Veritas NetBackup Reviews

We are a solution provider and Veritas NetBackup is one of the backup and recovery products that we resell to our clients.

This product works well for all of our use cases.

The most valuable feature is the ease of use. NetBackup is very easy for end-users.

We have never had a problem restoring data.

NetBackup has all of the features that you would expect. It includes differential and incremental backups, snapshots, virtual backup, backing up to the cloud, and backing up on-premises.

The biggest problem with NetBackup is licensing. With more customers working with virtual machines, they are now licensing based on the number of CPU cores. Some customers choose Veeam because if they have two servers with 100 terabytes then that is four CPU cores, and it will cost less than it would with NetBackup. This is a change from the past, where the licensing was on a per-socket basis.

I have been working with Veritas netBack for about two years. My company has been involved with backup solutions from different vendors for about 30 years.

This is a very stable product and better than IBM in this regard.

It is very easy to scale. There are two different solutions, where Backup Exec is for small to medium-sized businesses, and NetBackup is for medium to enterprise-sized organizations.n.

We are very satisfied with the technical support.

We also work with products from Veeam and IBM. I have about 10 years of experience with IBM Spectrum Protect but the support for it is very poor in Egypt. For this reason, we prefer to work with Veritas NetBackup and Veeam.

With IBM, there have been many times where we were unable to restore data.

IBM uses many agents for backup tasks, whereas Veritas uses only one agent for backing up files, databases, and applications. The IBM approach is more complex.

It is very easy and straightforward to set up. The length of time required for deployment depends on the implementation and the number of servers. I would say that the average is between three and four days.

We have two people to deploy this solution.

Licensing fees are charged based on the number of CPU cores.

Overall, NetBackup is a good product and the only problem is the licensing module. We would really like to have socket-based licensing.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

Our only other frame of reference is switching from BE to NBU. We got more advanced control of backups and restores by switching to a full-fledged enterprise solution.

Its most valuable feature is probably the variety of features it has. You have the ability to perform a lot of actions with a single software solution. Specific features that I could not do without are SLPs for replication and duplication control and AIR which makes DR easy.

The code base in general could use an overhaul. The base of the product is very old. It gets a lot of new features, but improvements in basic functionality are often sacrificed for a shiny new bullet point to put on sales presentations. It is one of the best solutions available, but it certainly has its shortcomings.

The product itself is very stable. Most issues with stability come from running too many parallel operations and the hardware itself can’t handle it.

Price is a major issue with scalability. In big environments with lots of servers, this product is quite expensive. When a single backup environment gets large, the backup catalog gets large and then your catalog backups for DR production begin to take a very long time. The database performance begins to suffer. I find a 500-700GB catalog will give the highest performance, but I wouldn’t want to get much larger than 2TB.

Technical support runs the gamut depending on where your call lands. US based support out of MN or FL is generally the best I can find for frontline people. India is about what you would expect. They push off a lot of work and assign busy work when they don’t know the answers. US backline engineers are some of the best technical people in the business.

I previously used Backup Exec, NetBackup's little brother. We switched as our environment grew large enough to justify a more robust backup solution.

The initial setup was very easy. It has a lot of "next, next, next," and basic functions that just work. Setting up advanced features can be complex, but the documentation is readily available. If you read and follow the steps in the documentation, you will be fine.

Smaller virtualized environments will want to stick to a traditional licensing model if possible. It will likely be cheaper, but it is a pain to manage all the individual licenses for each client. Once you get to a thousand or so servers to backup, the capacity model starts to make more sense. Again, it is not what you would call cheap.

We did not evaluate other solutions before this product, but while this product was in a smaller environment, we evaluated EMC solutions, Rubrik, TSM, and HPE Data Protector. The solutions that offered robust feature sets like NBU were more expensive or more complex. They either lack features or they are too new, such as Rubrik. Some are very expensive for the same feature set with EMC's solutions.

The top level solutions all have similar features, but find what you do most and choose the product that makes that the most efficient. Remember that in the end, you have to spend your days managing this. You want to make the day-to-day stuff you do as straightforward as possible. Build redundancies into your backups systems and split out backup traffic from the production network.

We use it for all of our data protect needs at the moment. That's why we're exploring new options, as well as going into the cloud.

The most common problem is the backup failures over the weekend.

We have to troubleshoot and sometimes do restores and then we have trouble doing some of the restores.

I have been using Veritas NetBackup since last March.

It is pretty stable. We have one dedicated technician that is taking care of all the data protect. Typically, we have an issue once a month, if that. Or once every two months.

The only comparison I can make is to Commvault, and I think Commvault is a much better product, so I probably would rate it a six or a seven.

My advice to anyone considering this program is to take a really good look at cloud options.

On a scale of one to ten, I would give Veritas NetBackup a six.

Our primary use case for this solution is for doing backups mainly of our databases – Oracle, SQL, Sybase, DB2.

I think NetBackup has vast coverage, and I think that's why it's a great product. 

NetBackup is expensive and should be cheaper. That is why we are moving on to another solution. 

I have been using this solution for the last 10 to 15 years. 

This solution is scalable. 

NetBackup is scalable. 

I think the support is fine. We haven't had issues with it. 

