Micro Focus Data Protector Reviews

We use Micro Focus Data Protector to back up all our infra servers, plus file share and some VM backup.

The normal file system backup is easy to manage, and our success rate is quite high.

The scheduler setup could be better. We are facing some issues scheduling the job based on our requirements. Furthermore, if we want to change something, we have to run it through all the policies one by one. They don't have a central place to modify and apply it to all the policies. The virtual environment backup could also be better.

I have been using Micro Focus Data Protector for four years.

It's a stable solution, but every upgrade is such a headache. For example, we currently have to upgrade to a new version, but somehow the connection to storage isn't happening because there are issues with the library.

Micro Focus Data Protector is scalable. It's quite simple as we can just add on more media to fulfill all the requirements. Right now, a few thousand people use this solution in our organization.

We had a few cases through email, but one pain point is that they always go through to level one, go to level two, and so on. They spend a lot of time explaining what's going on before the problem is solved. 

Previously, we used Veritas Backup Exec. So, compared to Veritas Backup Execs, it's a little bit cheaper.

The initial setup is quite straightforward, like Master Media Server. 

Our licensing is on a capacity basis.

I wouldn't recommend Micro Focus Data Protector to be used as a cloud backup. But for on-premise and file share use, it's quite okay.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give Micro Focus Data Protector a seven.

The solution is used in protection across a heterogeneous computing environment.

What I like the most about this solution is that I can change and access the Oracle file. 

I would like to see a better user interface in the next release. 

I have used the solution for 20 years. 

In my experience, I found the solution to be stable.

The solution is scalable. There are approximately 10 users using it in my organization.

Since I am using the solution as a trainer, I have not used any technical support.  

I have used StorONE solution before. 

I have installed the solution myself. It was easy and took approximately 40 minutes. 

 There is one administrator necessary for the deployment of the solution. 

The solution requires paying for a license.

I would recommend the solution to others. 

I rate Micro Focus Data Protector an eight out of ten. 

We primarily use the solution for our server backup and some Linux system backups as well as a backup for our SQL.

The main reason for usage is to protect our information. However, we've searching for new tools for increasing the volume of information and increasing platform protection. Unfortunately, Data Protector is not exactly the tool for that task.

The stability of the product seems to be quite good.

The solution isn't ideal for big data or large CRMs.

We have been lacking proper training on the solution. This seems to be a weak point of the product. They should offer better training for their users.

Other tools seem to be easier to use.

The solution should offer support for the backup of cloud platforms. The same system needs to work with replication and mirror sites, for example.

I've been dealing with the solution for five years or so.

The stability of the solution is quite good. There aren't bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze at all. It's reliable.

As this is an appliance, the scalability is limited to the sizing. There's only so much capacity that is possible.

It's difficult to get technical support and proper assistance for this tool.

I've only worked with this particular company for eight months and they've had the solution for a number of years previous to my start. I did not play a role in the implementation and therefore can't speak to how easy or difficult the setup or deployment was for them.

I'm not sure how many people the company used for deployment or how many are needed for maintenance.

I don't have any insights into the licensing or costs. It's not an aspect of the solution that I handle directly.

We're currently planning on changing out backup tools. At the moment we're looking at Veeam and Barracuda. We have some systems deployed by Spanish users and they already use Barracuda, which is why we are considering it. We're taking licensing costs into account, however, we're finding that the most visible difference is the user interface as well as the style of use - for example, how to backup and recover data.

We're just a customer and an end-user. We don't have a special relationship with this company.

I'm not sure of the exact version we're using. It may be some iteration of version six.

I'd advise new users to implement the solution using a support person and good documentation and to make sure they are putting the correct data policies in place.

In the past, it was quite a good tool, however, now, due to a lack of training, or due to having a lack of staff that is trained in it, it is likely much easier to have something like Veeam, which isn't as complicated of a solution.

On a scale from one to ten, I would rate this product at a five. In comparison, I'd rate Veeam at an eight.

The primary use case is mainly for data protection for both short-term and long-term retention. We are resellers of Micro Focus and I am a storage and backup engineer.

Many colleagues complain about poor and complicated implementation of VMWare granular recovery

The feature I like the most is the deduplication implementation with CAPA. It's very good. 

I think the VMware backup integration and the cloud recovery is lacking. I also found it difficult to implement the granular recovery solution with Micro Focus for both VMware integration backups and for exchange integration backups. Implementing this solution was a big challenge. Other products like Veeam, or NetBackup have a simpler and more user friendly solution than Micro Focus. Implementation really should be more straightforward. I'd like to see stronger integrations, and an easier setup for granular recovery. It's a feature that plays a great role for data protection.

I've been using this solution for 11 years. 

Stability depends on the platform. It's quite stable on a Linux platform but I've had bad experience in the past with Windows. I don't know if there is more stability with the new releases, but we abandoned the Windows platform for the core services of Data Protector. We're using Linux.

The scalability is okay although there are issues regarding the database. If you're installing the solution in a physical machine, and you have to extend the database, it's not so easy.  With virtual machines, it's easy to extend it. Scalability depends on the type of installation. I suggest deploying the core as a manager that contains the database, then if you need to scale up storage, you can easily extend the virtual disk in a short time.

Technical support has not been good recently and in several cases, I have found the solution myself. I would expect support to be able to manage these issues. 

We currently also use NetBackup and Veritas which are both more open to other systems. There is also the Veritas fast solution for appliances together with the pro. With Micro Focus, you need to contact the vendor for equipment for the storage device, and for the new servers and the physical middle servers. NetBackup and Veritas only have one vendor and we get everything from them. It makes it easier to prepare bonds and to design a solution for customers. Veritas also has integration for cloud-native backup, and we have integration for the backup storage before the middle server. There is also good integration with VMware and Data Protector. Micro Focus is not like that. We need three different vendors to provide the same solution.

The time it takes to set up a virtual machine with the software operating system is very quick if it's a new installation. But if it's an upgrade, it is quite difficult, because it takes time to convert the database to the new user. The performance of this product in the Windows platform is not great so we usually don't install it. With VMware, it is easy to attach the kit, the package ISO file. Then the setup is quite easy. In that sense, it's like the other products for this. It's probably more difficult than implementing in a network environment, with firewalls in between middle servers and clients, or between some manager and the new servers.

Implementation was in-house

This solution is a manager service. We resell this product with the manager service in our private cloud that we provide the customers so for us, it's a good price. However, I do think they should lower the price as there are other, better technologies available.

EMC Networker

I would rate this solution a six out of 10. 

We are using this solution to back up our data from SAP HANA and Microsoft applications. We also use it to back up our domain and file servers.

The most valuable feature is the capability to back up our SQL server.

We also use this product to back up our Linux file system.

The interface has been the same for many years and needs to be updated. The dashboard has changed, but that only deals with part of the backup process.

We have been using Micro Focus Data Protector for 15 years.

We haven't had any issues with respect to stability.

The scalability is very nice.

Overall, this is a good product and it hasn't given us any problems.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

The primary use case is integration with the HP storage unit. There is an HP product line called HP High-End Storage. We are primarily using Micro Focus Data Protector for SAP RT application, which is an earlier version. 

Integration with HP storage is a very strong point for Micro Focus Data Protector. 

It is the best solution for general operations like backup and restore. Zero downtime backup (ZDB) is one very important feature, which is basically the integration with the storage array. It is a very strong feature. We're using storage with snapshots with this integration. 

In general, you can say that Micro Focus Data Protector is behind in capabilities when compared with other backup solutions, such as Commvault, Symantec, NetBackup, but it is very strong for certain use cases such as array integration. We are using it in production even now.

There should be some kind of cloud integration and archiving solutions. I think this is the area they need to focus on.

We have been using Micro Focus Data Protector for six to seven years. 

We have been using HP solutions, comprising HP servers, storage, and even the HP operating system unit, for five to seven years. Micro Focus Data Protector was configured and installed during the last tech research around six to seven years ago, and it is still in production. Currently, we have replaced the solution with some other solution, but for the older tech research, Micro Focus Data Protector is still working.

We're relying on this backup for our very critical core application. It's really good all the time for backup and restore operations. We never faced any issue. You can say it is a very smooth and stable experience.

Scalability of Micro Focus Data Protector is good. There may be tens of thousands of users currently in our company.

The technical support is really good. They're always very cooperative and really very good. The support experience is actually very good.

I was not there at that time. It shouldn't actually take much time, maybe a few weeks or one month.

It was deployed by HP. Their deployment team installed and configured everything.

It is a very good product if you want to go for the ZDB backup or the array integration with HP products. In general, when comparing Micro Focus Data Protector with other backup solutions, such as Commvault, NetBackup, or any other vendor, they are much more comprehensive and have much more capabilities.

I would rate Micro Focus Data Protector a seven out of ten.

 We primarily use the solution for data backups.

On the interface level of managing the backup, especially the history of the files that we are backing up, Data Protector is pretty good.

Implementation is pretty easy, depending on the number of clients.

The data deduplication is great.

The solution offers easy device detection. It's great for detecting devices you attach to the network. It doesn't matter if it's HPE StoreOnce or Data Domain, this solution will pick it up.

The catalog if very complete. Even if your file is eight years old, you'll be able to see it there.

Data Protector is very good at automation. From the time of the backup, verification, and copy to tape, it is very good. I don't need to touch it, it will do it by itself. 

It's annoying that you actually have to pay for the deduplication feature in order to use it.

Starting at around 2010, they haven't really changed their interface or added many new features. The console is dated. they need to make it more modern, add colours and better UI to make it more user friendly and attractive.

If you compare the solution with the same specific features and enhancements on another solution, Data Protector is expensive. This is especially true when compared to, for example, Veeam.

They are starting to create a cloud version of the Data Protector. The thing is, it's very hard to convince an administrator like me to switch to it, due to the fact that they are basically a hardware designed software. It was designed by a hardware engineer, that's why it looks and feels and operates like hardware. To change it to a software doesn't sit right. In comparison, when you use Veeam, you feel like you are managing a cloud. You feel that you are managing something on the top. When you're using Micro Focus Data Protector, on the other hand, you feel that you are directly communicating with the device. It's just as bumpy and not as satisfying as compared to Veem, which is compact and light.

Every time there is a backup running, I cannot predict anything, so I cannot say if it will back up the first time. Data Protector has a status bar. You need to wait and see.

Their flexibility of their reporting needs improvement. You cannot save. You need to copy/paste. It may have appeared flexible in the 1990s, however, it's 2020 now. We need a flexible reporting of all that is happening on the Data Protector. We don't need to focus too much on the data, we need to focus on the maintenance of the machine. There needs to be a focus on analytical reports. We need answers to questions like: "Am I going to lose capacity?" "Do I still have enough space?" "Do I still have enough capacity for the cloud?" Data Protector should analyze these things for you, and alert you if you need to increase capacity.  

The solution needs more mobile capabilities. If I cannot see your product on my mobile, you're not worth considering. Nowadays, that's a basic requirement for an administrator.

There is no place in the world that is not connected to the internet or IoT. There is a lot to be done that the competitors are already doing for the last four years. 

The solution needs to change their support agreement. It was changed from traditional to capacity. That means the product is now only targeting big companies. As it stands now, they cannot really market to smaller organizations because their capacity is not that much. Licensing should be flexible for small businesses all the way up to enterprise-level businesses.

Once you perform a backup for a huge amount of data, you cannot browse it. You cannot browse a specific characteristic of that data on the database in order to find a file. If the file is large, you need to restore it. With Veem, you can view it even if it's inside the archive. It gives you the assurance it's actually there. The solution needs to have a good explorer for administrators. I need to have the flexibility of viewing where I put my data. When it is going to the tape, the tape is totally encrypted. You need to restore it before you know what is inside. It's a big waste of time.

I've been using the solution since 2007. It's been well over a decade.

When the Micro Focus acquired this product, they changed the way it was supported. Before, when HP was doing it, technical questions were handled by after-sales support. Usually, they would take three days, at the minimum, to get help if you have of any trouble. 

The good thing about Data Protector is that they now have levels of support. They have three levels and you can request it personally. Basically, if the first agent doesn't detect your problem or solve the issue, the customer can take the initiative to say to the agent, "Now, we want to go level two". The agent does not make that call for the customer. 

As of just this year, technical support has really stepped up their game. They've changed. They're amazing.

We have had backup solutions before, with another vendor, before we started with this solution in 2007

The initial setup is mostly straightforward. An example of a complex installation for me, would be Microsoft Exchange. Micro Focus Data Protector is still a bit of a gray area, but it's easier. It's not modular. You always need to copy the whole SAN in order for you to achieve success.

It's an easy deployment. It's a basic server from the client to the device. It's a little bit of a two-step pattern compared to the Symantec Back Exec deployment, which is the simplest way to install your backup solution. With Data Protector, there are a few additional steps. That said, implementation is easy once you know what you're doing.

The length of time it takes to deploy is approximately 45 minutes for a single server. With clustering, it might take two hours. Now with SAN storage, it might take you a half-day, due to the configuration.

