Veritas Backup Exec Reviews

It is for backup and business continuity. You have a technology in there that allows you to start virtual machines on the backup set of data, which is really cool stuff. It also allows you to have an image of your environment. You can drop an image onto a virtual machine and just spin that environment up.

It supports cloud and on-prem deployments. If you have the infrastructure in the cloud, you can deploy it there. If you want an on-prem solution, that also works. The cloud provider is usually Amazon, but it doesn't really matter.

Synthetic backup is valuable. It gives you the possibility to do a synthesized backup, which means that it combines a full backup and incremental backup data and gives it to you in one stream. So, you don't have to restore the full backup and then later go and restore the incremental backup. You can do that in one go. 

It has also got some backup lifecycle policies that allow you to do different things in one backup definition. So, in one backup definition, you are backing up data, copying it to another place, and probably creating an image of the data. You are doing multiple things in one backup configuration, which is very good because it simplifies the way administrators work.

I wish that they have an outlet for the other products from Veritas built into the Backup Exec product. For example, Backup Exec does only server backup. Currently, it is possible to read the backup of one other product, but if they can add more products so that you can just go into the dashboard of these other products by clicking on a button within the Backup Exec product, it would be great.

They should also increase the number of applications that it is backing up currently.

I've been working with this product, in general, for about five years.

It is very stable. I would rate it a ten out of ten in terms of stability.

It is scalable and manageable. Some of the solutions can scale but become complex to manage. This is scalable and easily manageable.

They provide great support. I would rate them a ten out of ten.

Positive

It is very simple and straightforward. It is done in 30 minutes. One engineer is enough for its deployment.

The whole implementation in a small-sized or medium-sized environment takes a maximum of three days. In a large one, it depends on the number of machines and different use cases that you're looking at, but usually, in a week, you are done. In the first two to three days, you would have done quite a lot of the deployment. It is just more about having conversations with the backup admin to understand, for example, how often they want the data backed up and other little things, but in terms of getting the solution to work, it is pretty straightforward.

The ROI is really good, and it is better than most of the other competing products. I would rate it a four out of five in this aspect.

It is affordable, but I hope that the price will come down a lot because of other competitors. It is a good price for the customer, but sometimes, the competition provides a much lower price. 

There are two ways to license it. You can license it per instance or per terabytes of data that we are mocking up. It is enough because it is not so complex. It is good when you're working with customers.

OEM has always been a data company. They've always wanted to protect data. The methodology, the idea, or the concept behind the Backup Exec application is that you can back up and restore your data, and you can go to sleep. There are other newer solutions on the market. Of course, they also do the job, but when it comes to working in a simple manner, Backup Exec does the job well. So, one should not just say that Backup Exec is a product that has been around for a long time, and it is not modern. Backup Exec is very modern, very fresh. You should at least try it out before you make any decisions.

I would rate it a nine out of ten.

We use Veritas Backup Exec mainly to backup virtual machines (about 120), and also Exchange mailboxes (about 1500).

I have found the overall features of the solution very good.

There is the option to backup to the cloud (we don't use it for now).

I have experienced some errors. From time to time the backup of one VM fails.

I have been using Veritas Backup Exec for approximately 15 years.

Overall the stability of the solution is good.

The scalability of the solution is very good.

I am the only one really using the solution in my organization. But I have 2 other colleagues able to do most of the tasks required when I'm away. 

The technical support is good.  It does not take too long to receive an answer. 

Positive

I have previously used another solution, Arcserve.

The installation is very easy.

In house.

The price of Veritas Backup Exec is fair and we pay annually for the license. Compared to other solutions, such as Veeam, it is less expensive.

For a time we were, long ago, we were using both Acserve and Backup Exec (it was physical
servers at the time, some servers were backed up with Arcserve and others
with Backup Exec). We decided to simplify this and kept the best of the two.

I recently was asked to evaluated Veeam. My conclusion was that for our needs Veeam did not bring anything that backup exec was perfectly able to do, and Veeam was significantly more expensive.

Veritas Backup Exec is a good solution. It can take a little time to get used to the GUI, but once you've understood how it works, it's really great to use. You can quickly do what you want to do, or get the information you want. 

