Veritas NetBackup Appliance Reviews

This solution is for backup and recovery in physical and virtual environments, in data centers or server rooms. We are a solution provider company, and I recommend this product for clients and projects with these needs.

The majority of our deployments are either on-premise or private cloud.

Our clients are able to back up their physical and virtual machines, seated on one of many storage devices from Sun, EMC, HP, IBM, etc.

The most valuable feature of this solution is the backup speed. The traffic made up of backup data is not passed on the slow networks. Rather, it is delivered directly from the network storage solutions.

I offer another feature to my customers, called the Backup Aerial network (BAN). This separates the heavy backup traffic from the service traffic. I use a dedicated data switch or network port to separate the lighter traffic from services such as Exchange, Skype, Active Directory, DNS, etc. 

I would like the ability to recover a single folder within the backup of a virtual machine. As it is now, if I want to retrieve a single folder then I need to first recover the entire VM and then copy that one folder. This takes longer than it should for this operation.

The price of this solution should be lowered by ten or fifteen percent. This would help to compete in an environment where people and companies share licenses, effectively lowering their price. I estimate that our sales would increase by fifty percent if the prices were lowered.

This solution is not as stable as Veeam. When it crashes and you want to cover, it is a complicated procedure.

This is a very scalable solution. We have deployed this product for very big solutions. The Central Administration Console helps to make Veritas more scalable than competitors such as Veeam. 

Installing this solution is very simple and takes perhaps five or ten minutes. It takes a little longer to purchase the license and register the product.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

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. 

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.

Over the past seven years, we have been using this backup solution. However, over the past year, we have begun to integrate Commvault, and have stopped worrying about upgrades for Veritas.

We are using an on-premises deployment and it has been used for our data center. We have various operating systems including Solaris, Windows, and Linux. Our databases include Oracle, MySQL, MongoDB, and Informix. We also have virtualization. This solution is responsible for everything in the data center.

We have good data backup coverage.

This solution has to have better integration with the cloud, as well as with other solutions such as Business Intelligence products.

They need to simplify the backup licensing model, as it is really complex at the moment. We are having problems with them because of the licensing, and this is why we are changing solutions.

It is not easy to manage the environment, and you need the expertise to do it.

The backup catalog is very complex and takes a lot of space compared to other vendors. There is an important need for a better catalog management system.

We have 99.9% completion of the backups.

At one point during our migration, we experienced a loss of all of our backups. It took approximately one week to restore all of them.

This solution is able to scale within an environment without a problem.

We back up more than two thousand servers.

Technical support for this solution is good, as long as you are paying for the high-level support. Otherwise, you will be dealing with somebody responsible for supporting many different products.

We did not use another solution prior to this one. We have used different versions of this solution over the past seven years, and we are now moving everything over to Commvault because they have a simple licensing model.

The initial setup of this solution is not simple. It is complex, and you really need a professional technician to assist. In the end, however, you have a really stable solution.

The deployment took place over time, where we have been improving things over the years.

We have perhaps twenty administrators and operators who manage this solution. It is not used by the end-users.

The price of this solution is very high compared to other solutions.

This is a really good technology, but they are missing some key, important features.

The biggest lesson that I have learned from using this solution is that there is always something that can be improved.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

The intelligent policies feature is used in order to protect the VMware infrastructure. One of the things that makes a big difference for our company is the usage of these intelligent policies. The system automatically provides extra protection for any VMware server application or service. From a backup administrator's point of view, this is what we call peace of mind. It reduces the workload and therefore reduces resources needed from the company.

The backup administrator always tends to be combined with all other administrators and tries to find if there is any new application, service, or server. With intelligent policies, this has been resolved. I create one policy for VMware because it has a very good integration when we pair it up with the API. With this intelligent policy, anything that is changed into the VMware is automatically led back to NetBackup protection and NetBackup covers it.

The other great thing for the company is that this kind of application is fully encrypted so it gives us full compliance for issues. That's the greatest benefit.

One of the best features is the VMware integration with NetBackup.

The cloud-based backup is also an excellent feature. 