Give me a basic set up, and I can do it within 30 to 45 minutes. I can set the servers up, install the binary, have it detect the media, and then I can deploy the agent and backup any machine.

I don't have the storage inside my server, the storage is connected somewhere else. Connecting the configuration, depending on how I presented the device to the Data Protector, could be 30 minutes to half a day.

For maintenance, ideally, one site should have three engineers. However, in our environment, I am the only backup administrator for five sites. I would say that's understaffed for the solution.

Recently, we've seen a huge improvement in the licensing team. They're now phenomenal.

I've also looked at Veem and have downloaded both solutions for free.

We have a service level agreement with Micro Focus.

I cannot say that Data Protector is the perfect tool for my aim. Data Protector is losing to the competition day by day due to the fact that there are so many other features on the market. Data Protector doesn't need to copy their competition, but they at least have to have an offering that's equivalent. Especially now, looking at the console, there's been no money put into updates or UI, especially if you compare it from 2007 until the present day.

The technology itself is proven and it is working fine. 

I have a lot of machines, so I have room to play with the solution. Data Protector is great, however, after using Veem, I can see now where it could be improved. I'd rate it overall seven out of ten. If Data Protector offered a cloud version with better graphical interfaces, plus more analytics and reporting, I'd give it higher marks.

The primary reason clients purchase this solution is for backup.

I don't like this solution so much because it's very technical and compared to Commvault and Veeam, it's not so user-friendly. The interface needs improvement. 

It was sold to another company, I haven't seen a lot of improvement that they have done. 

I have been using it for six years. 

It is not a stable product because I found that it's only dedicated to HP products. 

Scalability is not good because for us if we buy 10GB and want to upgrade there's no provision to upgrade easily. You must consult with the HP support team. As opposed to Veeam where you just buy their license then they upgrade it or with Commvault you just buy their license and then the user can upgrade.

The support nowadays isn't so good because in order to get support you have to have a support contract. 

Commvault is an enterprise backup solution that does both virtualization, on-premise, and cloud and also does outside replication.

The initial setup is straightforward if you understand Data Protector. The deployment takes around two days. You need a consultant for the deployment. 

The pricing is around $3,000 to $5,000. The charge additionally for support and to scale.

Considering the data report and also the possibility of maintenance and support, I would advise going for Veeam or Commvault because of the free trial security and backup possibility data protection, which is on-premise, cloud, and replication. This cannot be done by Data Protector. 

I would rate it a six out of ten. It only has the option for on-premise while the other solutions can do on-premise, cloud, and replication use the same interface. They should improve it to have a replication feature and do backups within the cloud. It can be a good device to use.

The most valuable feature for me is the duplication.

With Micro Focus, which works with the HP hardware, you don't need to use interfaces. With other solutions like Backup Exec, etc., you have to run an additional API in the background. It impacts your systems. It's not the same when you are using Micro Focus directly with the HP hardware. This solution is more efficient. If you use another solution, you need to use an additional API. The people who designed Micro Focus were from HP, which is why they work so well together.

The solution would be improved if it would work with OpenStack.

People prefer Veeam because the interface is easier, and Data Protector is difficult in comparison.

Data Protector is beginning to integrate virtual machines. Customers, however, find it more comfortable to work on a virtual machine, for example, with Veeam Backup. They find it easier, once again, because the interface is easier.

Stability isn't perfect. You have issues from time to time. 

I'm working on multiple cases, so I'm able to see what is not working with the software. Micro Focus, however, continues to refine the product, which is one of the strengths of the solution. They have new versions every month to fix problems. We advise clients from time to time to upgrade to improve stability. 

With new installations, incidents can occur sometimes. If you have an incident that affects the backup server, it can impact the software and create a bug. There are people from Micro Focus - high-level people - that can help and take control of the solution remotely to troubleshoot issues.

Regarding scalability, it's unlimited with Data Protector. You can link multiple installations and let them work together. They can share backup devices. You have many possibilities with Data Protector. It's very proficient.

I didn't previously use a different solution.

The initial setup is complex. You have software to install on all of the machines and communication to set, including security communication. It's a delicate process, and it's not something common and easy to do. Normally we plan downtime with the customer. For a big enterprise, we take nearly a week to upgrade the solution.

Occasionally, we have problems when upgrading. Sometimes there's something that's not automated and you need a specialized person that can do the upgrade or the installation for you.

We installed the solution. We are an integrator.

We essentially handle enterprise solutions. We work with enterprises that have their own cloud and machines to back up their systems.

I would rate this solution ten out of ten.

If you are an enterprise, and you need a strong backup solution, Micro Focus is for you. For me, it's the best.

We are using the on-prem version of this solution. We use the software for both the Microsoft application backup and Oracle backup.

We are planning to switch to Veeam in the next six months.

The feature that was most valuable was that we could restore one mailbox and we could do different backups for different databases.

I'm sure Data Protector has improved because we have an old version and I think the new versions have many new features but I'm not familiar with them. The version we are using now does not work with virtual machines and it lacks many features. I'm sure the new version is better. It has many functions that can compete with Veeam, but the problem is that its price is more expensive. It's very expensive compared to Veeam and other similar solutions.

We changed Microsoft to a virtual environment, so in a virtual environment, we could not do a backup with the version we're using. It doesn't work with a virtual machine. In addition, we could not restore the machine. This is the main problem with it. 

We are switching to Veeam because Data Protector is lacking good virtualization features and because the cost is very high.

The solution is very stable but we had some problems with our VTL although, this is a hardware problem.

The scalability is good. 

We have three users using this application: Infrastructure section head, one senior infrastructure administrator, and one infrastructure administrator.

We require two staff members for the maintenance of this solution. We use this solution daily. 

Their technical support is good. When we wanted to change our partner and to have the support from another partner, we didn't find any partner in Egypt that could help us. We didn't know that HP is not responsible for this solution. When we bought it, it was HP Data Protector and now it's Focus. It was very hard to know this. We sent a request to Focus, but they didn't respond to our request.

Before this solution, we were using a Linux platform and we were using an open-source program, I don't remember the name. We switched from Linux to Microsoft. 

The initial setup was complex. It was not easy. Data Protector itself is easy to install, but sometimes when we re-install it, it doesn't work and some agents do not work properly especially for Microsoft and for Unix.

Our deployment was done in 2008 and it took two to three days to finalize our deployment, the agents, and everything and to be sure that all backups were working well.

We used a partner for the deployment. We had a good experience with them.

The licensing cost was not annual. We didn't pay any license. We paid when we deployed and we didn't pay for anything after that. There were no additional fees after the initial payment. 

The solution is very stable, it was very helpful. We are confident that when we do a backup, we are sure that we can restore it which is very valuable. It's very reliable and we are confident when doing a backup, we could restore it. 

I would rate it an eight out of ten. It is very stable and we trust it but we've had some problems with it which is why I would deduct two points. 

We run all of the bank applications on it. 

The solution allows us to be able to backup and exchange directly to backup Microsoft Exchange.

The solution is not intuitive enough. I think they should work on the user experience and the graphical interface. These can be a lot better.

I would give the stability a rating of seven out of ten. There are still some improvements to be made in terms of ensuring stability in the product.

Scalability is very good. Right now, we have ten users, including backup administrators, compliance, and audit. The backups run every day.

I would rate technical support as six out of ten. They don't respond in a timely manner when you report issues.

The initial setup was complex. It's because it's not user-friendly. I think they can work a lot harder at making the solution more intuitive. Deployment took about two weeks. For deployment and maintenance, we only needed two people.

We used a reseller that helped with the deployment. They were fantastic. I liked them a lot.

For us, the solution is bundled with other HP licenses, so I can't say how much the licensing is exactly. There are no other costs above the standard licensing fee, however.

We are using the on-premises version of the solution.

In terms of advice that I would give to those thinking about using the solution, I'd say this: it's a very good application. It does the job. It can be better, but it does the job. It does everything any basic backup application should do. The interface could be more intuitive and more colorful to help with its ease of use.

I would rate the solution seven out of ten.

I would like to see an improvement in the reporting feature of this solution as it is really bad. It needs to include important views and dashboards so that we can configure the functions we need. They should also improve their technical support to make the response time faster.

This solution is quite stable because we have only three users. I am not sure if we will increase our usage soon.

The technical support was very slow.

The initial setup was really complex. I am not at all impressed by this solution. It was difficult to find anyone here in Denmark to help us with the setup because my experience was that everybody was moving away from this solution. So we had to do the installation ourselves.

I really wouldn't recommend others to use this solution - especially when it comes to the technical support. I rate this a five out of ten.

Our primary use case is backing up our data and restoring it when required.

Our company assets are information and data. The product protects these valuable assets.

The most valuable feature is the protection of our data with the backup capability and performance.

Make it simpler to use, integrate with as many applications as possible, and improve the dashboard.

It is stable to a point, but it has room for improvement. I would not call it a very stable solution.

The product is scalable, but it depends on the vendor's license as well as the customer's infrastructure.

The support is not good and they should really work to enhance the customer support experience.

Data Protector was our original solution. It shipped with our HP Printer.

I found the initial setup to be ok. I would not say simple or complex, but medium.

Our goal is to have the simplest possible solution that will work without extra effort.

The product was part of the backup solution that shipped with our HP printer, so we did not record a vendor implementation.

I would not recommend this product to my colleagues.

We have looked at several including Cobalt, Upline, Veritas Backup Exec, and Dell EMC.

If a company has no protection for their data and information then they need this product. However, the reliability needs to be enhanced.

Micro Focus needs to fix the current issues by working closely with customers to determine how it is that we can help.

Overall, I would rate this product a six out of ten.

I use the Micro Focus Data Protector for our corporate data backup requirements. That is the main business need for this product by our company.

I don't like any function of the Micro Focus Data Protector. Honestly, I hate the Micro Focus Data Protector. It's not really good.

I have used Micro Focus Data Protector for the file backup facilities. My primary use of the software is to backup file data.

The software needs to redesign the UI and they should organize the functions so that they are much easier to use. It's very hard to understand how to use the software.

Micro Focus Data Protector is stable. I have one customer using it. The data center utilizes it. 

It is scalable. We use it for our data center and website.

We haven't contacted the technical support with Micro Focus.

The initial setup is very complex. It's hard to understand how the components work together and how each component is related together. I read a lot of information but I still don't really understand MFDP. I don't spend much time on it, therefore it's hard to understand. 

The information about MFDP is easy, but the application of it is not easy. When I deploy the software, I only understand it because I have written down all the information.

It just takes a few hours to finish the installation and the configuration.

I have deployed Micro Focus Data Protector myself with some technical issues and problems.

The Micro Focus Data Protector solution is not really good, but it is "good enough" that it can help our client requirements. If I compare Micro Focus Data Protector with other solutions, MFDP just does not have enough complexity in the UI.

On a scale from 1 to 10, I would give Micro Focus Data Protector a seven. They should design the solution so that it is much easier for deployment and make the UI easy to use.

For backup testing, previously it was taking a long time, because we needed to restore all the machines and systems. Now, testing the backup machines is very fast.

It's supports Unix, Linux, all of the OS's. It's very stable software, we have been using it for many years now. It's great.

The new backup systems are using new mechanisms for the recovery phases; for example, VM, recovery and testing the backup before recovering it. These features are not available in Data Protector. What we need to see is fast recovery and testing of backups.

The second thing is the license type. Because in Data Protector, if you need extra features, you need to buy the agents for these features. Some of the features are Terabytes, some of them are agents. There's some complexity in the pricing and licensing.

It's stable, but there are times when you need to open a ticket with vendor support. It is stable but when you are using any system, you need to open tickets from time to time.

No problem with the scalability. There are many agents, anything I need, I can buy agents and do it with Data Protector. It's very scalable. But it's costly when we need to scale it.

Data Protector is great software, but after we started getting support from Micro Focus, it was taking too much time, there was too much delay. That's why we are thinking of testing other backup software. It used to be helpful and very good. But with Micro Focus, now it's taking more time.

I wasn't directly involved but I think it was straightforward, because the integrator who did the installation was an expert.

Commvault and Veeam, these are the options on the shortlist. We haven't made a decision because there are new features being added by Micro Focus to Data Protector. We need to see if the new features and updates - maybe up until the end of this year - cover our needs. Perhaps we will not change backup software. But if we find that no, there is still complexity in recovering and testing the backups, then we will choose one of the two above options. 

We requested a PoC from the vendors, just to see the features that are now available.

When selecting a vendor, first of all we need local support, here in our country, so that we don't need to open tickets with the vendor every time. A lot of times we need to open a ticket with local integrators. This is how we choose our backup software.

A lot of the backup solutions have the same features or the features are similar, because when one of them adds a feature, the others, after a few months are are adding the same thing. So mainly, we're based on the local integrator, who is providing the support and who is doing the implementation, who has very good experience. Based on comparison ratings, we haven't found a lot of difference between, for example, the Commvault and Veeam.

If you have a complex environment, if you have different OS's - Linux, Unix, Windows - if you have backup to disk, Data Protector is a very good choice to cover the whole environment. But it will cost you a lot of money.

