Veritas NetBackup Appliance Reviews

We use the solution to back up everything we have, including SQL backup, Oracle, and VMware. It works very well. We like the solution and its price when compared with others. Data Domain and Veeam were fine, presenting the optimal solutions with the best prices. There was a period of many months that we had a lot of performance issues with Veritas NetBack Appliances, but since the upgrading has taken place it has worked very well. We do not encounter issues that are critical and the solution functions smoothly. 

The solution is the best for me, as it combines two solutions for use of our backup environment. Before 2016 we employed two solutions and it is now easier for us to manage our environment. 

The most valuable feature involves VMware Instant Recovery, which allows one to do restoration within seconds. It is very nice. We use it a lot for restoring VM.

The upgrade process of the solution needs to be improved since it is extremely complicated, especially without the benefit of a support person who can guide one through it. This can result in many problems. Occasionally we encounter issues with the backup process which necessitate support from Veritas. Consequently, I would highlight the upgrade process as being in need of improvement. 

We hope to see SQL Instant Recovery in the 9.0 version. It is the same as VMware Instant Recovery but its restoration processes are very fast, with the ability to handle a terabyte of data in a single minute. 

I have been using Veritas NetBackup Appliance since 2015. 

I consider the product to be good and very stable, although there are many things in need of improvement, such as the upgrade process. 

From the research we conducted, scalability seems good, but I cannot properly comment on this point as the size of our environment is very small. 

I feel technical support could be better. When we first started making use of the solution, we had the benefit of local support in Brazil, but today this is only an option in the United States. The support is okay, but it can take a while to receive a definitive answer. One must go through the first layer of support before being escalated, a time-consuming process. Nowadays, I consider the support to be okay, not bad, but it used to be better. 

Prior to our use of Veritas NetBackup Appliance, in 2016, we utilized Avamar. Though Avamar was a good solution and worked well, we encountered many instances of interruption in data transmission. It was, initially, a good tool, with a good appliance workflow. However, the Avamar that has been made available within the past five years does not provide a good window to sync data with Veritas NetBackup Appliance. This process is time consuming, which necessitated our use of two applications for managing our backup environment. Once we switched from Avamar to Veritas Netbackup Appliance there was no more need for two applications and these were replaced with a single one for the entire management of our backup environment. 

The initial setup is okay. It is not very difficult. While the planning stage requires the use of much Veritas material, it's easy. This is because we are talking about an appliance which has everything predefined or preconfigured.

The deployment took a long time. I believe that the process lasted a month-and-a-half. This is because it required us to do many validations, as we were replacing our solution.

The department we engaged to assist us with the installation and appliance configurations of the solution was very helpful and we did not encounter any problems. The implementation was extremely nice. I should point out that when we bought the Appliance we didn't use NetBackup and everything was new to us. This said, we had to do much configuration and planning, as we were buying not only the appliance but the solution as well.

I cannot say whether our licensing costs are on a monthly or annual basis, as we have a global contract.

As the solution is towards the end of its life, we are looking to replace it with a new or different one. While we are considering the Data Domain by Dell EMC, we are also looking at an Appliance solution. This is because the Data Domain will still require the use of NetBackup, but will serve the purpose of acting as a storage destination. We will only use NetBackup as it relates to the Data Domain. I know much about the application and we are looking to book solutions here. We would be able to take all of our knowledge of Appliance, but to use NetBackup software for third party storage.  

Prior to going with Veritas NetBackup Appliance in 2016, we evaluated two other solutions, one of which was Data Domain. However, at the time, we decided to go with Veritas NetBackup Appliance because it offered better pricing than the other vendors, with Data Domain serving as an illustrative example. 

We have a total of three people working on the Veritas NetBackup Appliance environment, two for the short and one for the long retention.

The size of the backup is very important. If this is not accounted for in the beginning of the appliance stage, many problems can arise. This was the case in our use of Dell EMC and Avamar and with all other backup solutions. With Appliance we encountered site problems, Appliance did not work well with HashBackup and there were many backups which used batch files, something that led to compression and deduplication of the data. This required us to replace or dump files so that we could use an agent for providing a direct connection to the database server software. 

Once we changed the size of the backup, the problem was solved. The issue addressed is present not only with Veritas NetBackup Appliance, but with any solution that possesses deduplication architecture. 