The initial setup seemed straightforward. It took maybe a couple of hours. 

We primarily use this solution in order to backup virtual machines and our databases as well as the mainstream applications such as Exchange, etc.  

The most useful aspect of this solution is the MSDP, the Media Server Deduplication Pool. I like how they do the compression that they do, and how it helps move it to a safe space.

The initial setup is pretty straightforward.

The solution has been very good over the years at fine-tuning various aspects of the product so that it is continuously made better.

The user interface of the product needs to be improved. It's been the same for so many years. Likely, they haven't changed it in more than 10 years. That is definitely something that needs to be changed and updated. The interface and console both need a bit of a facelift, so to speak.

They have come out with a web application, however, the web application is not fully developed yet. 

Planning for the implementation takes a lot of time.

I've been dealing with the solution for quite a long time at this point. It's been ten years. It's at least a decade.

After ten years of using this product, I can say definitively that it is extremely stable. We don't have issues with it. It's reliable. There aren't bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze.

I wouldn't describe the scalability as bad. I'd say it's pretty good. We haven't had issues with the appliance when it comes to scaling.

In terms of technical support, it's been so far so good. I would say the only improvement needed is the callback time. They would say they will call back in two hours, however, many times we didn't get called back in that time. That said, the technical knowledge of the support engineers is very good.

We also use Quorum. Which is a better option depends on the use case and also the company size. Usually, I would recommend Quorum for a smaller business that actually wants not only a backup but also a DR or HA solution. However, for bigger enterprises, I definitely recommend Veritas, due to the fact that for a bigger environment they will have a pre-setup DR environment and all they need is point-in-time response. On top of that, a larger organization typically has a lot of applications.

While the initial setup is not complex, and, in fact, pretty straightforward, the planning is not that easy. The planning needs a lot of time. It often takes days just for that one part.

Veritas should come up with some sort of a standardized checklist that everyone can use to simplify the implementation process.

Typically, for a deployment, you need one or two people. That's the maximum to do the deployment, in theory, however, it depends on the environment. If it's a very large or complex one, we will need more. Most of the time it's one to two persons for deployment and maintenance.

The solution is pretty expensive, which is why it's important to do proper sizing and capacity planning, so that you aren't buying more than you need.

We are resellers. We resell both Veritas and Quorum products.

In Malaysia, solutions like this are typically installed on-premises.

Overall, I would rate the solution at a seven out of ten.

Veritas is a very good solution. I'd recommend other organizations to try it, however, to always do proper capacity planning before going with Veritas, as they may not be happy with the price later if they just assume the prices. They should do a thorough assessment before purchasing NetBackup.

Our primary use case is for our databases, servers and VM. We are resellers of this product and I am the manager of infrastructure and support. 

Backup brings us business continuity. 

I like this solution, it's quite easy to use because of the friendly graphical user interface. It's easy to create policies and to do installs.

This product doesn't come with a reporting feature which means it has to be installed separately. The outcome is that you don't have good analytical tools or business intelligence reports that you can share with top management. Previously, we were unable to do regular restore of sites, especially with mailbox backup which made things cumbersome. That seems to have been sorted in recent versions. Finally, if you need to change the server, the solution requires retention of the initial domain name. I think this can possibly create security concerns. The solution is also quite costly. 

I've been using this solution for 10 years. 

The solution is stable. You can install one version and forget about it.

The solution is scalable. We have one person maintaining it and our users are the IT team, the manager for infrastructure and support and about six people involved in technolgical support. 

The last time we used technical support was when we made a version change. They were fine. 

Deployment was completed in less than a week. We used a third party and they were quite good. They took us through the installation, the configuration, and they trained me as well.

I don't have the actual figures at the moment, but this is a costly product. Additional expenses would come in when other devices are integrated to the backup solution in that tape library.

I would recommend this product because of the ease of use, the simple installation and that the solution is on cloud rather than on-prem. It's important to research options and to do fact finding before getting into it. You need to know that this is the solution you're looking for. 

Finally, no matter how well your environment is maintained, or well kept, or how well your disaster recovery plans are in place, at some point you will need a backup solution.

I would rate this solution an eight out of 10. 

Data replication among critical DCs across regions.

AIR and duplication, overall management and troubleshooting.

DDBoost.

Not since version 7 and higher.

The number of media servers is restricted and this should be pointed out by the vendor.

Quite good. Seven out of 10.

We switched due to better scalability and overall app management.

It's pretty straightforward for a simple configuration but much more complex for a large environment, with many features and tuning required.

Acceptable if you need to implement it for larger environments, e.g. over 1000 clients. For smaller setups it might be too expensive.

IBM TSM, EMC NetWorker.

This is a mature product, one of the market leaders, so if you can afford to purchase and have significant infrastructure to be protected, then go ahead and speak to Veritas.

I use it to back up servers, databases, files, and photos. 

I like the virtual server backup. 

Maybe they could add more cloud solutions.

I've been using NetBackup for more than 10 years.

It's very stable and very good.

It's easy to scale. 

Technical support is very good.

It's somewhat complex. It wasn't very easy but it's fixable. It takes about one or two hours to deploy.

I would give it a nine out of 10.