If you need to use more than one backup software, use Commvault and Veeam for the VM environment. I have been told that Commvault is very good with physical servers and other OS's, and this is why we need to test it.

I can backup and restore our company’s various systems without issue.

It is very easy to use and the interaction with various systems is very handy.

• I'd like to be able to pause a job rather than to abort it; and
• I'd like to know which file or folder is being backed up while the job is running.
• Faster VEAgent Restores

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

Customer Service:

In my experience, the customer service was very good and helpful.

Technical Support:

Technical support was very good.

I used Backup Exec in a previous position. I only switched solutions because I changed changed jobs, and my current company uses Data Protector.

Initial setup was straightforward.

Implementation was done in-house.

Our return on investment has been better restorations.

Get it and use it. Read the manuals well before implementing and have a test environment in place, especially for upgrades.

The flexibility when restoring Oracle/SAP data.

Backup of SAP/Oracle -- they are more robust than the competition.

Virtualization.

Delay when using a big Internal database.

Same as above.

Excellent when support in Brazil gets the ticket.

No.

Very easy.

Avoid using many LTO drives; when using fewer drives, the price will be extremely good.

No, but I'm very familiar with CommVault.

I'd go ahead if you're not planning on using it with Virtualization.

The simplicity of the software since when it was deployed makes the training easy for the backup operators (there is a big rotation of employees in this area).

The file system backup (by far, the most used) is the most valuable feature.

Integration with the market applications must be improved, such as MS Exchange, MS Active Directory, SAP and Oracle. Other backup tools are more efficient with the integrated backups.

We encountered some stability issues. Before 2014, the system run over HPE-UX platform when some software issues were recurrent. After it moved to the x86 platform, these were reduced a lot (almost to zero).

There were some scalability issues. In the older version 7.0, we reached the clients limit (500, if I'm not wrong).

I would rate the technical support a six out of 10. The ticket takes too long to be forwarded to the superior levels of support.

Since I have been working in my company, we have been using this software.

The setup was simple, i.e., both the setup and the administration are simple. That's one of the advantages (maybe the only one) of the HPE Data Protector.

Before, we did not look at other solutions, but now we are analyzing other solutions, e.g., probably Veeam, Commvault and Veritas.

The HPE Data Protector may not be enough to support your RPO/RTO needs, specifically for application integrated backups. Possibly, some complementary solutions will also be needed.

It provides us with reliable backups and restores.

The reliability of HP Data Protector is the most valuable feature for us.

The graphical interface needs to be improved.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

Customer Service:

It's great.

Technical Support:

It's great.

We used Arcserve 2000, and switched because Data Protector is more reliable and the licensing options are better.

It was mostly straightforward.

The implementation was done by a technical team from HP who had a great level of expertise.

We also looked at Symantec Backup Exec.

It is fast, reliable, and its licensing policy is great.

SAP R/3 Integration is what I like best because our main production systems are SAP based with Oracle database, the “save-delete archive” feature is of ultimate use. It actually saves the Oracle archive file to the disk and after the save is verified it is deleted form the disk. That way you actually keep an eye on archive space on the physical disk and at the same time you are safe that no archives have been delete from the disk without been checked.

We started using this product back in 2000. At that point we mainly used the SAP R/3 Integration along with some filesystems backups. From that point on, the software started getting integrated with Exchange Server, and lately SAP HANA. The Data Protector software is getting along with the growing needs of our company.

I haven’t found any issues that need to get improved. The main purpose of this software suite (safely backup and restore main systems) is fully achieved. It was already implemented as the company’s first backup and restore solution. As the company evolved and the technology implemented evolved along, it seemed that the software adequately supported our systems.

I've been using them since 2000.

Generally no, but there were some issues that appeared when we first tried to deploy the software to a HANA database environment. However, they happened mainly because of the HANA database Linux environment.

Mainly, I can’t say that I have encountered major stability issues. At some point in time, patches fixed some minor issues.

No issues encountered.

Customer service is excellent with a ticket per call.

Through the fifteen years of support from HP, you realize that many things have changed. But, above all, I have to say that technical support has remained at a constantly high level. Depending on the issue, each time, the support may be local or international. Nevertheless you will get your job done.

This was the first backup and recovery solution.

The initial set-up is very straightforward. Nothing special to be done, as it's got very friendly user interface.

Back in 2000 the software was implemented by HP. I wasn’t present for the implementation, but after that, some upgrades and migrations has happened. Both HP Greece and an in-house software engineer have performed the projects. I have to say that the level of their expertise is more than adequate.

As we have most of our systems integrated to HP Data Protector, and because we have many daily and even hourly backups, I must say that we have a high ROI in our case.

Pricing and licensing clearly depends on the systems that you plan to backup. How many systems do you have to backup (licensing), what kind of support do you prefer for your systems (24/7, 8/5) (pricing).

You have to check the needs of your systems before you decide on your backup solution. Do you have many different platforms? Do you want to integrate the backup solution with a SAN environment? Do you want to use integrations (SAP R/3, Exchange Server, SQL, etc.)

It is really helpful in giving us a great backup and restore environment, and it's especially a great help in doing the granular recovery for VMs, SharePoint, and Exchange servers.

It is very reliable on the server side for providing a trustworthy backend. The installation was simple and provided an easy way to install even on Unix servers. It has excellent features like deduplication.

Reporting on scheduled backups via the advanced scheduling option are non-existent, and this needs to be available.

VM backups needs to be improved. They need to make it similar to the way Veeam and Commvault are doing the virtual backups.

We've had no issues with its stability.

There have been no issues scaling it.

Customer Service:

It's not good and needs to be improved.

Technical Support:

It's not good and needs to be improved.

We were using EMC previously, and switched because this is easier to manage and it's cheaper.

It was easy and there were no major difficulties.

A vendor team came and performed the implementation. I recommend that you get a professional services team come and do it for you.

The ease of use for operators provides a quick response when restores are needed by the business.

The licensing structure provides cost savings to business.

• Customers have been able to utilize multiple data protection schemes to be implemented with a single point of contact.
• Utilizing a single point of control has helped to maximize all current data storage technologies (AIT, LTO, DLT, etc.)
• Allowed for the leveraging of the latest methodologies such as snapshots, dynamic mirrors, hypervisors, deduplication, compression (in-line, hardware and/or software), and encryption (with or without PKI integration).

• Ability to automatically detect and secure new data sources without requiring manual configuration intervention.
• Has an extensive support base for most data formats.
• Natively allows the solution to be a ‘one-stop-shop’ for any enterprise data security requirements.
• Seamlessly integrates database security (i.e., Oracle, Sybase, Microsoft SQL server).
• Utilizes product APIs: Allows for the leveraging of the latest manufacturer product innovations without compromising data security or recoverability.

Data Protector's main single point of weakness is its GUI. While being very easy to use and intuitively constructed to present users with a minimal learning curve, nonetheless:

• It can occasionally be inaccurate in its backup/recovery time estimates
• It can sometimes reflect incorrect data quantities for a specific source stream

There have been some stability issues. As with any product remaining on the cutting edge of security and protection trends, utilizing the newest features comes with its share of caution by the user.

HPE Data Protector product support is always on the lookout for customer issues and provides patches and hot fixes immediately if presented with an undiscovered flaw.

It does have some issues better left behind. I am specifically thinking of Data Protector, Version 8, which went ‘off the rails’ fairly quickly and is best avoided.

Upgrading from Version 7 directly to version 9 is supported and strongly recommended.

We did not have any scalability issues. One of the shining attributes of Data Protector is its scalability.

Data Protector can easily coordinate and maintain any user's storage deployment, regardless of the complexity. This includes:

• Backing up a single server with a hand loaded DDS tape
• Entire multi-petabyte data centers with remote site coverage
• On-site/off-site storage duplication

Customer Service:

HPE support (Tier 1) can be a bit frustrating (as with virtually all vendors) with their reliance on keywords gleamed from user support calls.

More often than not, they can point a user quickly to patches or support documentation to alleviate the issue at hand.

Backline support provides individual customer assistance with an amazing level of familiarity with any given user need.

This often leads to developing enduring lines of communications with the best and brightest developers anywhere.

Technical Support:

I would rate technical support as follows:

• Tier 1: 6.5/10
• Tier 2: 8/10
• Tier 3: 9.5/10

We previously used Backup Express and Alexandria. They were both file products. One lacked the breadth and depth of source compatibility, and the other had almost insurmountable configuration implementation issues.

The installation was very straightforward. You simply:

1. Point to a source to be secured
2. Define a pool of media
3. Define a backup device
4. Create a schedule

Poof! You’re in business.

Vendor interaction for basic to moderately complex deployments is usually not needed. For complex multi-site, multi-vendor, deployments, HPE provides a wealth of assistance to attack and resolve even the most convoluted enterprise environments.

For the most extreme, complex environments (FIPS, Tempest, DoD, etc.), HPE consulting provides excellent support from the initial design to complete overhaul/upgrade.

This is not a simple answer. ROI is almost immediate for basic, single data center deployments.

However, for complex multi-site, multi-vendor, encrypted, de-duplicated, WAN tuned deployments, ROI can be an ongoing challenge. Retention requirements can change quicker than IT budgets can be formulated.

Pricing/licensing is Data Protector's single best offering. In its most basic environment, the only license required is for whatever target device is required.

If time and quantities permit the use of a single tape device, then there is no license cost above and beyond the initial base product purchase. (This includes a single tape drive license).

As your data environment grows, you can add as many sources as you like with no additional costs.

It is only when expanding the number of backup devices (tape drives/arrays, disk targets, etc.) that additional licenses are needed.

I personally have deployed this product at many customer sites and I only needed the basic, out-of-the-box license to protect an entire data center.

Other products (i.e., Backup Express, Alexandria) were pre-existing solutions which had become inadequate for the task at hand and required replacement.

I cannot recommend a better solution for enterprise-wide data security and retention.

It is more user-friendly. It integrates into a virtualized environment very easily.

The major issue we are facing in this product is Sybase database integration. We had resolved this somehow with the help of HPE by making changes in some Perl file.

However, it was not included in the next patch release. In the next upgrade to Version 9.0, it was not included either.

Every update or upgrade removes the changes in all the program files and the integration is stopped.

Old bugs or old issues should be implemented in the new releases if they are discussed with the technical team.

I have been using this solution for approximately three years, starting with HPE Data Protector, Version 8.0, and upgrading to Version 9.0.

We have not had stability issues.

We have not had scalability issues.

Using technical support was a good experience. However, they were asking for more information before providing any support.

I was using a different solution previously and switched because I went to a new company and a new environment.

Product, support, and implementation costs matter.

Definitely use it.

• Ability to manage
• Ability to integrate with various products such as VMware, MS SQL, MS Exchange, and MS SharePoint
• Ability to automatically verify backups

It allows us to have confidence in our backups and our ability to restore them.

Data Protector is a very mature product that allows custom backups, scheduling, and copying in a manner that reduces the amount of time spent with backups from an administrative point of view.

I am not happy with the support structure within HPE when things go wrong.

It takes longer than competing products to get updates to cover a new OS version or product version (i.e., a new version of SQL). This is necessary so that backups within those environments work properly.

The update to Data Protector to cover Windows Server 2012 for backing up the file system took months longer than many of Data Protector’s peers.

I have administered Data Protector for almost 14 years.

I did not encounter any deployment issues.

We had no stability issues since version 9.05 came out. There were some issues with versions 9.0 to 9.02 that caused a month’s long engagement with HPE support to get a patch to fix it.

We did not have any scalability issues.

Each cell manager can handle hundreds of clients and dozens of backup jobs. If you need more, then you can add another cell manager and create a "manager of managers" setup to allow for clients to easily be moved from one manager to another. It’s hard to get the appropriate scale on the disk or tape backup system.

When a complicated fault occurs, it can take a long time to get a resolution. I have had a few cases that wind up with the programmers and it can take months to resolve in those cases.

While fixes that come from such cases have resolved the problem every time, it is maddeningly frustrating to have such long waits.

In one instance, we had to keep calling support to get updates because they would not provide them otherwise.

Once you get beyond Level 1 and wait a long time for a hotfix or patch from Level 3 or beyond, I would give them a rating of 8/10.

Considering the long waits for fixes, if it’s more than an existing patch can handle, and the near worthlessness of Level 1, I would give technical support a rating of 4/10.

We have used this product for the last 13 years. I do periodically review other solutions. Many have great features, but are too limited in scope for a shop that does not have a dedicated backup administrator.

Having to administer a different solution for each backup type would take too many resources for that kind of company.

Solutions like VEEAM are hard to justify.

Veritas NetBackup, while sporting much of the same feature set as Data Protector, does not have any compelling feature for my company to switch to it.

The initial setup was pretty simple for anyone technically minded.

We took these steps:

1. Built a server to host the Cell Manager (Windows, Linux, or Unix)
2. Installed the cell manager (Windows executable or Linux/Unix package)
3. Entered the needed information
4. Installed the needed components to the clients.