I rate Veritas NetBackup Appliance as an eight out of ten. 

The deduplication that is on this solution is its most valuable aspect. It's very robust. 

Overall, how the operating system is tuned is perfect.

The hardware on offer has no parallel. I would say that it has been more than eight years now, and in all that time, I haven't had a single hard disk failure or even hardware failure on this appliance. It's in excellent condition and works perfectly.

I can confidently say that I have managed more than 30 or 50 appliances over different time periods, and yet I never had a single hardware failure.

It is a very robust and very good product from the appliance point of view, as well as the software point of view, however, you need to have a certain level of skills in order to operate it properly. You need to be experienced at a certain level to easily manage everything. In that sense, it's not straightforward.

It's very difficult, for example, if you need to analyze the logs. If you don't know what you're doing, if you're not very experienced, you will find it very difficult to do things yourself. It's an enterprise-level solution, after all, and it has a lot of things to do. That might be the reason why it is like this. It's not for entry-level people.

In terms of implementing the solution, it's quite technical. You need to be knowledgable in order to pull off a successful deployment.

We've been using the solution since about 2011. It's been almost a decade.

I would say that it is very stable. Obviously, I had faced a lot of issues. I can't say that it is an issueless solution, however, it is very stable. You can rely on it.

Basically, I never go with the latest version. I tend to go with N minus one - one version below. That way, if there are any issues with the latest version, I'll just give time. I wait at least six months for the vendor to sort everything out before I implement it into our production environment. At that point, I would say that it is very stable. Most of the time, the issue might not be on the solution or on the appliance side. It might be on the client-side. 

In terms of scalability, you can scale it up. You just need to buy the hardware. That's the only constraint. You need to buy an appliance and just add it. Basically, as long as you have the appliance or hardware, it's very easy to scale out.

I've had vast experience with technical support.

Most of the time, I'm pretty happy with their support. I would say that there were a few instances where I was not satisfied with the support that I received, however, overall, I would say that at least 70 to 80% of the time I am quite happy with the support.

I've worked with many different solutions. A lot of them are at the top of the industry. However, I prefer NetBackup above the others.

If you know what you're doing, it's a very easy initial setup. First-timers always find it difficult. That said, if you're using a GUI, it's very straightforward. You can just photo screen. However, if you're an experienced user, you'ld probably prefer to do it on the command line, for which you need to know what you're doing. 

We're not using the latest version of the solution. We're using N minus one.

As an enterprise-level solution, you may need a bigger team to manage it, depending on your organization's size. We need a big team. Basically, it depends on the size of the solution. In the past 10 years, I've worked in different companies. At one time, we had around 10 appliances, and we had multiple people managing everything. 

One guy alone will not be able to manage it, though it depends on the sizing. Basically, if you know there is a good guy who knows the in and out of an appliance, if it is one appliance and depending on how many machines we are backing up, he might be okay. There are lot of factors that have to be considered when building a team that can handle it.

My advice to other would be, if your environment is big enough, to be aware that your biggest major expense is the on-premise solution. Even though we have top cloud solutions, if you're on-premise, if the infrastructure is on-premise and it's a large enough infrastructure, and if you have a good team to manage, the best, the most dependable solution would be NetBackup. That's considering all the other big players. I'm talking about the enterprise level, where we need to manage more than 200, 300 machines, or 300 VMs, or 300 servers, and then you need to protect these machines.

Based on the options that we have, and based on the enterprise solutions that are in the market, there are maybe five to 10 big players. Out of that, I would say that NetBackup would rank either first or second. I have personal experience with some of the other products too, or I have reviewed most of them basically.

Based on my experience, even though I had multiple choices or options to move out of NetBackup, after reviewing everything, I went back to NetBackup or I decided, okay, fine, I'll renew NetBackup. 

Overall, I'd rate the solution at seven out of ten. There are lots of things that can be done from the administrative point of view that, if accomplished, would rank them higher.

With the NetBackup solution, we have a Flex Appliance in the central data center, which we use to backup remote sites. We will first do a local copy to a virtual appliance, and then to do a copy of the one network to the central appliances.

The most valuable technical feature for us is the deduplication ratio. This is a very important aspect in order to have a remote site backup. The advantage of the solution is that they provide agents for all types of databases and applications that are included in the solution.

The initial setup wasn't overly complex.

Technical support has been helpful over the years.

