I work for a government organization that administers county, state, and federal elections.
We are currently evaluating Veritas Backup Exec and Veritas NetBackup. How much is it per server or per megabyte? Do I need a license for each individual server and is a site license available?
Thanks! I appreciate the help.
Both solutions are perfect and great names in data protection.
If you have a small or medium setup then go with Backup Exec and if you have a big setup with the latest workload then go with Net Backup. You can get a TB license for all servers which you want to protect.
Veritas NetBackup is a more robust solution supporting more environments than Backups Exec. There are different pricing models with NetBackup. ie. Per Storage (TB), Media Server or Servers. It is better to reach a Software Vendor who can guide you and quote a solution that meets your requirements. The company that I work for started with Backup Exec then moved to NetBackup. If your environment is more virtual than physical you should also consider Veeam or Rubrik.
The proper question is not Backupexec or Netbackup but what kind of protection you want to have?
We had backup exec for more than 4 years and I can assure you, as a backup administrator, that I had some really hard days related to the proper coverage of servers, applications, and data. Netbackup is the proper choice if you want a serious protection infrastructure but you have to consider the following key facts:
-What type of environment do you want to protect?
Netbackup works perfectly with VMWare and with mixed environments. I'm not saying that it will not work with other providers but the integration with VMware is one of the greatest pros of this product.
-Is the backup time window enough to cover all your resources?
With Backupexec I was struggling to have all backup jobs complete in a time frame of 13 hours. With Netbackup and especially in conjunction with their Appliances I was able to add more and more jobs for the very same time frame.
-What is your frontend volume?
With Netbackup the best solution is to have a Frontend Capacity license. With this license type, there's no need to buy extra licenses for SQL, SharePoint, Exchange, Oracle, etc. It's an all-inclusive license. Furthermore, with the new version 8.2 you don't even have to install agents on servers! The prices may vary but I guess for i.e 20TB capacity the price will be somewhere between 80000 to 100000 euros (1-year maintenance included and assuming a feasible discount). You don't have to pay for an appliance but if you afford it it's highly recommended in order to achieve the best performance and other technologies (i.e AIR, deduplication ratio, etc).
I don't really know what is the current status of Backupexec in terms of version, prices, features etc. As a product it's absolutely not comparable to Netbackup On the other hand we have left it behind for good.
We have just recently migrated our backups off of Netbackup due to the cost.
I do not remember the licensing, but the whole product was getting too expensive for not only the product but for the management of the product. We had 6 different pieces in the environment due to some configuration designs.
So we have moved to a product that we pay so much for the hardware and then a license for the amount of data we ingest through that product. It is one environment management that can handle a large amount of Data Protection.
- For Veritas Backup Exec: Licenses are per client that you want to backup and depends on if it's only an agent for the system or for an application.
- For VMware, the license is per VMware host.-
Actually, I am a technical person so I look only at the technical part rather than the sales part. So I don't know what the prices are for Veritas appliances and software licenses. But the licences of NetBackup are available on both storage and per virtual machine-based.
We recently migrated off of NetBackup to Avamar using a Data Domain for storage. Since we already had the Data Domain it made sense.
What did you move to?
I am happy to set up a short call to explain the differences. Backup Exec is an SMB solution while NetBackup is an enterprise solution. Backup Exec would be more in line with your organization's size. Call me and we can set up a short Webex.