It only really gets complex when you start using integrations such as Zero Downtime backups or VMware.

Data Protector can get expensive. Each integration component is a license, mostly per client, that you have to buy,

If you are using disks for backups, it is licensed by terabyte.

If you are using tape drives, it is licensed per drive.

Once you are licensed and as long as you are paying support, the licenses can be transferred from version to version.

I have used the same licenses since Data Protector, Version 6, for my current employer. Other than adding licenses for capacity or have more integration, the base set has been the same for nearly 10 years. They are still in use with Data Protector, Version 9.

I didn’t evaluate any other options in my current job.

Read through the manuals and best practice guides. They are well written and will get you up and running smoothly.

The most valuable feature is the Integration with Oracle, MSSQL and Exchange. They are the easiest to work with.

Unlike some other backup solutions, the configuration and restoration of the data is really easy. Just check it and you are done. We don't have to meddle with configuration files or create several of them, as is the case with IBM Spectrum Protect.

The mailbox restore works wonderfully on Data Protector. The RMAN scripts created by the solution save a lot of time for the database department.

The process to restore a database from one server to another got really easy. It improved the amount of requests the backup administration unit could attend to.

They could really improve on the integrity. A lot of times I get the log error or no log message. To get my data, I have to scan the tape. It's not really the best way to go with the product. It should be more robust.

I have used this solution since 2013.

The server is stable. The issues are regarding what was saved. Sometimes you have to read the tape to get what was saved.

The migration to Data Protector 9 was a nightmare. Migrating to another version is really complicated. Adding more servers is easy.

When I tried to migrate the catalog, the history of backups got lost. HPE was working on a fix.

It's important that data history remains in all migrations. Otherwise, the solution cannot be used on environments with long expiration dates, such as in a bank where data must be kept for ten years.

Technical support is not the best. They take a lot of time to solve complex problems, but at least you know they are trying their best.

I used IBM Spectrum Protect for over five years. The company switched because the licensing costs were large.

The installation was really straightforward. Just check the integration and you are done. The only consideration is that you must have a really powerful profile to do all the installations.

Data Protector has one of the most flexible and affordable prices. I suggest the following:

• Always check the expiration timeframe for the data
• Keep the SLA actualized for every unit
• Avoid backing up data without control and for longer period of times than needed

We evaluated Veritas NetBackup, IBM Spectrum Protect, and Microfost.

It's a great product. You must read the logs every day to be sure that everything runs smoothly. It is really easy to backup and restore your data across all servers, something that IBM Spectrum Protect struggles to do.

The granularity of brick-level restore functionality is very valuable. We receive approximately 10 restore requests on a daily basis for your typical file/folder restore, with the odd Exchange mailbox restore request thrown in, just to keep me on my toes.

Backing up to disk (HPE StoreOnce 4900) has been valuable in reducing the man-hours in managing the backups, with the added bonus of backup replication for all jobs to the opposite HPE StoreOnce. Historically, all our backups onsite backed up directly to LT04 tapes. This method brought a lot of its own challenges: tape management, costs, man-hours; not to forget having to ensure all our backups completed within the scheduled backup window throughout the week/weekend was tight.

The reporting capabilities of HPE Data Protector are very limited and is the main area I feel that HPE Data Protector needs to improve on. The standard report options available with the product are adequate for generic reporting.

However, if you’re like me and want to get customised reporting, you then have a problem and you will need to purchase another licensed product: HPE Data Protector Reporter.

I have used HPE Data Protector for six years.

Deployment of our new HPE Data Protector 9 environment went quite smoothly, even with the addition of our HPE StoreOnce appliances, which were new to me and required a lot of planning in regards to scheduling/creation of backup stores, etc. Our HPE consultant was very helpful in assisting me in the execution of the new environment.

Part of this project was a requirement to migrate all the servers and data from the legacy Cell Manager (DP7) across to the new Cell Manager (DP9). This project has been very frustrating, as it has been fraught with technical issues. The main issue was a corrupt IDB (DP7). HPE support had worked on this issue for a long time. They had our entire environment in their labs and to date have not been able to resolve the IDB corruption. Currently, we are working with one of the HPE consultants to manage the export of the data via a custom script. Time will tell how successful this migration will be, but until then, I will just have to continue managing two onsite production DP environments.

I rate them 4/5. I cannot fault their customer service. Luckily, our customer service team is in the same locale as us, which is very helpful. Small things like this make a big difference to the customer service experience.

Technical support gets 4/5. Mainly, the technical support is very good. You kind of have your preferred support guys working on your cases, than some of the other guys. Some of my own company’s users probably say similar about me and our team, but hey, that’s the way it goes!

The implementation team gets 4/5. Implementation was through HPE consultancy.

Over the course of the deployment I had two different consultants. The first consultant got a promotion within HPE and the second consultant was from Italy. I now have a 3rd local Eire based HPE consultant that will be assisting and guiding me on the legacy IDB migration. I look forward to working with him, as his knowledge of the DP is outstanding.

It’s important to get your licensing right as this will drastically Influence the pricing.

Consider the following:

• How much Data is getting backed up on a weekly basis?
• What are your Data retention policies?
• How many different types of Integrations, i.e. Oracle DB’s /SQL /Exchange /SharePoint/VMware, etc., your company has? (These numbers could influence the licensing model you adopt, as the more integrations you have – the capacity licensing model may be the most cost effective.)

Luckily for me, I inherited HPE Data Protector.

I have evaluated other backup products for some of our overseas remote sites and found Veeam Backup and Replication 9 to be the best product to meet our needs.

Implement the B2D technology, i.e. HPE StoreOnce, depending on your company setup. If a DR/FO is a requirement, consider another HPE StoreOnce in the DR/FO site and avail of the HPE StoreOnce replication capabilities.

Invest in HPE consultancy to help plan out the environment.

The most valuable feature is the ability to back up to tape. We can quickly restore files that have been deleted or are missing from the system.

It allows us to be more flexible with how we do our system backups.

We would like to have a direct plugin to VMware.

It could also be simplified, made more usable and manageable.

In the current version, it is very stable. We are currently a couple of versions behind. At this stage, it's very stable.

It's designed for enterprise businesses. We're a small to medium business. It's more than perfect for us.

I haven’t used technical support in the last couple of years.

We have always been using Data Protector.

Because of the version we were on, it was quite complex at the beginning.

I would advise colleagues to try it. If it fits their system, then go for it.

Our most important criteria when selecting a vendor was cost.

Using it on smartphones and laptops is valuable. Now I have seen a new version of the HPE smartphone and it is fantastic. Syncing among devices is very interesting to me.

It takes less time. You need fewer passwords. You need less of everything else. You have everything in one space; you can control everything: your payments, your business, your email, and so on.

It is stable. It is always up.

It is scalable. I think it would be a great idea to show it to my colleagues and have them join us in using it.

I have a special group, IT support. After some training, maybe it will be fully supported for us.

The initial setup was complex in terms of IT, the business, and our technical support. I think it is possible for us.

I would recommend this product to a colleague.

The most important thing to me is that I can trust the vendor. I never feel that I am on my own without support.

The most valuable feature is the integration with the infrastructure layer, for example, to storage systems like 3PAR. That is really valuable because you can use functions in the hardware platform to integrate with the functionalities in the Data Protector.

It provides secure and high availability platforms.

The organizations I work with that use the product are actually managing to get a higher availability figure. They can design their infrastructure to manage it in an easier way, so they need to spend less hours of management.

I would like to see more integrations with virtual environments and more integrations with platforms like SQL Server, Oracle, and SAP.

The stability is excellent, actually. It more or less depends on how often they release new versions, but the stability is extremely good.

The scalability could be a bit better, actually, because that connects to the stability question. You don't enforce new functionalities in a stable product unless you're willing to accept some disturbances or destabilization of the product.

The technical support is very good. They have both local and central skilled technical resources, so it's very valuable.

We needed to move towards a new system because of the complexity in the environment. We were looking for ease of use.

The initial setup was very straightforward.

We also considered Veeam and NetBackup. We chose HPE Data Protector because it is easy to use.

When you evaluate products, take one important aspect, for example, ease of use; and then try to focus on that aspect when you compare it to different vendors.

We use this solution for data deduplication. It also has the media library, so our disk-to-disk backup is also backed up to the tape. If there is data corruption in the disk-to-disk backup, we will have a copy on the tape.

Other solutions do not have this feature. If data corruption happens without this feature, you will be in trouble.

It is easy to recover our backup data using Data Protector.

I would like to have more capacity. This can be done by having more deduplication and compression. If they can compress the data more and more, we will save more space. We won’t need to pay for more and more space, especially in the Oracle databases, where we don’t get much compression.

I would like to see them address this issue, so we can have the Oracle database compressed to the maximum level.

The product is stable. We have had some issues here and there, but we have good people in support who can help us.

This tool is scalable.

In general, technical support is fine.

When it comes to hardware support, HPE will help you in a minimal amount time.

When in comes to software problems, you do not know when they will close your issues. They are unpredictable in terms of when they will get back to you. They are slower with software issues than with hardware issues.

The initial setup was straightforward.

We are evaluating EMC.

In addition to low cost, I am looking for stable systems.

When looking for a vendor, we look at the financial thing. We are looking to reduce costs. From the technical side, most of the competitors have the same technical capabilities. From the technical side, you can get what you are looking for here or there.

The most valuable feature for me is the number of agents available to back up our data.

It provides one solution for all our backup needs.

We could use the ability to do snapshots for mass storage systems.

The stability is very good.

Technical support is very good.

The initial setup was 12 years ago. That’s a long time ago.

I would advise colleagues to have a look at it, and maybe to choose it.

The most important criterion when we select a vendor is the catalog of products, quality of the product, and the price.

When it's installed, the most valuable feature is ease of use. It's a little tricky to install straight out of the box and configure, because of the way the licensing module works. Once you get beyond that, it's very easy to use.

We don't utilize it the way it's supposed to be used. It's kind of like a back stop. For example, if an engineer accidentally deletes something, he raises a ticket and with a request to get his file back. Normally, the backup routines are run, and that's what we use Data Protector for. We just dive into that, pull it back, and say, there are half a dozen backups, and ask which one he wants. He says, "I want the one before I made the changes." We can't just apply a mindset here, or read his mind. They can drill it down to specifics. We can then drill the tool down to specifics. It does that process, and it does it well.

I know I am being picky, but the only thing that really tripped us up is the license model. It’s a wonderful product, but if they could change that model, it would be great.

I would like to get everything for 60 days, so I can turn on all the features that I want. I can get it all set up and then broadcast a message to somebody at HPE or their distributors. We could sort out our licensing then, because we will have time to work out what we want to do, and get it honed up first. Because we're all moving to a service base, it would make sense to do it that way.

To be honest, I don't think Backup Exec comes anywhere close to this tool in terms of stability. When you match it, and you use Backup Exec and Veeam together, you can get kind of close to this tool. However, you still don't get the granularity of the data. This solution is awesome. It is leaps ahead of Backup Exec, leaps ahead.

We haven’t had to scale it, but the way it's set up, it can be scaled. Although my distributor will correct me, I do think it comes down to the licensing. The current license model isn’t complicated, but then it's not straightforward either.

What you have to do, and my distributor will shoot me down for saying this if I get it wrong, but you license the box or your data. Then you license the device you want to put your stuff on. If you want to scale it, you've then got to jump through the hoops to get the right licenses, and then go from there. That's one of the things that we hit first off. Once we got it up and running, it’s easy to use.

What we wanted was disk-to-disk replication. After we got that nailed down, we then wanted to replicate from disk to tape. We were told that we can't do that. We asked why not, and then we were told it doesn't let you do it unless you buy it with a license. That's what hurt, because then we have to go back through the loop of giving the business justifications. This just added to the frustration.

To be honest, I didn't actually talk to anyone. The information that we needed was on the HPE website, so it was good that we didn't need to talk anyone. I dare say we would have had to talk to somebody in a different time zone. My distributor, who shall remain nameless, was actually quite helpful because what he said was, "Right before we start dialing numbers, eight hours back that way, jump on the HPE website, and see if you can find it there." We did find it.

We viewed several things. We initially started off with Backup Exec, and then we had a homegrown thing which didn't work. This tool and Backup Exec will only run when you tell them to. We were frustrated with that because the engineers, being engineers, don't care. They just want their data and they want it now.

You can't do that in a backup environment. You have to plan, schedule, tell it what and when to monitor. We went forward with that. The only thing that even came close to doing what we wanted was Data Protector. So that is what we purchased.

We proved the tool as follows. We took quite a few of the senior management and told them we are going to stage a real-life crisis, without the rest of the staff knowing. We just turned the storage off. Everybody screamed and we asked, "Who needs what? What do you need? When do you need it?” We starting using the Data Protector service and we retrieved what they wanted. It took us two hours, but that two hours proved the point that Data Protector was the tool for us.

The setup was a little complex. You follow the steps, which are very logical and straightforward. However, once you get beyond that, you start to define your backup process and that's when you fall over. If you haven't put a lot of thought in that up front, such as defining that you want to perform disk-to-disk backup and then replicate to tape.