The initial setup gets easier the more you do it.

If you compare the solution to, for example, Dell Data Domain, it looks that the deduplication ratio is even higher than what we have on NetBackup. If they want to improve, then they should look at the deduplication ratio in future versions.

The configuration can sometimes be tricky during implementation.

If the features could be complete in that they can work on all systems, all operating systems, that would be ideal. We have a lot of diversity and integrations to the cloud. This means, for example, if your Flex Appliances are not sufficient, you, for example, can offload to Azure Cloud. I know in some devices it's already possible. However, it's not universally the case. 

Today, if we have to implement it as software, if we are talking about virtual appliances, we need to implement it as software. However, it could also be developed as a package, so that you just have to mount it and to have the service. That would also be an advantage.

We are a big company, and we have been using this solution already for multiple years. It's my understanding that we've used it for maybe five to six years.

The appliances that we are using with NetBackup are on our virtual private cloud. For a lot of other customers, they are using it as well for the remote site backup. Of course, we have plans to sell it more to customers and to also increase our usage amount - including the number of devices, the amount of software, and so on, that is needed. 

The technical support is not bad. We have a partner contact channel, where we can log cases and communicate with them. We're quite satisfied with the level of support we get and the amount of access we have.

We've also used HPE.

The initial setup wasn't complex. It was pretty straightforward. 

First of all, we have done it already a couple of times. That helps. You get used to it. Also, in one of our latest projects, we received assistance as well, from Veritas NetBackup. They were on hand to configure it correctly.

We have had Veritas help us with implementations. They assist in the configuration aspect of the process.

However, for the most part, we are a consultancy and service company ourselves, and therefore we have the needed resources in-house to handle most implementations ourselves.

We have a contract, a global contract, and we are providing services using that contract to different customers. However, I cannot say how much that costs us on a monthly or yearly basis.

We are an integrator and consultant.

While we tend to start by using the latest version of the solution, we may use various versions. I'm not sure which versions we are using right now.

We have a combination of different deployment types. 

My advice to others is that you should have a solution that can cover a lot of things. Especially if you look for the deduplication functionality. It's very important that you check that it's valid for complete virtual environments or VMware environments or Hyper-V environments. You can use it as a complete solution, meaning that you can have the full chain where you want to have deduplicated data streams and data storage locations. Users need to make sure that it is fitting on everything. Whatever a company chooses, they need to make sure before they start they aren't missing anything that they absolutely need.

With Veritas, you have the deduplication software and you have the Flex Appliances, and so on. I have learned also that there is some interesting functionality in the physical appliance as well, and that's not always known by teams of people. It could be useful as a DR solution, for example.

Overall, I would rate the solution at a seven out of ten. It does fill the requirements. The basic things are there. However, I have learned that other solutions have a higher deduplication ratio. If Veritas NetBackup would also come with a better deduplication ratio in the future I would rank it higher. 

NetBackup helps system administrators and solution architects to easily replicate and back up data from one site to another site. It is very flexible and suitable for mix environments. it has many advanced features which are needed for my customer's data centers. Most of our clients are looking for stable and sustainable solutions for protecting their data.

Most of our customers are using this software. We help to implement this solution for our customers. Most often, I use this solution in private-cloud and on-premises environments.

We can create a unified solution for our customers, in many data centers.

For example, one of my customers has some important data that needs backing up, and we had to use several solutions at the same time. These included Veeam and some backup scripts for their Linux environment. This solution has allowed them to unify their backup solution. The others were removed, leaving them with a single solution that was well suited to their requirements.

Another one of my customers had experienced a virus a few years ago, and most of their services were affected. Most of their data had been encrypted by the virus, and they were unable to decrypt it. This solution helped that company to restore their data in less than one week, and they were thereafter able to continue providing their services. It was an amazing event at the time.

This solution is flexible, powerful, and fast. It is very capable of scaling and very good for heterogeneous environments.

The day-to-day operations including imaging, backup, and restore, are very easy to do.

This solution includes many good features such as:

NetBackup Accelerator
NetBackup Replication Director
Synthetic Backups
Multi-streamed Backup
OpenStorage (OST) support
Bare-metal restore, supports P2V as an option
Automatic robotic/tape drive configuration
Broad tape device support

And also replication, compression, and integration with VMware. Many of the features it has are not available in other solutions.

