability to plug in to the cloud. Meaning, instead of using local storage if we're backing up a small user or end user, we want to be able to make it so they can direct the backups directly to the cloud. It can't be done at the moment. We can only back up to the storage then replicate to the cloud, but we cannot use the cloud as a source of storage."
"Lacks a reporting feature."
"System administrators would be more efficient in NetBackup if the number of tools and command lines was reduced."
"The flip side about NetBackup is that it is not policy-based."
"I would like to have support enabled for cloud backups."
"We faced so many backup configuration issues. And from the Veritas side, they couldn't fix that issue. So we started from scratch, purchased everything, and then we configured everything. Therefore, the support could be better."
"It gets a lot of new features, but improvements in basic functionality are often sacrificed for a shiny new bullet point to put on sales presentations."
"It is a very expensive solution. They should have a different scheme for selling it. They should also make it easy for us to switch from Solaris to Linux. We are having some trouble in migrating our actual catalog from Solaris to Linux."
"The pricing could be improved, and the interface could be more intuitive."
Veritas Backup Exec is ranked 15th in Backup and Recovery with 71 reviews while Veritas NetBackup is ranked 5th in Backup and Recovery with 111 reviews. Veritas Backup Exec is rated 7.8, while Veritas NetBackup is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Veritas Backup Exec writes "Highly stable, intuitive design, and integrates well". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Veritas NetBackup writes "Efficient data recovery and replication features ". Veritas Backup Exec is most compared with Veeam Backup & Replication, Acronis Cyber Protect, Commvault Cloud, Veritas System Recovery and Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain), whereas Veritas NetBackup is most compared with Veeam Backup & Replication, Rubrik, Veritas NetBackup Appliance, Azure Backup and Dell NetWorker. See our Veritas Backup Exec vs. Veritas NetBackup report.
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Veritas NetBackup is a more robust solution supporting more environments than Backups Exec. There are different pricing models with NetBackup. ie. Per Storage (TB), Media Server or Servers. It is better to reach a Software Vendor who can guide you and quote a solution that meets your requirements. The company that I work for started with Backup Exec then moved to NetBackup. If your environment is more virtual than physical you should also consider Veeam or Rubrik.
The proper question is not Backupexec or Netbackup but what kind of protection you want to have?
We had backup exec for more than 4 years and I can assure you, as a backup administrator, that I had some really hard days related to the proper coverage of servers, applications, and data. Netbackup is the proper choice if you want a serious protection infrastructure but you have to consider the following key facts:
-What type of environment do you want to protect?
Netbackup works perfectly with VMWare and with mixed environments. I'm not saying that it will not work with other providers but the integration with VMware is one of the greatest pros of this product.
-Is the backup time window enough to cover all your resources?
With Backupexec I was struggling to have all backup jobs complete in a time frame of 13 hours. With Netbackup and especially in conjunction with their Appliances I was able to add more and more jobs for the very same time frame.
-What is your frontend volume?
With Netbackup the best solution is to have a Frontend Capacity license. With this license type, there's no need to buy extra licenses for SQL, SharePoint, Exchange, Oracle, etc. It's an all-inclusive license. Furthermore, with the new version 8.2 you don't even have to install agents on servers! The prices may vary but I guess for i.e 20TB capacity the price will be somewhere between 80000 to 100000 euros (1-year maintenance included and assuming a feasible discount). You don't have to pay for an appliance but if you afford it it's highly recommended in order to achieve the best performance and other technologies (i.e AIR, deduplication ratio, etc).
I don't really know what is the current status of Backupexec in terms of version, prices, features etc. As a product it's absolutely not comparable to Netbackup On the other hand we have left it behind for good.
We have just recently migrated our backups off of Netbackup due to the cost.
I do not remember the licensing, but the whole product was getting too expensive for not only the product but for the management of the product. We had 6 different pieces in the environment due to some configuration designs.
So we have moved to a product that we pay so much for the hardware and then a license for the amount of data we ingest through that product. It is one environment management that can handle a large amount of Data Protection.
- For Veritas Backup Exec: Licenses are per client that you want to backup and depends on if it's only an agent for the system or for an application.
- For VMware, the license is per VMware host.-
Actually, I am a technical person so I look only at the technical part rather than the sales part. So I don't know what the prices are for Veritas appliances and software licenses. But the licences of NetBackup are available on both storage and per virtual machine-based.
We recently migrated off of NetBackup to Avamar using a Data Domain for storage. Since we already had the Data Domain it made sense.
What did you move to?
I am happy to set up a short call to explain the differences. Backup Exec is an SMB solution while NetBackup is an enterprise solution. Backup Exec would be more in line with your organization's size. Call me and we can set up a short Webex.