In our justification, we didn't make that clear. When we went to talk to our business distributor, we were then given our disk-to-disk setup. Then we wanted to change to disk to app, so we had to repeat the painful process again.

We kind of matrixed it out, and said, "These do that, this does that." Every time we asked, "What's this Data Protector? What's that Data Protector?" By the time we'd done that little exercise, it became very clear how to proceed.

I suggest getting Data Protector or lose my friendship. All kidding aside, if a colleague asked me for advice, I would say to seriously consider it.

Other tools come close, but what you have to realize, with everything that's happening, going forward, you'd be daft to consider other options, especially if you're on a HPE platform.

If you were running this tool on a Dell site stack, instead of HPE, it might be a different scenario. The HPE site stack can guarantee that there are no “gotchas” in there. If you're running Dell, then you would see that maybe it's not the product for you. Maybe you want something that is Dell equivalent, but I would still suggest giving Data Protector a darn good look. This solution does exactly what it says on the tin. I know that sounds cheesy, but the solution works as advertised.

When looking for a vendor, I look for know-how, support, and ease of use.

One of the most valuable features is its integration with 3PAR and StoreOnce. The integration is more important than the features.

The integration of the tool benefits our organization. The support is unified from one company for all data, storage, and backup processes.

In the next release, I would like to see more integration with VMware and HPE Recovery Manager Center (RMC). We don't have RMC, unfortunately. We are planning on getting it.

I have asked about the Data Protector and its integration with RMC. It is only integrated for managing and doesn’t go much deeper. This tool is also missing some configurations and functionalities that I want.

The tool and its functionalities are stable. You can find more features with other products, but they will be adding more features in the new version.

This tool is scalable.

We were using NetBackup. Although it has more features, we switched to this tool because it has single integration and single support.

I was somewhat involved with the setup. It was in-between straightforward complex. The initial configuration takes time, as does the customization and fine-tuning of the jobs.

We're doing a huge backup for SAP. We do a backup every 10 minutes of very critical data. We don’t do the whole backup, but rather the database log backup. This data is really huge. It took us time to fine-tune it and make it better. HPE assisted us with this process a year and a half ago.

I would suggest finding out what features you need before buying.

We bought it when it was a very simple product with a clear license structure, and it just did what we needed it to do.

The license structure for advanced features, such as backing up to disk or compression, can make the license pretty costly. That’s the main thing because we use it in a very simple way with just a client on servers, and then do backups. That license structure was really simple and cheap; but if you want to do a little bit more, then the structure gets pretty expensive.

We have been using Data Protector for 15 years.

It has really improved over time. In the beginning, it was not a real enterprise solution but it has evolved into an enterprise solution.

It is scalable. It has a nice relationship to the hardware that HPE has.

It depends. It takes some time to get to the real person who knows how to solve the problem. So that's difficult with HPE. You need to pass the first level, a second level, and so on.

We get phone or WebEx sort of support.

We have always used Data Protector in our organization.

Upgrading the solution is straightforward. We do it ourselves without any help.

Every other year, we look at what's new in the market. We take a quick look, and scan to see what’s around to see if we should switch. We look mainly for vendor reliability. The support level should be good. For the past 15 years, we haven’t done much switching because there was no reason for it.

Still, there are other products that fill gaps in the backup market, like Veeam and other ones.

Data Protector is software that we use to make system backups. The feature we use the most is doing daily backups and synchronizing backups from different locations to our central data center for disaster recovery.

With Data Protector, if we lose data, we can recover it. That’s the biggest benefit.

That is really a question for my Data Protector experts, but this is what I think:

• As far as the functionality, I think it has everything that we need right now.
• Some security aspects in Data Protector could be improved. It’s not enough to say that some people will have only a few rights and exclusions.
• The reporting is not good. That's something that HPE can improve.

I think it's working better and better. There was an improvement in the new version this past year. I think that it's very stable now. Under normal circumstances, we don't have any downtime.

Data Protector is software used to make backups of the system. What I expect from the software itself is that it provides us with the ability to do whatever we need to do. So, for example, if you have a new OS version, Data Protector brings up the software, and gets it running, also in the new version.

We have a technical support engineer from HPE if we have any questions. If we have any errors, we need to use our maintenance contract with HPE so they can help us. They deal with it efficiently and in a timely manner.

Five years ago, we had another solution, but I forgot the name. It didn’t perform well. That’s why we switched to Data Protector.

What is good for us when we use a vendor like HPE, they can help us find different solutions in different ways. For example, we have the storage system from HPE, and the server systems, and the backups solutions. So it's a combination of everything together; and we have the central person in contact with HPE if we have any problems or need to escalate something.

It was so many years ago that I cannot say anything about the initial setup; but I do know that when we set up Data Protector in a new location, it works quite simply.

I think that if we were going to start again to look for a new solution, we would read and talk with different people to get their opinions. I think you will also find some new software solutions for backups on the market. It's also good. I'm not sure. If we had the same choice to pick up a software solution again, we would still decide on Data Protector in the future.

People who work with it know it. We cover a lot of solutions with this backup solution.

The benefit is integration with HPE 3PAR storage and with other HPE equipment.

We didn't know exactly where this solution would go a few years ago. It was in a storage department and then later in a software department. There was some kind of confusion about that, but now it is better. I would like to see integration with hypervisors.

It is very stable; no problem with that.

It is quite scalable.

I have used technical support and I would give them an 8/10 rating. It's normally not direct support, but rather via emails and telephone calls.

If others have a similar environment like we do, then I would suggest this solution for them.

When selecting a vendor, I look for local presence and good partner support.

We rely on generating daily reports on our stocks for auditing purposes. Those reports are useful; so I would say they are the most valuable feature.

It is also very good that you can use it either from the command line or from a GUI. It depends on who is using it, what they want to do with it, and on their preferences.

Our data footprint was constantly growing. We couldn't back it up according to the backup schedules we had, so we needed a solution for this.

We have used Data Protector for as long as I have been at the organization. We're a huge HPE house, so all of our technology for backups is HPE. We were hoping to leverage as much of our current HPE technology as possible by keeping all our technology and software within one software house. Over the years, the ratio of capabilities in terms of what we wanted compared to what it was able to give us has changed.

A couple of years ago, I said that the reporting wasn't sufficient. There should be better reporting within Data Protector, rather than making you turn to an additional HPE software application.

I think that no company can get reporting right. Whatever software I use, we are always looking for reports that they just can't provide.

Our data footprint has grown massively, and we're asking a lot more of it than it can do. When I started back in 2012, it was perfectly fine. It was the hardware that was not capable of providing us with what we wanted, not the software. Now it seems that the hardware is providing us with what we want, but the software is not.

If I base my evaluation on the conversation I had recently with my SME for backups, the software is not very stable. Maybe that's because it is integrated with the hardware layer. I would say that it runs, but there are always a lot of errors. The software's stable, but the actual components are not stable for doing what we want.

We have scaled out and, therefore, needed the software to scale with that technology. We have a global backup solution, so it has been scalable in that respect.

Based on a recent conversation, technical support has been working to fix a problem for six months, but still haven’t actually fixed it. With the process that he says he had to go through, they need to look at it, and start getting their third-line engineers working directly with the customer much faster.

The professional services department is excellent in terms of the setup and configuration. We updated the hardware technology to work with the software. I definitely couldn’t fault them in that respect. The issues are with troubleshooting and when you need support.

We are looking at other vendors now. With the announcement that the software layer is leaving HPE, we need to make sure we can protect our assets; so, unfortunately, we will be looking at other backup vendors.

• We had a chat with Veritas because we are already a Veritas customer. We are going to check with them first because we already have that relationship with them.
• We looked at an offshoot called Navigator. We felt this was going to give us everything that we wanted from a reporting point of view. I had to provide reports for our stocks, but I also wanted to provide reports for our CEO on how our data footprint was changing. Navigator was incredibly expensive.

If you’re looking to move from one software to another, you need to understand how well it can be integrated with your legacy information and be backward compatible. If it’s not backward compatible, you must be given a clear strategy or process to follow.

From an auditing point of view, or a needs discovery point of view, the most important thing to look for in a vendor is the capacity to understand your environment; and provide you with the right solution and a process to follow.

Go out to your network and ask people. If you've worked in IT, I always say it is worthwhile reaching out to old colleagues. If you're still in contact with them, ask them what they are doing, why they are using that software, and what the benefits are of using that software. You're going to understand more from someone’s first-hand experience.

A company can come in and say, “We have all these customers that can be references for us; but they just pick really small customers who it has been easy working with. They're not going to tell you about a customer like us who has been currently having lots of difficulty. So I'd say: Use your network and ask them if they can help answer your questions.

The best thing I find with Data Protector as opposed to other products was the inter-compatibility with all different OSs. It's very OS agnostic; doesn't matter whether it be Linux or Windows or AIX or whatever. It just seems to work. That's useful, very useful. The GUI interface is very intuitive as well, I find. It's very easy to use.

The centralization of all the backup data is a valuable asset, and the ability to recover data quickly. It doesn't happen very much these days, to be fair. It's not very often we have to recover. We don't use Data Protector for data recovery. It does have that functionality, but because we're a 95% virtualized company, we use VMware replications for DR. But there is DR functionality within it. It needs work. It's not a simple thing to roll out. Of course now, it offers de-duplication which is big. The backup functionality is very, very good.

One of the things that they need to look at is the scheduler. At the moment, there are two ways to schedule a backup. There's a simple scheduler and an advanced scheduler. You have to do one or the other. Using the advanced scheduler is the only way to prioritize the backups. I'd like to see that merged into just one single scheduler that allows you to prioritize the backups. At the moment, backups come in and they queue with no priorities. For example, if you have four backups queuing, you can't say I want backup one to run before backup two before backup three. If they're in the queue, you can separate them with start times, but if they're all in the queue and all their start times have passed, any of them can start in no particular order. So that's one thing I would like to see.

I haven't looked at the VMware integration yet, but I'm just about to. I understand the VMware integration is quite good. That's obviously an essential thing for us.

We have been using it for about 7 or 8 years. We started at version 6. We're at version 9 now. Version 9 is very stable.

It's very stable. It wasn't in its earlier guises. But now it is.

It is scalable. It's not as scalable as HPE would like to think it is. I think the biggest problem we have with backups now is network utilization. Most backups will throttle your network, because you're shipping a lot of data around. Because of that, I've had to break up the whole service into smaller segments in order to back it up more easily. You've only got 24 hours in a day, ultimately, so you can only backup so much data in that time. That was a problem we were having, where backups were taking more than a day to run. As we scale, the backups are more challenging time-wise. Now, there are ways around that. I'm just about to start a new project on Data Protector to look in at the VMware plugin because we are virtualized. I believe that will help a lot with my network throughput.

The technical support for Data Protector is good actually. I have no problems with that. We log calls, and they get back to us straightaway. I've had a couple of P1s that have moved around the world with the time zones, so it's always been worked on. That's been good.

At various companies that I've worked for, I've used different backup solutions. I've used Veritas NetBackup and Backup Exec. That was a proprietary backup. They're the two main ones that I've used recently.

The most important criteria to me when selecting a certain vendor is not so much the vendor as the product itself.

I've been involved in redesign and all the upgrades, not the initial setup. It's quite straightforward.

I know that Veeam is becoming a market leader in backup software. But, I haven't recommended anybody else but HPE. It just works for us at the moment, so no need to change.

The most important criteria to me when selecting a vendor is not so much the vendor as the product itself.

I would recommend it, absolutely. Just check your network can cope with the product and the backup throughput.

The valuable features are the ability to:

• Backup data
• Write to D2Ds
• Utilize D2D compression technology

We write TBs and TBs of data to backend HPE D2Ds. It then dedupes all the information so we get a 10:1 ratio of deduplication. This means we can store a heck of a lot more data on less storage. It saves us time and money.

The benefit is that we've got data retention and we can store data for people. We are a financial services organization, so we are audited on the level of security of our data. This solution allows us to prove that we are storing it correctly.

I'd like the ability to search backups a lot easier. I'd like the ability to search for a particular server within a backup because people come to you and ask for the backup of a server. They talk about it in those terms. You end up trying to find out where that server is located for a particular job that you might have set up months ago. It would be good to have a search feature where you could ask, "Server X, what backup job is that?" That would be helpful.

It would be good if it worked properly and it actually gave you usable error codes.
A large percentage of the time, you get very vague messages, or it just turns off, and it never tells you why. It's very difficult to decipher what happened and what has gone wrong.

The problem with HPE Data Protector is when it goes wrong, it's very hard to fathom why it went wrong.

It's pretty scalable. Now we're on HPE Data Protector version 9.0, so you only have a single Cell Manager. We roll out globally so there's no issues with that side of it.

We have to raise support tickets and that's an extremely painful thing. It can take five to seven weeks. That's the bad side of it. It is difficult to get decent support and to get to the people who know what they're talking about.