This solution is very expensive, which is a problem for many companies. Some of them rule out this product because of the price.

I would like to see support for databases such as MySQL and MongoDB. This solution would benefit from integration with new operating systems. 

I have been working with this solution for more than twelve years.

This solution is really stable. It worked very well in the case of my customer who was attacked by the virus, and it is not dependent on other solutions.

This solution is designed in 3 layers Master Server, Media Server, Clients. This flexible architecture helps customers protecting their data across multiple data centers with maximum flexibility replication data across two sites also integration with the other storage such as EMC Data Domain and NetApp is very helpful for replication management, deduplication, and staging backup data.

Due to sanctions, my customers are often unable to use support from the original companies.

I have not had any experience with their technical support, although two of my colleagues have worked in Australia and have experience with their team. The level of support varies depending on the contract.

From what I understand, customers were satisfied with the support.

When it comes to the initial setup, this solution is not as easy as others when you are implementing it for the first time. You need to have experience with solutions such as Oracle, Linux, Exchange Server and the Malware Agent, otherwise, you will not be able to implement this solution at all.

This solution is easier to implement and configure than the software versions of NetBackup. You need to connect the channels, and then install the agents on your operating systems.

My customers generally implement this solution using in-house consultants.

I have implemented this solution, and it took me less than five days.

This solution is more expensive than HPE Data Protector and EMC NetWorker.

It costs more to license support for this solution, compared to others.

We routinely evaluate solutions in this area. One of them is EMC NetWorker, which is a good solution. IBM TSM and Veeam are also good solutions. However, none of these compare to Veritas in large projects.

This is a very good solution for Enterprise-level companies. One of my larger customers has been using this solution for more than five years. Because they didn't have experience with NetBackup, they preferred this appliance version. They have it deployed in their private data center.

While this is one of the best solutions in this space, the price is expensive compared to other solutions.

I would rate this solution a ten out of ten.

We do not have a dedicated NetBackup Appliance.  Instead, we deploy through VMware.

We are actually in the process of migrating everything to the cloud and we are trying to bring our on-premises exposure down to zero. We have yet to see where we will end up with that effort.  

Our primary use of NetBackup is for backups. But there are all different types of data that are less critical in the backup requirements in any organization. We use Vertias for on-premises data backup. Gradually, we will have more need for cloud data backup.  

We are looking into appliances for running things on the Docker Container. If we do not have a large number of servers and MSDP (Multicast Source Discovery Protocol), basically we can use service tools or fixed appliances that will allow offloading or streamlining our backup solutions.  

Most organizations are going to the cloud. The on-premises backup solution is not very interesting anymore.  

In our legacy system, Veritas was the number one product for us in many ways to fill our backup requirements. If you have got something like IBM mainframes, for example, then you want to definitely use a Veritas type solution. It has been our go-to product for on-premises backup.  

If you have got a NetBackup Appliance, then you have many options. For example, you can do LTR (Long Term Retention) busted out to the cloud. If you have got longtime retentions then you can do that as an option.  

When you use appliances then you need to make the investment. They do not give it to you cheaply. So, this investment is an RTO (Recovery Time Objective). People who would like not to have this as their objective prefer to go for more of an on-demand solution, like the cloud. Most of the organizations I see are going to the cloud and they escape the physical architecture to minimize investment in their local data center as much as possible.  

So we, in turn, are currently using the VMware on an appliance, but we are planning to go through the process of decommissioning as much hardware as possible for our solutions. We would like to do that as quickly as possible.  

We have got sufficient backup windows to complete proper backup points. That is not a critical issue for us.  

Scalability is about having the data volume metrics and backup windows available to complete the process. So you need to have sufficient backup windows compared to your volume metrics. Other scalability issues may come into play when you want to just recover with a given RTO (Recovery Time Objective). But it is very uncommon in reality that you will recover from the backup. In the last three years, there was not a single case of recovery from backup. The backup and recovery end up being more for legal obligations than for reality.  

We did our own VMware-based deployment.  

On a scale from one to ten where one is the worst and ten is the best, I would rate Veritas NetBackup Appliance well. Going from our experience and the popular reports, it is one of the top three backup solutions. But the higher ranking is also based on being an appliance and that is not a growing part of the market.  

The product itself, I think, would be nine-out-of-ten. But the future market for the product will dwindle.  

