Veritas Backup Exec Reviews

We have an on-premise deployment with a master server and five media servers. There is also Tape Libraries included and the maturity of the solution let us backup everything with assurance. 

Veritas is the main backup solution in our company. We have hundreds of virtual machines that we back up. They are VMware, Windows, and physical servers. It makes our backup process so stable and robust. Everybody with every kind of OS and service depend on our backup structure.

The most valuable feature is the SLP, and using it has been very beneficial.

The user interface needs improvement. When comparing the user interface to other backup and replication products, it is greatly lacks in UI. In some cases when I have an error, I need to use the command line. I prefer to have access to the logs of different services through UI and even to the services itself.

About the stability, It has occurred to me sometimes that I have crash on the master server. Sometimes in Device monitor you lose a device but after recovery the state doesn't change and you need to restart the application. But about the Backup processes, it is stable like 99.99. I suggest this solution to those who would like to run backup up solutions.

This is a very scalable solution. If you want to scale outside of our building then it can be done easily. It just requires installation of a new media server that is then joined to the master server. I have not seen another backup solution as scalable as this one.

I have been able to learn how to use this solution on my own, without training. Where I am, in Iran, we do not have an official Veritas branch. Therefore, most of the teachers are self-taught and have not used official technical support.

When I encounter an error, the first thing I do is visit the Veritas forum. Usually, I find a solution to the problem based on the type of error. In fact, the backup forum seems to be full and complete because there is no error that I have not been able to solve.

The installation of this solution was easy. Before the installation begins, you have to know the structure of your company and what scenario fits. For example, we are a company with master media, and we install it on our servers. We have about five full-size media centers and a master server. The installation is straightforward for an IT person.

I and one other person made up the team responsible for implementing this solution.

I have suggested this solution to four of five people. For big companies, with more than fifty people, I recommend this product completely. However, for companies with less than fifty people, I don't suggest it.

For the installation, you need at least two servers and a tape librarian. This is a good enterprise-level solution.

I would rate this solution a nine 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 is responding very well, and its performance is good. It has a lot of options. For backup, you can connect it to a cloud or a physical hard drive.

They also provide an API for integration with different platforms and products. However, we have not integrated it with another product.

Its scalability should be improved.

I have been using this solution for four years.

It is stable.

It is scalable, but its scalability should be improved. Currently, we are using it for 15 computers. When we tried to increase its usage to 17 computers, it was very slow.

I never required technical support from the vendor because they provided a lot of documentation with the product.

I had some difficulties in the first two months. I read most of the information and highlighted a few things, and since then, it is fine. For every update, they provide a lot of documentation.

Before Veritas Backup Exec, we were using a solution provided by a South African company called Vox Group. They used to monitor directly from each office. They had their own interface monitoring for monitoring the devices.

Its installation is very simple. It took around one hour. 

It is also very simple to upgrade. I just need to launch the new version. Upgrade also takes around one hour. There are some files that we need to upload. We also need to install some drivers and check the compatibility. Every version comes with a driver pack that we need to install.

The first installation was done by a vendor. They did a remote installation. Their company is based in Belgium.

For the monitoring of this solution, we have only two people. My colleague and I handle its monitoring.

I would recommend this solution for a company with around 15 computers. When we tried to increase its usage to 17 computers, it was very slow. We plan to keep using this solution for now. Later on, if we find something more scalable, we will switch to that.

I would rate Veritas Backup Exec a six out of ten.

We primarily use Veritas Backup Exec for backup.

Compression is the most valuable feature.

Technical support could be better. In most cases, we must learn and resolve issues on our own. There is no training provided, and their technicians are unaware of the features that are available.

We have been using Veritas Backup Exec for one year.

So far, it has been stable. However, in order to prevent problems, you should use their most recent platform.

In terms of Scalability, we haven't done much with it. I'm not sure how scalable Veritas is because we only have three or four sellers on one site. 

We have multiple sites, and each one is managed by a different Backup Exec.

Technical support needs improvement.

It is difficult to find a technician, or even a knowledgeable person because most of their technicians are not well-versed in their product.