Initially, the technical support is terrible. You raise a call and then you are asked for log after log. What you want is someone who knows what they're doing who can help you right away. When you finally get through to those people a month later, they can normally resolve your issues within an hour. However, getting to them is very difficult.

We were already using it when I came to the company. I was more involved in the decision to upgrade.

I was involved with the setup and it was reasonably straightforward. You install Cell Manager, then you create distribution servers, and then you roll out to a virtual machine. It's a pretty straightforward process.

We're probably going to have to start thinking about alternatives. Our data footprint is growing so rapidly that we're going to need to look at new solutions anyway. We have backup jobs that are over ten TBs for a single server. We need ways in which we can restore that data quickly.

We use 3PAR, so we're going to start looking at deduplication on it. We need snapshotting, and that sort of stuff. We've got to start looking at how we do things and how we can do them differently and faster. It may or not be with HPE.

When it works, it works well. When it doesn't work, it can be very frustrating.
I would look across the whole marketplace and see what's out there.

Originally, the benefit from Data Protector was that it fitted in because we buy HPE storage. So as an ecosystem, it was quite easy and smooth.

Although the ecosystem is good, development of Data Protector isn’t as fast as other products.

Actually, we're moving away from Data Protector due to lack of support on newer operating systems and latest products. For example, it takes time to support new products such as Windows 2016. Since we want to move faster, we're moving towards Tivoli Storage Manager. The reason being our infrastructure partner is IBM.

Improvements should be brought about in regards to the support for VMware. There is limited support for VMware, but it's not as good as other products.

We're running quite old versions. We're now running unsupported versions.

However, when it was relevant for this kind of work, the product was fairly stable.

The technical support was pretty good from HPE; better than usual. They're not bad.

It was more on the development side and that is why we are moving away.

We have not used any other solution and started off with Data Protector. Our company started using Data Protector from day one, as it was a free solution.

It was very much cross-platform. We run H-DOX, Solaris, Windows and Linux and it fit in.

Originally, we did have a vendor shortlist. We were looking at NetBackup, Veritas and similar products. We also looked at IBM and since we use them a lot we decided to go with their solution. That was very easy.

Globally, TSM is a well-known product. It is another old legacy product that has been used for decades.

You need to look at the applications that you're backing up. For integration, it's case by case. The integration piece is the key. As a piece of technology, it's good.

From a data protection standpoint, HPE Data Protector reduced our and our customer’s recovery time. It also gave them an advantage in the industry in that they are able fall back quicker.

Reduced backup times, and it helped with security mitigation from a data protection standpoint.

I don't use it today on a regular basis, but there are always feature improvements that our customers are looking for, such as more integration from an API perspective with different applications and cloud platforms. Also, broader integration to the ecosystem as it relates to the cloud and the application API.

We didn't have too many problems. It was fairly stable.

We contacted technical support a couple of times during upgrades, but I wouldn't say that the issues were anything out of the ordinary or systemic.

The initial setup was fairly straightforward. We did not have any difficulties.

There's always a bake-off process between competing products regarding feature sets, like Symantec. Customers typically go through a list of criteria as they relate to applications, and how they're trying to protect data, such as how it's encrypted at rest and in flight. These are decisions we all have to make. Other issues are whether there was encryption inflate, was it encrypted at rest, how many GO's did I need to protect that data, and what the replication scheme looked like.

With respect to HPE data protection, you need to do the mapping with respect to what you're looking for. From my own personal experience, HPE was a pretty seamless install from an operational perspective.

But, I never want to be involved in data protection again. It's a thankless job, but a necessary evil.

I can rely on this backup and recovery software, if we have a disaster, to recover the data.

The number one benefit of the solution is that our hardware is HP, so it makes sense to keep standardization, as far as backups are concerned and obviously ease of use.
We can rely on it if we have to get into a disaster situation, so it has absolutely improved how my organization functions from that perspective.

I would like to see it incorporate all of the new forms of cloud backup and similar items, absolutely. With the transition from on-prem to obviously cloud solutions, our backups need to be more cloud-ready, so to speak.

It is extremely stable.

With scalability, there are a few limitations. However, the product is pretty fair in terms of scalability.

It's limited to certain platforms. It could cover a wider variety of platforms more easily and not be so cost-intensive.

We have logged calls with technical support. We've had a few challenges, but they've managed to overcome them. Technical support has been good.

I've been involved in a few iterations of upgrades and that seems to have gone quite seamlessly.

We conducted three comparisons and HPE were one of the top. There were better ones, but at a higher price. HP seems to be the most fit for purpose and the most cost effective.

We looked at solutions like Redstone, we looked at a product called Veeam and obviously the third product being Oxove.

Obviously, standardization played a big role in the decision to invest in this solution; the fact that we’ve got an HP house, so obviously, from that perspective; as well as the reliability of the software.

The reason why we chose this category of solution is that we're an enterprise, and Data Protector is an enterprise DLP solution.

When we chose the solution, reliability was absolutely the most important criteria, and we’re absolutely satisfied.

I recommend the product, based on my experiences, obviously; being able to recover when we're required to get some data back; it is extremely reliable; and obviously the scalability and transforming the business as well.

Restarting the failed session, where you don’t need to run a whole selection list backup.

Newer DP versions even have a resume feature, which should allow you to continue from the point of failure, instead of ruining the whole partition in case of a “restart failed objects“ error.

There are lots of bugs around; inability to downgrade version, issues with version upgrades, etc. For example, Data Protector version 8 didn’t have a properly working restore feature; the next upgrade came within week. All kinds of small things required workarounds and support engagement to find some tweak within the config files.

When comparing other backup software, such as BackupExec for example which I have used at the same time as Data Protector. For BackupExec our backup team did raise one vendor case throughout four years, while for Data Protector, we had three to four vendor cases opened every month. That is just in general, as I really do not remember all the details for all those, I dont know, but hundreds of cases opened with HP Data Protector support. What I remember we didn‘t have a single patching/upgrade of Data Protector version without issues, which could only be solved by HP Data Protector vendor support. While for BackupExec it was always smooth and any issues we encountered we were able to solve them on our own.

I have been using it for 4+ years.

I have not encountered any deployment, stability or scalability issues.

Customer service is great.

Technical support is great.

We switched because of company policy, the tapes aged, etc.

Initial setup was straightforward.

I was within the support team, which did implement as well as support the solution.

Huge. Simply eliminating the need for tape changers returned the cost of the hardware within less than half a year.

Get an expert who knows the products, so you can get the best prices possible for both DP and StoreOnce. Because there are some things that can work for the same solution in different ways, hence they are differently licensed as well as priced.

Make sure architecture is planning properly, e.g., centralised or decentralised HPE DP Cell Managers give you some quite different options and etc.

The ability to run multiple jobs to multiple devices and systems is the best part of this system. The limit is the hardware that the software runs on.

In recent years, I would say this product has held us back rather than improving us. However, I would say also that the biggest improvement is its ability to back up the ESXi hosts over the SAN fabric as long as the disks are presented to the backup host.

This product is lagging behind most of its competitors. It is still expensive to add features and the ESXi integration is terrible -- you have to restore a whole VMDK to then get the ability to restore a file. There is no library of ESXi servers and the plug-in fails most of the time.

The integration into core products -- Exchange, SharePoint, and VMware, being some -- is just not as good as other vendors.

We've had no issues deploying it.

The database is vastly improved and it's much more stable. Rarely does it get corrupted like in the older versions.

We haven't had issues scaling it.

HP moved the support and, with it, any faith of any resolution to most tickets. It takes days to get something solved as you battle with the automated emails from the tier ½ support people.

It's expensive to add features.

The product is very stable and will work. However, it has lacked serious funding over the years and other products have overtaken it.

My advice to HPE is to start investing as you are letting this great product slip away.

• Backup to Disk with StoreOnce software catalyst
• Disaster Recovery
• Zero downtime backup

Data Protector helps us to maintain data consistency and recover data with minimum downtime. We can recover the user-specific data when there is data loss, such as a mailbox or file server.

Having dual-cell manager in the environment at primary and secondary sites, data restoration and services can be made up in case the primary site goes down completely.

• Technical Support
• Troubleshooting
• Restore using multi-path
• Restore for Microsoft Exchange
• GRE

I've used it for more than seven years.

I've had no issues with deploying it.

There isn't much instability as the product has been stable with the exception of a few bugs during upgrades.

There have been no issue with scalability until now for mid-level datacenters.

4/10

Technical support is very poor and I would rate it as 1/10. The response from L1 is very slow and there is no handover when the engineer finishes the shift. There's no direct interaction with the L2 or L3, which makes the case take more time. L1 basically behaves as a mediator for transferring the information from the customer to L2 or L3, and they don't perform any troubleshooting.

I haven't migrated a customer with different solution to Data Protector, but I have seen a customer move from Data Protector to Avamar, Veeam, and Commvault, who had better product offerings.

The initial setup is straightforward if you understand the architecture correctly.

We implemented it with out in-house team.

Licensing is categorized for each sub component rather than on the basis of services which is what we would like. For example, there is one license for all GREs, and similarly one license for all zero downtime backup products.

No other options were looked at.

It's easy to learn for new users, not complicated, and has a simple backup and restore procedure. Last but not the least, it's easy to recover in case of disaster. The drawback is that there is some inconsistency and bugs with the level of technical support.

I would recommend the product to others keeping in mind the ease of implementation, maintenance of software, and easy backup and restore steps.

Our primary use is for disaster recovery, but the most frequent use is the restore function when a user accidentally deletes a file or two. Being able to restore the files quickly is extremely important.

We are required to provide an offsite location for our tape rotation, and we use the D2D function regularly. This function allows the backups to run faster and more efficiently.

I think the GUI needs a vast overhaul. DP has looked the same since its inception. The functionality has improved, but the interface is not attractive and a little clumsy.

We've had this solution for over eight years now. I've been the subject matter expert for it for the past five years. I've upgraded the solution from v6 to v10.

The deployment was standard, other than hardening the product for use in our secured environment.

There have been no issues with the stability.

When we need to upgrade or increase scalability, the procedure is quick and painless.

Customer service is good, not great. Usually when we need some level of assistance, hold times are about 20 - 25 minutes on the phone, or about two days via email (in response).

Tech support has been good and they are usually able to assist us once we get in contact with them.

We went with HP for their solution from the beginning. Since most of our hardware is HP, we decided to use them for this solution as well.

The initial setup was extremely straightforward. We have a great team of system engineers and they worked on getting the solution to run within our environment without any real issues. There weren't any real issues in getting the system setup and running.

We had the option of using professional services to do the installation, however, we chose to do it ourselves. Just think about an overall design, what your current and future needs are, and implement for the future.

I'm not sure in dollars our ROI, but the system has definitely paid for itself time and time again. We've used it for basic backups/restores and have successfully utilized it in our disaster recovery plan.

The product works as described in our environment, but we are required to harden the application, which causes some backup failures. Otherwise, the D2D function and backups/restores function fine.

The only advice I'd offer is to plan your backup solution with great detail. Make sure it will fit within your infrastructure and that the system is scalable. Make sure licensing is understood and that there are professional services available to implement the system in case your team needs assistance.

It’s a very user friendly, easy to understand restore platform. The good thing about DP is that there is a Windows GUI version. This saves a lot of time and effort when one is learning on recovering using commands. The report generated by DP is very detailed as well.

It gives a good overview of which tape library and tape drives are connected, and gives you the ability to restore selected portions of the tape and not necessarily the whole tape. You can even control the tape library using this software.

When you unplug a laptop with the GUI version from the network, the restoration status will be terminated and will not update even if you try to connect it back. Which means to say, that I need to leave my laptop on and connected throughout the whole restore process, so that I can keep track of the restore status. There could have been an existing workaround for this, not that I know of one.

I haven't had any issues with deployment.

See the above Areas for Improvement.

I haven't had any issues with scalability.

Overall, when compared with other restore solutions, I can say most of the good features are packed inside a software that has a small footprint.

This is the most difficult difficult question to answer because in order to get certain things done, we need to go to v9 or to a product like Unitrends or Arcserve.

As time goes on, it actually becomes a handicap. It requires too much storage and there are holes where backups should be.

Reporting is definitely an area for improvement, as well as scheduling and the way that pools are created and grouped. Some of these are fixed in v9.

We've used it for approximately eight years. We came from version 6.1 and upgraded to 7.xx.

There were no issues with the deployment.

The integration with MaxDB and MS SQL gave us problems as it is never working the way we expect. As they are certified, we expected it to work flawlessly, but it didn't.

There have been no issues with scaling it.

Once a solution is provided, it works and is OK, but it takes ages to get to that point, mainly due to the fact that we need to supply a lot of data from within a small pipeline, which doesn't always work. I have to admit that now that the new website is up and running, it is better than it was.

No, but we are actively looking for a solution that will put us in the next century. Personally, I believe that v9 combined with dedupe and 3PAR would be a good solution, but it still can't compete with the appliance from Unitrends with backup, storage and deduplication all-in-one.

Reading the manual and following instructions will result in a working version.