We primarily use the solution for backup and for testing in the system.

I'm not extremely technical, so I'm not sure if I could discuss the benefits of certain features in great detail.

The solution overall has all the features we need.

The pricing is pretty good. We don't find it to be too expensive for us.

The solution is pretty easy to use. Users can easily learn as they go. There are other solutions on the market which are much more difficult. Some, like IBM, need specialists to handle them. That's not the case with NetBackup.

The solution has a very easy-to-navigate user interface.

There aren't any real outstanding features. Right now, the solution works well for us, and I don't think there's much missing per se.

It would be a better solution if we were able to make more reports in regards to the backup system.

I've been working with the solution for three years.

The stability of the solution is quite good. Any problems or issues are resolved quickly and they don't affect the overall reliability of the product.

The scalability of the solution is good, from what I understand. I've never tried to scale myself, however, I know individuals who have and they have told me it's quite easy to do. If an organization needs to scale, they should be able to do so using this solution.

Our organization has about 600 employees and has just about 14 terabytes of data within its servers. We use the solution quite extensively.

I've personally dealt with technical support in the past and I can say that I'm satisfied with their service. They are quite responsive. They know what they are talking about. They always help us solve any issues we have.

This is the only backup solution we're currently using. However, we previously used an IBM solution. It was ultimately difficult to use and we needed a specialist to run it, which is why we switched to this solution.

We have a team that handles the setup and management of the solution. I didn't handle the setup myself. I couldn't say, from experience, if it was difficult or not, however, I don't recall the team running into issues or requiring outside assistance.

Our in-house team handled the deployment. We didn't require the assistance of a specialist.

We're just customers. We don't have a business relationship with the solution.

The pricing is okay. It's not too expensive.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

The solution offers good scalability and stability. It's easy to navigate and offers good pricing. For the most part, what we need is right there, however it could use better reporting.

The solution is primarily used for business continuity. We use it for backups.

The backup capabilities are very good.

We find the ability to allow for business continuity to be very helpful. Our systems are not very stable, where we come from here in Kenya. There can be serious problems very often. There are many incidents and businesses can just collapse. The peace of mind of having a backup on hand is critical.

The initial setup is very simple.

The solution is stable. 

The product is quite scalable. 

Technical support is very good.

We find the pricing is reasonable. 

I'm not sure if I have seen any area that needs improvement. I'm not overly technical, and I personally haven't had any real issues. 

The monitoring could be a bit better.

I've used the solution for about a year or so. 

The solution is very stable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable. 

The solution is mature and very scalable. It's not a problem to expand. 

As an established brand, Veritas has a very good technical support team. We are quite pleased with the level of service provided. They are helpful and supportive. The staff is knowledgeable. 

It's my understanding that the initial setup is straightforward. I have not seen anything about the solution that would make the process overly complex.

The pricing is fair. It's not overly expensive. 

At the moment, I don't have any relationship with the company, however, I would like to be a reseller and implementer.

I mainly handle consultancy on business continuity. I look at products to propose to my customers on business continuity, storage, and backups.

I'd rate the solution at a seven out of ten.

We have a library attached that we back up and store off-site, on a weekly basis. 

It only offers NDMP backup capabilities, we follow a traditional method. Mostly, we are creating backups of NetApp's shares.

We think the latest products and hybrid solutions are great, but considering the amount of data backup we have to perform — hundreds of BB data —, the hybrid model is not that efficient if we want to off-site data; it takes a lot of time to upload the data on a regular basis. 

The reporting is very good compared to other tools. Even though Commvault has some better features, the Veeam/Veritas center is a very good feature; it's really helpful for our reporting purposes. To clarify, I am referring to Veeam and Veritas NetBackup, as we have applied them both.

Because Veritas NetBackup Appliance is integrated with the cloud, it's hard to say. The block-level backup features could be improved.

I have been using this solution for three years.

This solution is both scalable and stable. Everyone in our company uses it and there are no issues.

The technical support is very good; I would give them a nine out of ten.

They have a standard two-hour response time but sometimes the response times vary. That needs to change.

We have been using Veritas NetBackup Appliance for a long time and never switched. Initially, we were using NetBackup. 

The integration was easy.

Overall, Veritas is a good solution; the problem is the cost. For a large enterprise, it's great.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give this solution a rating of eight.