The ability to establish many plans for long term retention, especially using some of their appliances is very helpful. We're not using paid backups for long term retention. It's our business procedure. Instead, we use new apps for storage. There is a type of storage they offer in which they give us member shared space and we can establish a parent point of the primary appliances in order to comply with the long term retention.

One of the other features of NetBackup is that it gives you Granular Recovery Technology for three major applications, or services: SQL, SharePoint, and Exchange. That means that you don't have to deploy an agent on Exchange servers or a DAG server. It also supports Office 365, and Cloud-based services. You don't have to deploy agents in a SharePoint environment, a SharePoint file, and you don't have to deploy an agent in SQL because when you create the VMware policy and you activate Granular Recovery Technology, the VMware technology that is used gives you the ability to restore with GRT, without the obligations which have an agent on the server. That is a great feature.

The only drawback for NetBackup, and of course for Veritas, is that they have stuck to the same environment and to the same user interface. This needs to be improved in future releases. It needs to be more dynamic.

I would like to see more prepared, pre-configured reports and higher integration with other leading-edge products. I'm not talking about backup solutions. I'm talking about other services like ticketing systems such as ServiceNow. 

They need to offer more integrations because of the convergence of the demands on the system these days.

The solution is very stable when there is no major change that actually requires corresponding changes to the policies of the NetBackup protection environment. If there are no more major changes from protected areas, like the VMware infrastructure, like the application of services, the solution is stable.

It's even stable with the patches that Microsoft releases from time to time, that can cause so many problems.

Some jobs may fail, but it reports back to the Backup administrator. An extensive loss gives the opportunity to find out what was changed and what is going on and proceed and make all the necessary adjustments to get back on track.

It's very stable also as an environment. After one and a half years we've never had a failure in a hard disk startup and we've never had a failure of NetBackup services. We never had any kind of corruption or any kind of failure, generally speaking.

There are some small issues, as with any product. However, the backup administrator continues reporting daily and checking to see if everything is working fine.

The solution is very scalable.

There are different types of technical support. They offer Gold and 24/7 monitoring, for example. The also offer support where they take the responsibility of monitoring the appliances. Even in cases where the backup administrator is not aware of an imminent hard disk failure, they know about it and send the replacement.

We decided to go with the Essential Support because my knowledge is very good on this product, so we try to eliminate the costs of more premium offerings. Even with Essential Support, their response time is very, very satisfactory. There was no situation where I had to call them or open on the technical support portal and chase them to get answers. Usually, they respond within 4 hours. That's really good especially because it's merely Essential Support, not Platinum or Gold. 

There was one case where we had a problem that needed escalation. The escalation happens after the second or the third action from their side. Usually, they request some logs to provide immediate feedback. They didn't spend too much time investigating the logs, and they responded immediately. They can escalate it as well if they need to.

We used to use Symantec, but it was a very smooth transition because Symantec and Veritas were part of the same company.

We looked at Veeam, which was very competitive in the process but was only software.  

Veritas won out because it offered a solution that also had native hardware and we didn't want to use space from our core storage.

The initial setup was quite straightforward. We use a Linux based backup, and we chose the solution because we are using Veritas appliances as well; it was recommended by Veritas.

It's quite easy for someone who is experienced with backup administration. It might not be as easy for someone implementing for the first time, but for someone who is already experienced, it's very easy.

There is only one server you have to prepare. The configuration is very easy and the integration with VMware was a piece of cake. It's not a complex ATI that you need to strip down, connect, stream, send, etc. It's very, very easy.

Thre are initially only four or five policies that NetBackup uses with Microsoft Windows, SQL, Oracle, VMware and Check Point. That means that you don't have to deploy agents everywhere.

The correlation between the amount that the company spends to start with the infrastructure and the gain that it has seen in terms of work components has been good. For example, the deduplication ratio that NetBackup performs is highly competitive. It's a very, very good thing because we don't have to buy extra storage that creates an extra cost for the company. 

We use the on-premises deployment model.

We've been very happy with this solution. The correlation of NetBackup with a Veritas solution, which gave us the opportunity to dynamically capture the protected data in the two different styles, was helpful. Another Veritas webpage solution works perfectly with NetBackup and gives us a dynamic picture of protected data.