I rate Veritas Backup Exec an eight out of ten.

We use the product for data backup purposes.

The product's most valuable feature is scalability.

Veritas Backup Exec's support services could be faster.

We have been using Veritas Backup Exec for eight to nine months.

It is a stable platform.

The product is scalable.

The initial setup is complicated and takes 45 minutes to complete. However, the prerequisites, including environment monitoring, make operating easy.

The product's price is reasonable. However, it could be reduced. We purchase its yearly license.

I rate Veritas Backup Exec a six out of ten.

We use this solution to backup MS SQL databases, backup NAS servers, backup virtual machines, and directly backup clients ( on windows servers).

All data sources are covered by a backup process which is very stable and fast.

A big advantage is that it can backup direct to tape.

It has good stability. Its interface is very good, responsive, and easily restores data. I use it for backup, encryption, and restore operations, and it works.

The possibility to back up and restore directly to/from tape is valuable.

I am using many agents from VM to LMDP. I also use an agent for SQL Server, which has advanced options because it is the Enterprise version.

It is currently missing the dynamic backup feature for virtual machines, which is available in NetWorker. I can create politics in NetWorker to add virtual machines with specific tags, but I cannot do this in Backup Exec, which is a minus for me. Currently, a user has to send a request to the Backup Administrator to add a machine to the backup, but I should be able to create rules to automatically add a new machine to the backup. This kind of functionality is very important in current times, especially when we are using cloud solutions.

I should be able to create more than one stream in a policy and specify how many streams I want to run in parallel in one policy. Currently, I have to manually create more policies to back up more than one virtual machine at the same time.

Their support can also be improved in terms of response time.

I have been using this solution for forty years.

It is a stable product. There are no issues with its stability, but I am facing an issue with QNAP storage. 

I use two types of storage for backup: Data Domain and QNAP. With QNAP, the backup server connects through iSCSI, and sometimes, I had problems with the stability of storage on QNAP through the iSCSI interface. I didn't have any such issue with Data Domain. I am trying to find a solution to this. I have tested the storage from Quantum, which is a good solution. Very soon, I will change from QNAP to duplication storage from Quantum.

They are helpful, but they are not very fast. They respond, but it takes them 24 hours to send the first response, which is not good. I am using their standard support. They might have another better support.

Positive

Its initial setup was complex because I had an old version of Backup Exec, and I could not upgrade directly to version 20. I had to do a new installation and migrate the data. It was nice but complex.

We used an in-house team to implement the solution.

We save six hours.

It has a good price-value ratio. Its price-value ratio is better than Veeam.

It has good replication, and it is better than other products. It is good for backing up not only VMs but also clients. It is also good for SQL Server and NDMP data servers.

I would rate Veritas Backup Exec an eight out of ten.

It's user-friendly, and, except in the case of AIX, it supports a wide variety of platforms. This includes Windows, VMware, Linux, et cetera. It's okay as a product.

The solution is stable.

It is a scalable product.

The solution is easy to set up.

It doesn't support the AIX platform.

I've had a little problem in the tape solution in the Backup Exec. When you use a tape solution, take a backup in the tape, not in the disc, and restore it, there is a little complexity. It's not really user-friendly in that aspect.

I've been using the solution for five years. 

The solution is stable and reliable. There aren't bugs. It's not glitchy. It doesn't crash or freeze. The performance is good. 

You can expand and scale the product. It's not a problem at all. 

We might have five or six people using the solution right now. 

I didn't face any problems just yet. I have not reached out to support. Typically, I can just search the internet and find an answer to my questions. I'd, of course, reach out if I had a huge problem. 

The initial setup is straightforward and simple. It's not a complex implementation by any means. I'd rate it a four out of five in terms of ease of setup. 

I haven't followed any details related to there being an ROI. 

I'm not sure what the exact costs of the product are. 

I'm a customer and end-user.

I've enjoyed the product. It's a user-friendly and widely support platform and is flexible and scalable.

I'd rate the product seven out of ten.