Veritas was already in place.

We installed Veeam for a new client a few months ago.

The installation of Veeam was hectic. It was difficult at first, and the process took longer than we had anticipated.

It required a lot of other applications. It has several dependencies, even at the client.

The initial setup is intermediate. You should at least be familiar with it before you install it. It's not easy.

We completed the installation with the assistance of a consultant.

The price is reasonable for the features it offers.

We are resellers. We offer products for our clients as well as installation.

I would rate Veritas Backup Exec a seven out of ten.

Our primary use is that we are using it for backup mostly with Hyper-V service.  

It allowed us to step up to a better backup routine from the previous product we were using.  

The most valuable features for me are the ease of restoring the data and the backup window.  

I think that the one place the product could improve the most is in user-friendliness. If you compare it with Veritas' NetBackup, for example, that difference is pretty clear. They could take a lesson from their own products.  

Capability-wise the Backup Exec product is very good, but the lack of user-friendliness means people struggle to find and use some of the interesting features that would otherwise benefit from. They will miss utilizing those capabilities.  

Reporting capabilities are not up to the standard of other products. If you compare the reports which we get from NetBackup, those contain a lot of information that we need and do not get with Backup Exec. By comparison, the Backup Exec reports are pretty simple.  

Better reporting capability and a more user-friendly design would greatly improve usability.  

We have been using Veritas for backup for close to five years now.  

We have not seen any glitches in the product's function. It has always been stable and reliable.  

It is easy to scale the solution. There is a limitation to the size or complexity of the environment that it will be optimal for, but it is scalable.  

The technical support is pretty good. We have reached out for Backup Exec and we have gotten the support that we needed.  

We were using Data Protection Manager prior to Backup Exec. We switched to Veritas because we saw by comparison that it was a better product for our situation with more capabilities.  

The setup was simple. I do not really remember exactly how much time it took to set up because it has been quite some time now, but I know that we did not have issues getting it up and running.  

The setup was done by a small team from within our company without the help of a vendor or integrator. The team was mostly made up of engineers within the company. The product has remained in place for about five years.  

It requires maintenance from our side. Usually, it is mostly the admins managing it, so that is about four people in our case.  

The cost of Veritas is really mid-range for this class of product, I would say. Everything is included in one license and there are no additional, hidden costs.  

My advice to anyone considering this product would be to know how many servers have to be covered and the complexity of the environment as well as the capabilities of Backup Exec. Veritas cannot handle a complex environment very well. It is really only designed for a simple environment.  

On a scale from one to ten where one is the worst and ten is the best, I can rate Veritas Backup Exec as somewhere around eight. It has some very good capabilities but limitations with system complexity, user-friendliness, and depth of reporting.  

Our primary use case for Veritas Backup Exec is to take the emails from all the servers and for backing up the files. We require administrative control of that process. 

We use Veritas for incremental backups for all the servers. It is an automated process. Lately, we have taken advantage of the full backup facilities provided by the product.

Veritas Backup Exec has enabled us to save costs.

One nice feature with Backup Exec is mainly that disaster can happen to any server and the disk image can be destroyed very easily. It's also easy to fully email the backup image and restore the server.

A lot of backup solutions are coming out now and a lot of new disaster recovery software is coming. We should see an updated cycle in six months or one year. Veritas Backup Exec should be more user-friendly. The costs should also be much lower and it should be easier to go through the disaster recovery process.

This solution has been working perfectly for us for many years now. I did not encounter any major problems or issues with it during production.

We need some more added value to this software, i.e. better disaster recovery.

The stability of the solution is good. I cannot think of any issues that we've had with stability. 

I would give the scalability an 8/10. We have more than 50 to 60 servers. We were declined to accomplish what the servers needed for images at that scale. 

We can support 50 servers and after that, we use some higher angle or higher position user permissions for backups because of our infrastructure requirements. 

For deployment and maintenance, we only require 4-5 people.

The technical support is very good. They give us very good support. We don't have any problems with support. 

We were also using Symantec Enterprise Vault.