One other improvement we've seen since implementation, from a business' point of view, is that the usage of the new popular technology of Veritas, like the access storage, where the initial configuration is 700 terabytes, gives us long term retention. The company avoids paying for quite expensive robotic libraries. The access storage is outside the company but the backup and the reach hold times are working in tandem. The speed on daily operation, in terms of cataloging, restoring operations, and related things are very good.

The DR (Disaster Recovery) in RPO (Recovery Point Objective) and RTO (Recovery Time Objective) has also improved. Everybody is looking for the best solution that actually gives a balance RPO or RTO. And these two terms are highly related to the DR, the disaster recovery plans. From that point of view, they are a great improvement in contrast with the previous solution that we had. The previous solution was a backup exit. Again, it was the very best, before it was Symantec. We had it for more than five years but when we moved to NetBackup we discovered a whole new world of possibilities and capabilities.

I would advise anyone to use NetBackup. I know the solution well, and I know that they offer very good implication ratio. Of course, I have this opinion because we are also using their appliances, which are pre-configured specifically for this operation.

I don't know if these ratios will be sustained if a customer buys just the software, and uses a third-party storage option to keep the backup. In our case, I would suggest sharing the POC with NetBackup, and even if the POC is without an appliance, I think they can expect to see a big difference. It's very fast.

I would rate the solution ten out of ten. If you would ask me about the software alone I would give it 9, but with the appliance, it deserves a 10.

We use Veritas NetBackup Appliance to backup virtual machines from VMware and Oracle Databases. 

The policy-based backup feature is very helpful. We don't really use many other features, but we're looking to use more.

The reporting feature can be improved. At the moment, we can't acquire the exact information we need from NetBackup. We're looking to improve it on the new system. If I were to look at it performance-wise or storage-wise, it's really complicated to see what's going on. I heard that there's an additional software for that problem, but I didn't really examine it.

We've been using Veritas NetBackup Appliance for about four years.

Veritas NetBackup Appliance is fairly stable. There were one or two errors in one backup, and we don't know what caused it. Overall, it's been a good experience.

Scalability is very good. 

I think they're helping us as much as possible, but they're just saying the problem is with our setup or maybe the internet, or something else. Those problems aren't with them. They say that it's with us, but we can't figure out the problem.

I would tell potential users that it's only worth it if they can use all the features.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give Veritas NetBackup Appliance an eight.

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.

I am a consultant that provides DR backup solutions for cloud-based and hybrid environments. I assist my clients with choosing solutions, and this is one of the solutions that I recommend.

My experience with this solution is in both on-premises and public-cloud environments.

The interface is ok, but not the best. Newer solutions have more flexible interfaces. This interface provides more detail but is not as friendly for the non-technical user. I would like to see a product that requires less expertise to manage it. Companies are struggling with getting people who are experts, so a product with less knowledge-intensive requirements would be better.

Having more templates that help to accomplish things based on best practices for vertical solutions are needed. For example, more support for virtual environments.

I would like to see support for different cloud providers with specific features for each one. If I'm working with Amazon, I would expect it to support the specific features of Amazon. If I was to migrate my solution, my systems, or applications from cloud-to-cloud, I want to be able to do it easily and transparently. Similarly, if I want to migrate from on-premise to cloud, it should be easy. The same should be true for hybrid-cloud environments because there are intensive knowledge requirements.

I don't think that there is a problem with the scalability of this solution, but you need to deal with cloud intensiveness when you deal with Big Data. I don't think that Veritas is doing this with Big Data.

I don't deal with technical support myself, but from what I have heard from my current customers, they haven't had any trouble. This is a plus for a big company like Veritas.

I find that the mature products in this space are supporting the cloud only partially. The main products that really support the cloud are coming from startups, rather than from mature companies.

Choosing a solution depends on the usage and the environment. There are different solutions for different scenarios. You can do backups by copying disks, or you can do logical backups, such as of a database.

I like Veritas. They are a large company with good best practices, and they give good support. They can invest in knowledge-intensive features to make their solution more user-friendly. They need to work more on their R&D, be more innovative, and take more risks in providing solutions for the hybrid cloud and for migrations.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.