We have never had any problem with storage and backups. It works very well and is a user-friendly solution.

The scalability could be improved even though the solution is targeted to small customers.

I've used this solution for almost eight years.

In terms of stability, the volume to backup is not very big, and we have never had any problems.

With regard to scalability, Veritas Backup Exec is a good solution for very small enterprise clients. If you have big systems, you must move to NetBackup if you stay with Veritas.

We have 10 to 12 people who use this solution.

The technical support is very good. Veritas is one of the best at providing technical support.

There were no problems with implementation.

I think it's sold at the right price. It's not expensive. The license is usually for a year.

We have 200 users working with this solution. Our primary use case of Veritas Backup is to backup, at a fine level, our Windows-based, small SMB level clients.

The product is good in a small environment when looking to backup on a tape.

The console of Veritas Backup Exec is complex when compared to other software. The solution has a lot of tabs, so it is not neat and clean, causing confusion. The console dashboard needs to be simplified to help the customer, together with more training.

We have been using Veritas Backup for 8 years.

Veritas Backup is a reliable solution.

Technical support with Veritas is very good.

Positive

The initial setup of the solution is straightforward and can be completed in one or two days, with all of the backup job configurations and tests restored.

We deploy the solution ourselves. It requires one person. We have one person on this project, however, we have three people that get involved if there are any concerns.

The pricing of Veritas Backup's license is comparable to Veeam.

Veritas Backup Exec is complex compared to HP Data Protector, Veeam Backup & Replication solutions.

The product is good. If the organization is considering Veritas Backup, and they want to do a file-level backup on a tape, in a small environment, then definitely Backup Exec is the perfect solution. If the organization is looking for backup and disaster recovery, replication and the like, Veeam Backup & Replication would be preferred.

I would rate the solution a 9 out of 10.

We deploy Veritas Backup Exec for customers where they have a production site with between 10 terabytes and up to 50 terabytes of data where they then backup the data to their local storage and then replicate it to their site or to the cloud.

I work with partners and end customers, Backup exec is improving yearly and they are introducing new features which enhance things like quick recovery with forever backup, global dedupe, etc.

The one thing for the last 12 months which has been very good for Veritas was the instance-based license. This means that you're able to license per instance, not only per physical server. And also, the incremental backup which they introduced for virtual servers, where it makes it much quicker to restore, it just automatically is able to mount it back to the original backup. This makes it much quicker when you're doing the restore.

The one thing which could be improved, which we have informed Veritas about, is the ability to plug in to the cloud. Meaning, instead of using local storage if we're backing up a small user or end user, we want to be able to make it so they can direct the backups directly to the cloud. It can't be done at the moment. We can only back up to the storage then replicate to the cloud, but we cannot use the cloud as a source of storage.

In terms of features, myself and my team are quite happy with most of the features. The only feature which we need is the plugin to the cloud. That's it. They've been doing a lot of improvements. The other part which they need to look at is the replication feature. In this case, we're talking about replicating between server to server. We do have a lot of competition from Veeam because of that. A lot of people want to have one server in the production side and one server at the other side, and replicate the servers across.

In my current position, I have been using Veritas Backup Exec three years, but I used the product previously when it was still under Symantec for four years.

100%. It's got great stability. In South Africa, it is widely used and it's got very good stability. Just that, as I said, only one improvement they need. Otherwise, the product itself is great.

It is scalable.

For one site you only need one person, max two. The administration or console is very easy to accommodate. One person is able to do that. That's no problem.

I work with technical support a lot whenever there are technical issues. They have been very good. Although they sometimes do battle with something, they eventually get it right. So I will rate them nine out of 10.

The initial setup is very easy.

Normally we take about two hours. It's just that sometime if the environment is old then you have to fix the environment first. But if everything work 100%, two hours, max four hours and then you're done.

For customers, the main point is to make sure that the skill of the solution is readily available in the county. That's the reason why it is an easy product to adopt or to onboard in your environment, especially here in South Africa.

On a scale of one to ten, I'll give Veritas Backup Exec a nine out of 10. It's just one point I'm taking off because of those two small issues. We feel that the competition is using it against Veritas.