Test everything at least twice. Don't listen to others but do the actual tests, even the absurd ones like "suppose I lost my entire backup solution in a fire, let's start from scratch and try to get everything back from tapes and or disks and or remote replica."

I realize that v7 is almost out of support and we are looking to either upgrade or go for a different solution. In my experience with the sales and technical sales from HP, they have no fitting answer for our current solution unless we pay a lot of money for an assessment which will not guarantee anything. So if HP wants to improve their products, then being clearer about their product as a whole it would help. It took me weeks to find out what I could do with HP 3PAR and backups. From my point of view, they need fewer products and more integrated ones, especially backup and storage which are one and the same.

• Low-bandwidth backups
• Deduplicated backup storage with StoreOnce.

Many of my clients have been able to remove tape drives from remote sites.

It has a reputation for bugginess.

I've used it for approximately 20 years, since v2.1.

It's very easy to deploy.

The deduplication stores on Windows are a bit flakey.

There were problems in v7 and earlier, but they have been addressed now.

Customer service is mostly through partner companies, so it depends on which partner you are dealing with.

If you can get to the right support technician, it's good, but it can take a long time to escalate issues high enough in the organisation for them to be addressed.

It's pretty straightforward. It's never more than a few days, even in large environments.

I implement Data Protector for most of my customers myself.

As it is a backup solution, ROI is very hard to measure. How much money did we not lose because we had backups in place?

HP will try to sell you on capacity-based licensing first; make sure that they also quote on "classic" licensing as this can come in much cheaper for large-but-simple environments.

Get an expert to set it up, and it will be good.

I have a multi operating system and multi virtualization platform infrastructure which includes Windows, Linux, HP Unix, VMware, Hyper-V, HP VM, etc. Since HP Data Protector has the capability to do seamless integration with each of the OS's and hypervisors, this makes it a complete solution for my environment. This feature is really valuable for me.

I have been using this product for my customer’s infrastructure. It has helped to keep away backup-related concerns and has provided consistent backup for a long time without intervention and with much less administration. The reporting feature keeps you updated about the backup status. 

I have SUSE XEN virtualization set up in my environment. HP Data Protector does not provide integration with it, and I would like to see it integrate with XEN in a future release. I would also like to see an improvement in its user management. I am still not able to integrate its user authentication with Active Directory even after talking to support from HP.

I have been using HP Data Protector for almost three years.

There have been no issues with the deployment.

There have been no issues with the stability.

There have been no issues with the scalability.

The customer support is quite responsive and often able to handle issues technically. In rare cases, the case will be escalated.

I haven't used any other products on such a large scale.

The initial setup was quite easy.

I was able to deploy it myself when I was a first time user of the product. The documentation of the product is quite impressive.

I found the product really useful and it fulfills almost all of my needs which is ROI for me.

Licensing of the product is component-wise; I found it quite expensive when it comes to online backup.

People should consider the infrastructure size and type before selecting the product. It is quite good for managing a multi-technology infrastructure. 

A few of the most valuable features for us are backup and restore, the SQL databases, and the exchange and VM's on tape libraries and disks.

We can do backups and restores easier and quicker than before.

The Virtual Environment component needs to be improved.

We've used it for 10 years.

There have been no issues with the deployment.

Sometimes a few of Data Protector's services do not start automatically even if they are set to do so.

We've had no issues with the scalability.

Technical support is a 9/10.

We just used NTBackup.

The initial setup was straightforward and quite simple.

It has lower prices than its competitors, especially for advanced backup to disk.

We also looked at Veritas Backup Exec.

If you have a heterogeneous environment, then this is the right product for you.

The most valuable feature for us is the central, single pane of glass that allows us to manage our clients without having to log into their systems. It's a really good feature for us.

It reduced the backup times so that the database admins use the backup door to perform restores. Previously, to perform a database refresh, we'd have to wait hours for the restore to complete. Data Protector has reduced that time down to an hour-and-a-half. That's good.

It integrates with the 3PAR product well and with other major vendors such as EMC and NetApp. We use 3PAR, but we haven't fully integrated it with Data Protector yet. Data Protector itself is pretty complete. I'm on version 9.05, the latest version, and I haven't really encountered any deficiencies.

While technically it's a good product, the technical support is an area that could use a lot of improvement. We've had communication issues with support staff being unable to speak English, though I understand that HP's been working on this.

We haven't had any issues with deployment.

We can have everything up at night so that the database admins can kick off backup jobs automatically, whereas previously the jobs were stuck in the process. The database is backed up every 15 minutes and there are roughly 1,600 backup jobs per day that go through the system. It's quite reliable, more so than other solutions we've used.

We've had no issues scaling it.

Although we're lucky in that we haven't really had to contact technical support, it's quite variable when we've called in. Many of them don't speak English very well, so communication is a definite issue. I know they're trying to improve in this area because they've asked me.

Once you understand how the pieces fit together, it makes sense. When we purchased Data Protector, we also purchased installation assistance. I'd certainly recommend that to get the setup right. Information transfer is very important.

We implemented with a vendor team, which I'd recommend because they'll train you or install it for you themselves.

They have a small charge for client licenses, which is good. It depends on what licensing model you have, whether you have a capacity-based licensing or have to pay for each separate component.

It works best if you've also combined it with StoreOnce. You could use it with Data Domain, too. A lot of customers still have Cape by Verizon, and we wanted to get away from that and go to a digital solution. If you're going through a digital solution, I would recommend you include StoreOnce at the time of purchase. We didn't do that. StoreOnce actually does come with the product, so you can do a software StoreOnce. That works okay. You get better performance if you have a physical device than going through a software StoreOnce.

Obviously, it depends on your budget, too, and that's really the reason why we didn't purchase the physical StoreOnce when we got the Data Protector. It would be better if you can get it all together.

The most valuable feature is the ability to recover individual files. It's a quick process that takes very little time. It also provides the ability to manage other tape backup systems remotely from a centralized server.

It's given us the flexibility to recover individual files, which is important to us because we have a lot of end users who have the tendency to accidentally delete files on the shared drives. We're able to locate which tape the files are on. It's a pretty straightforward process.

We have a disaster recovery site and I'm trying to figure out how to export the internal database from our named site manage to disaster recovery site manager, that took some time. I wrote a script that's working, but it's kind of a cumbersome script to export the internal database and import it in our disaster recovery site. I have that script going everyday. If something happens, we have the latest database with our recovered data at a different site. But this is not a good process, so it would be good to have it streamlined.

I've used it for five months.

We've had no issues deploying it.

It's been pretty stable. I haven't had any instances of crashes.

We've had no issues scaling it.

Technical support is OK. They helped me with exporting our internal database. They responded to me within a reasonable time, but the person with whom I spoke didn't really know how to do or understand what I was doing. I had to figure it out on my own.

Learning the ins and outs of the application itself will take some time to wrap your head around, but once you do it's pretty easy to manage overall. It's a pretty straightforward product.

This is our only backup product and we've used it since the beginning because HP was a partner of our organization.

It seems to me that HP is not focused in their backup and recovery division. They're going to release other products which integrates with Data Protector and which use special licenses for functions that Data Protector already can do. I wish they'd focus on one product that does everything, and that product should be Data Protector.

One particular improvement I'd like to see with Data Protector is the user management. A user in a group is limited to only some rules without rights to do more backup and recovery functions.

We've had no issues deploying it.

Data Protector is absolutely stable for us. We have no issues with instability.

We only have one terminal shelf so we have only one data center, but they are all backed up, so scalability works just fine. We don't really have a large environment to manage.

I think their support is OK, but not very good. The problem is that Data Protector is spread across so many hardware and software combinations that its development can't keep pace with all the changes in heterogeneous environments. So we have issues with IBM DB2 databases. The integration with Data Protector was old and unstable.

The release cycle for Data Protector was way too fast for customers, going from 7 to 8 to 9. When we had issues, they instructed us to upgrade to version 9, and then we had two or three more problems. We could never fix every problems because new ones kept coming up.

It's been better in the last year, however, because version 9 seems to be stable with some patches.

It's a very good product for backup and recovery. You should do the trial for 30 or 60 days and implement it on Linux or Windows, but not UNIX

We purchased it as part of a package with StoreOnce. Its integration with StoreOnce was probably the key selling point for us and made us choose Data Protector and not one of the other products on the market that don't natively support StoreOnce. There's quite a wide range of application integrations, for example, with SQL Server, Exchange, and Hyper-V.

It's allowed us to reliably perform backups without a whole lot of constant attention required. Again, the integrations with SQL Server, Exchange, and Hyper-V are reliable and effective. The integration with SQL Server 2012 is particularly well-executed.

Data Protector is a fairly complicated product and some of the terminology is quite complex. There is a bit of a learning curve for new administrators who are working on it. Some of that could be eased by having a better GUI, which is not very good. There isn't much good reporting built-in to the GUI. For example, to see the status of yesterday's Exchange backup you have to click on and view all of the possible numbered backup sessions from yesterday until you find the one that relates to Exchange.

I've used it for 18 months.

We've had no issues with deployment.

We have become frequent customers of the Data Protector technical support team because Data Protector does fairly regularly break. And it does so, generally, without any involvement on our part. The software is not as stable and reliable as it should be.

Invariably, the response from technical support to that is to install the latest set of patches for Data Protector. It's very frequently patched. Upgrading to the next patch release is quite a big task because you also have to upgrade all of the components running on all of the backup targets at the same time.

We've had no issues with scalability.

While they're fairly knowledgable, they're not very responsive. The turnaround time on critical tickets can be many days. First-level support is not very knowledgable, so virtually everything ends up going up to second-level support, who are, quite obviously, overworked.

Generally, once you're talking to someone, it's a reasonably good experience. But the response times aren't as good as they should be.

Technical support for Data Protector isn't as good as with 3PAR, the Blade platform, and the ProLiant servers. Support for those, 3PAR in particular, is noticeably better.

We previously used Tivoli Storage Manager, which was similar in complexity to Data Protector but less reliable. Tivoli required daily care and attention to keep it running. Data Protector, while imperfect, is significantly more reliable than Tivoli was for us.

I'd say for a typical organization of our size, where you're not able to send someone on multiple training courses and make them the full-time "backup guy", it's probably going to be a project that requires external consultancy. There are very many moving parts. It's a complicated architecture with confusing and not-always-consistent terminology.

Data Protector is a little bit more complicated than it should be. I think most people would probably agree that there's no such thing as good backup software, but Data Protector is certainly not the worst that we've used. It could be more reliable. It could be a little easier to understand. It could have a better user-interface, with better reporting. But in terms of actually, reliably, backing things up, it's superior to the other products that we've used in-house.

There are several valuable features, such as the integrations with SQL, Oracle, Exchange, VMware, as well as the copy-jobs/replication features.

Data Protector has provided us with somewhat reliable backups for our environment, but it otherwise has not really improved our organization's functions.

The Virtual Environment backups still need major improvements. They are working much more smoothly now, but we still get error messages without explanations. More often than not, the jobs fail when other products on the market actually excel at these types of backups.

Granular Recovery and Smart Cache are huge improvements but don’t always work perfectly, and Granular Recovery is really difficult to install and configure. The documentation makes it sound easy, but it never works on the first attempt.

I’ve been working with Data Protector since version 3.5, about 12 years.

There are always issues with deployments and it's never the same issue twice. Most are easy to resolve, but some issues are very frustrating. Again, most revolve around virtual environments.

Since we implemented the new PostgreSQL database, Data Protector's stability has greatly improved.

We've had no issues with scalability since implementing the PostgreSQL database.

The customer service is fine, we are an HP reseller, so we get good service. If anything takes too long to resolve, we usually have internal connections that help us.

Tech support is not very fast at resolving issues and it takes a long time for them to get anywhere. Usually calls opened about Data Protector tae at least 2-3 weeks before they get resolved. I’ve also had calls open for 2 months with no resolution. This needs to improve and at some level, the support persons need more background knowledge on this product. Also, always having to deal with level one support can be frustrating especially when you know the product very well and are certified in it. Sometimes the questions we are asked make it sound like we are children.

I’m a consultant and have used many different backup solutions. Since we are an HP reseller, we tend to favor Data Protector. However, I must say, other solutions in the industry do a much better job in certain areas.

The initial installation is straight forward. The complexity begins when the backup clients are added and backup jobs start to get configured. That’s when all the error messages start appearing.

We are an HP reseller and are certified in this product. We generally do the deployments for our customers.

Pricing is fairly competitive. Licensing can start to become expensive depending on the features required. If many features are required, then usually competitors have a better price.

We usually evaluate other vendor products in backups environment. The top ones are Veeam and Commvault.

Be ready for an exercise in frustration, but once all the problems are resolved, then you’re OK.

The most valuable feature for me is its flexibility. Data Protector has a solution for almost every situation in which we want to backup something.

The best and biggest improvement for us is that we can rely on the backups it provides. It saves us a lot of time which we can use for other things.

The biggest area of improvement for Data Protector would be the proper functioning and ease of configuration of clients behind firewalls and other security mechanisms.

I also think that the license model should be more open and flexible.