It's easy to set up, setting up it is no problem. The configuration is also very easy. 

The setup time for Backup Exec was about one week. If the structure is very heavy, then it will take around one month to set up. 

We had some help from what our integration company would provide for the setup. Then we go through our own internal configuration settings. 

For Backup Exec usage, the client uses the software with us because we have a license for this product. The license availability we have is for ten years.

Licensing is somewhat expensive. They should decrease the price.

This solution we are using now is only for the data backups. The last data recovery we were on had different features and functionality.

Disaster recovery is only part of our backup solution for our internal operations. Other backup solutions were not as reliable, i.e. the previous solution crashed. After that, I knew that Backup Exec solution was what I was looking for because it has better features for recovery.

For our internal purposes, Veritas Backup Exec is very good, but for disaster recovery, you should go with another product. 

Nowadays, everything is going on the cloud and the backup solutions should also be also fast. A lot of things we are maintaining now require professional disaster recovery services. With Veritas, an internal alert problem is happening for all the windows which should be somewhat decreased. Then it would be better and more user-friendly.

I am giving Veritas Backup Exec an 8 out of 10. The Backup Exec software is very good but should be updated with new features. 

One of the latest improvements is the Azure Cloud connector integration.

One of the valuable features is the instant recovery for VMs. It reduces the RTO (Recovery Time Objective) drastically.

There still a lot of room for improvement in synthetic technologies, especially when targeted to deduplication media.

Backup Exec does not support any technology similar to Netbackup´s Accelerator feature, or even Arcserve Incremental Forever (at least for physical systems or virtualization platforms other than VMWare and Hyper-V). The Synthetic option that we have on Backup Exec does not allow us to target backups to a deduplication media.

Any technology that can synthesize previous succeeded backups will result in a drastic reduction of time to complete backup jobs, giving us subsequent Full Backups for the price (effort) of a incremental.

It is very stable.

This solution was designed for a middle-sized market. It scales properly for a small business.

I would give technical support a rating of a six and a half out of 10.

I have worked with many other vendors. They all have some strong and weak points.

The initial setup was extremely straightforward and it was full of wizards.

Make sure you verify the V-RAY Extension when licensing your virtual environment. Depending on the scenario, it can cost less than half of the price of other methods.

Our customers, who have chosen Backup Exec, normally evaluate Veeam or ArcServe.

Try the cloud connectors. They can become a replacement for long retention tapes in some cases.

The solution was primarily meant to be used for securing data. 

Overall, it's a very good product.

The scalability was good.

The solution was stable and reliable. 

Ultimately, the product did not sell enough to keep the contract live. 

The solution lacked local support, which became an issue for us and our customers. They needed to have more presence on the ground.

The deployment process was very difficult.

The pricing was quite high. We tried to sell it as software as a service, however, clients preferred to have their own product.

We used it up until October of this year, at which point the contract was terminated. However, we had been dealing with it since 2015.

We found the product to be stable. There were no bugs or glitches. It didn't crash or freeze. 

The solution could scale if a company needed to. It wasn't a problem. 

Local support was lacking. It was an issue in our region. Customers would not have been able to get the support they needed. 

In the end, we did not use it as our technical teams were not able to deploy it. 

Ultimately, the clientele rejected the subscription model on offer. They found it to be too expensive. 

We were a distributor, however, we did not sell enough and therefore the contract ended. 

Ultimately, the product had to have more presence on the ground. A good example of that would be Microsoft or, if you want, Kaspersky. They have the representatives here, and the representatives used to go to see the customer. 

They have many QBA with their distributor, and so they helped us promote the solution. It's very difficult to promote the solution. I was alone in the company trying to sell the solution, and I know that there were some representatives on the ground, yet they never spoke with us. Even if you asked them for a quote or something else, they never answered you or they answered very late. With so much time passing, it became more and more difficult for us to sell the solution. There was competition from, for example, Veam, which had people on the ground and able to help customers. We just never got the same level of local support for this product and it never worked out for us.

I'd rate it at an eight out of ten, as it is a good product in general, however, selling it effectively proved to be difficult.