I've used it for almost 10 years now.

Overall, deployment was fine except for one major issue that was very annoying -- the proper functioning and ease of configuration of clients behind firewalls and other security mechanisms.

No, we haven't had any stability issues over the years.

We haven't had any issues with scalability. Higher scalability is reached by purchasing more licenses.

We haven't had to deal with customer much. We buy licenses, etc. through an HP partner.

Technical service is quite good. When we had a problem, it was solved in an appropriate time either by HP support or an HP partner.

Most of the backups were executed by scripts. We switched because it was hard to oversee all the different backups on each machine which also made reporting difficult to handle.

The initial setup was rather complex because we had many different systems to include. But in the end, everything went fine.

Our implementation was done by a vendor team or HP partner. They were very skilled and I learned the basics.

I would say that some licenses are quite expensive and it is not a cheap product, but it is worth it. The features, flexibility, and robustness of Data Protector speaks for itself.

We tried other products but we do not share more information about them.

My advice is, make yourself comfortable with the white papers and best practices. If it is a basic installation, try the installation for yourself. If it is more complex, use a HP Partner. And don’t forget the care pack.

Integrations with others systems are the most valuable feature. With a little setup, you can connect and make online backups of entire structures like SAP/Oracle/MS Exchange.

Data Protector allows us to improve our SLA in successful backups and the reporting tools integrated with our management console make possible 99% backup success in our clients.

The product could be better in a "policy assignment". Each job requires you to have your own device selection, and it takes a lot of setup work in a large environment.

I've used it for five years.

No, Data Protector is very easy to deploy itself. The final touches are more complicated because of the specificity of each environment.

The StoreOnce software has a few problems with housekeeping jobs, requiring us to contact support.

The software itself is a very robust solution. The database in new PostgreSQL architecture allows a large cell without problems.

The customer service works well, but we don’t have a lot of specialists/vendors here in Brazil.

We never have problems with technical support.

We have a lot of customers who migrated to Data Protector. The main motive was cost X benefit of the solution. Data Protector is a simple software with a very huge potential to attend to mid-high businesses.

Initial setup was very simple. With GUI or Command Line Interface, it's just a few steps and the software is installed and ready for the setup the jobs.

We always implement in-house. We had a bad experience with a vendor team's lack of expertise.

Licensing of HP Data Protector is one of the best things about this product. We have a lot of flexibility to choose TB or number, Online Extension, etc. Also, one Cell Manager license grants unlimited file system backups, so you can use one or a number of licenses in a small environment. This makes the product very attractive.

Yes, we evaluated BackupExec and ArcServer, which are better in some ways, but lost to Data Protector in a lot of ways.

Stay in focused to make things work simply and use the software feature without fear. Data Protector offers a lot of customization, so know your environment particularities before setup and optimize the functions.

I think that the most valuable feature for us of HP Data Protector is its ability to connect and integrate with all the other systems of our company. It's very important to us that all individual solutions in our IT infrastructure are able to work together.

Because HP Data Protector connects with the other systems in our company, we're able to better use our time and resources to address other concerns instead of dealing with issues of incompatibility.

There are several areas for improvement, including the database, the stability, ease-of-use, and the interface (which is too old).

I've used it for about four years.

Yes, we've had some issues with deployment. Sometimes we've needed to connect to a client and launch the deployment from there.

Yes, we've had issues with stability. Specifically, the database that uses this version of of Data Protector is unstable.

We haven't had any issues with scalability of the solution itself. The only thing that holds it back are the licenses we've had to purchase to run more jobs.

I'd say that customer service is nice.

Technical support is good, but it seems that we're always needing to update versions.

We used a previous solution and we switched to HP Data Protector based on our partner's recommendation.

The initial setup was complex and we needed support from HP to complete it.

A vendor team implemented it for us. They had a nice level of expertise.

I'd say that our ROI is bad.

HP Data Protector is an expensive solution.

We did not evaluate other options.

My advice would be to evaluate it first. My opinion is that HP doesn't improve this product enough.

The ease-of-use and management capabilities are the more valuable features for us.

We are able to utilize entry-level staff to operate our complete BURA. The product highly integrates and leverages the strengths with our other HPE products and our business processes.

The UX dates back to a very historic past. They need to bring it into this decade. Easy to say – difficult to do.

I've used it for 10 years.

We have had some bumps here and there as you would expect from a product in this category.

The product has struggled with some of its more complicated integrations (SQL Server and VMware) from time to time.

The product scales very well and cost-effectively.

The sales resources for Data Protector are quite limited.

The technical support resources are sometime challenging to work with due to language barriers. Latin American resources.

We have used this solution for 10 years now, but our staff has used other solutions in previous roles elsewhere.

One of Data Protector's key benefits is its simplicity. It may be the simplest product of this category to implement and operate.

We did an in-house implementation for the core features. We used HP consultants for implementing the HP Catalyst integration due to the capabilities and therefore the complexity. It has been a tremendous success.

We don’t disclose this information.

It has dead simple licensing and the pricing is appropriate for the features provided.

Our staff has used products during other phases of their careers. They have stated they are pleased with Data Protector.

It's very easy to use. Really, the simplicity of it is something we find very useful. Otherwise, it might not be a solution that's beneficial for us.

Our central system must be powered at all times. Data Protector is always available for powering our central system. It does exactly what we need it to do.

It works with virtual machines, but it's way too complex right now. Also, the licensing structure is not very good.

We've used it for 15 years.

It deploys without any issues.

It's quite stable.

We use the 300 series servers. We've determined that it won't scale any more for us while we researched an alternative backup solution. Have have 90% virtualization now that we're suing VMware and CommVault.

Technical support is quite good.

The initial setup was complex.

It's not an expensive solution.

The database it provides is the most valuable feature for us.

It has helped out our backup services requirement for retentions.

It would be great if the software could help with optimizing the device. Also, the web interface needs improvement.

We have used this product for around six years, I think, possibly more.

No issues as the installer detected it quickly.

The Data Protector software service shuts down randomly sometimes.

7-8/10

7-8/10

We had the previous version, and since our service was growing, we needed an extra. So we got this one.

It was straightforward.

We did it in-house.

The ROI is basically just the fact that it is cheaper than the price for hard drive per gigabyte, and it's easier to store and organize.

We also looked at options from IBM, since they have become a lot cheaper and easier to use.

Check if you actually need a tape library this big.

The most valuable features include Sharepoint item-level restore and integration with the vSphere hypervisor.

It provides us with more assurances that the backup procedure is actually working.

The user interface as the GUI is out-of-date and should be updated in the next release.

I've used it for four or five years.

We had some issues with the Exchange agent, but this was resolved with HP support.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

Tech support varies a bit depending on who takes the call. Generally speaking, it’s at a professional level.

We previously used CA Arcserve.

The product is somewhat complex because of container object permission inheritance. Compared to a “normal” Windows software, it was a bit more complicated.

Implementation was done by a value added reseller (VAR) and their level of expertise was adequate.

In theory, the pricing structure is quite simple: just pick what you need. But the price tag might be a little on the high side.

We also evaluated Symantec Backup Exec.

Get a professional to do the initial configuration and, after that, you can continue on your own.

Cell manager and single drive for Windows/Linux.

It helps us with ISO 9001 statement norms.

The GUI needs to be easier to administrate.

Also, it should have better access to more materials to help understanding the product (like the different between INCR, & INCR1, etc. and how it works).

Around one year.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

It's excellent.

It's excellent, but doesn't have my native language (Portuguese).

No previous solution was used.

It was a little complex for everything, because it's the data-protector concept.

I implemented it myself.

High! For our data there is no price.

It's a very good choice, but requires a specialized professional.

Yes. A free one, Cobian and Symantec Backup Exec.

The integrations with other applications, for example SQL, Oracle, and Exchange is valuable. Also, especially valuable is the granular mailbox backup.

• It's use is intuitive
• Performs quick restores
• Integrates with multiples applications

In this company, I’ve used this product for five years, but I used this product in my last company, at an HP partner where I did a lot of installations. I've used it from v5 to v8.

In new installations I’ve never found any problems, but with the upgrade from v7 to v8, I found some problems with the IDB errors.

There have also been issues with Exchange integration misconfigurations and licenses.

In v7, some W2012 clients fail occasionally.

No issues encountered.

It's perfect.

It's perfect.

No previous solution was used.

The initial set-up is very intuitive.

I’ve implemented the solution as HP partner and as final customer.

No other options evaluated.

There are some issues with W2012 server clients. HP's solution is to update Data Protector version 8 or 9.

I would advise that you to test the product with all the options.

• Integration with a lot of OS and applications, e.g. SAP, Oracle, Exchange, SQL Server, SharePoint, VMware, Unix, Linux etc.
• Very reliable SAP and Oracle integration.
• Licensing is based on a backup library/drive instead of a licensing model based on the involved servers. This library centric model allow you to add some new backup procedures very quickly.
• Intuitive user interface
• Easy and reliable client agents installation
• Backup log files accurate and clear
• A lot of customization is possible through the configuration files and script integration
• Preview for backup and restore
• A powerful CLI interface is also available

• Fantastic SAP backup resilience and reliability
• Offline and on-line consistent backup possibilities
• Oracle log treatments for archive log mode databases
• Affordable restores with preview possibilities

• Reports
• Possibilities to personalize the GUI adding desired columns
• Windows image backup (similar to Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery that allows you to restore an entire Windows system through the network without the need to create DVD or boot devices)

We've used it for 10 years, starting with v5.1.

No, but it depends on the application platform you want to work on.

No. Recently I accidentally destroyed my backup server and the HP technicians restored my backup server in the entirety in a few hours using Data Protector's own backup. We often use Data Protector for disaster recovery tests, and the results were always successful.

No issues encountered.

They're honest and helpful.

Until last year it was very good, but in 2015 we felt a drop in service because some technical resources disappeared.

In the past we used the different manual operating system approach. We also used Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery to backup Windows images and files. Our schema is a specific tool for OS system images (Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery for Windows OS, to do net recovery for HP Unix OS) and Data Protector for the data.

It's a very simple deployment on file systems, Exchange, SQL server, and VMware, and more difficult on SharePoint, SAP and Oracle, and even these difficulties are derived from the Applications architecture itself. It depends on how large is your backup scope; the wider it is, the more time you need to dedicate to the implementation of the product. However, the Initial set-up itself is not complex.

We implemented the initial version of the product through a vendor team. They were experts, and helpful, and we have done some upgrade projects within the team.

We implement the initial version of the product through a vendor team, the team was expert and helpful, we also have some upgrade projects with the team.

The licensing approach is very convenient and useful because if you purchase the license based on physical drives, you can backup everything on them. If a new server application is deployed, you can start backup to it immediately. Other license, possibilities are available, for example if you have some D2D appliance you can acquire licenses based on the per-terabyte approach. The maintenance contract grows every year by 5%.

No, but we know different customers that use more popular backup product like Legato, Tivoli, and Netbackup. Often, they tell us that these products are good but very expensive or complex to use. Often when competitors suppliers visit us for marketing, they always says that Data Protector is not an enterprise backup solution. This is a typical vendor approach and I really think that this is not true because in our experience, Data Protector does its work well, and this is what a customer need.

Trust in Data Protector. It's probable that HP doesn't push it enough in marketing but the product works well.

Backup View by Type

Client View

Restore View

Sessions View

Tape Slots View

For us, disaster recovery is the most valuable feature.

We do not use the product within our own organization’s backup solution.

The Disk Agent feature is pretty basic, for instance, with the included wildcards.

I've used it for more than five years.

Upgrades can lead to issues with the internal database.

Data Protector is pretty stable, but when it does fail, we can quickly reset the internal database.

No issues encountered.

I haven't contacted customer service.

High. The last upgrade caused issues, but due to their support, we didn't need to roll back.

No previous solution was used.

It's straightforward.

We did it in-house.

It wasn't chosen, but mandatory for the specific customer.

Look to other products before buying, if you require complex backup solutions.

ZDB, and instant recovery. Also, it will do both physical and virtual backups with Hyper-V and ESXi.

Using the backup storage snapshot functionality we are able to back up 2T databases and 2T file storage fast.

Hyper-V backups need improvement so they can do GRE.

I've used it for five years.

We have a very complex and unusual environment so it took a while to get things working.

Since we started using v5, stability has improved quite a bit.

This has also improved since earlier versions.

We have very good customer service.

We pay for premier support and it is great, but it's not so good if you just have regular support.

We used Tivoli and it did not work well in our environment. Data Protector was cheaper and would do what we needed to do.

It was complex. We had a consultant in for several weeks to get us working. We needed to get the ZDB type, and virtual backups working. The file system backups were no problem.

We had a vendor team, and the main person is still the most knowledgeable one I know for what we needed.

You get what you pay for so don’t skimp.

We had it included in a large purchase we were making at the time.

If you are just doing straight file system backups, this product is straightforward, but if you use any of the many features I would suggest getting help. The interface could be improved and it doesn’t have some things that other products do, but it would depend on what you need from your backups/restores and what your window is.