OpenText Data Protector Reviews

The granularity of brick-level restore functionality is very valuable. We receive approximately 10 restore requests on a daily basis for your typical file/folder restore, with the odd Exchange mailbox restore request thrown in, just to keep me on my toes.

Backing up to disk (HPE StoreOnce 4900) has been valuable in reducing the man-hours in managing the backups, with the added bonus of backup replication for all jobs to the opposite HPE StoreOnce. Historically, all our backups onsite backed up directly to LT04 tapes. This method brought a lot of its own challenges: tape management, costs, man-hours; not to forget having to ensure all our backups completed within the scheduled backup window throughout the week/weekend was tight.

The reporting capabilities of HPE Data Protector are very limited and is the main area I feel that HPE Data Protector needs to improve on. The standard report options available with the product are adequate for generic reporting.

However, if you’re like me and want to get customised reporting, you then have a problem and you will need to purchase another licensed product: HPE Data Protector Reporter.

I have used HPE Data Protector for six years.

Deployment of our new HPE Data Protector 9 environment went quite smoothly, even with the addition of our HPE StoreOnce appliances, which were new to me and required a lot of planning in regards to scheduling/creation of backup stores, etc. Our HPE consultant was very helpful in assisting me in the execution of the new environment.

Part of this project was a requirement to migrate all the servers and data from the legacy Cell Manager (DP7) across to the new Cell Manager (DP9). This project has been very frustrating, as it has been fraught with technical issues. The main issue was a corrupt IDB (DP7). HPE support had worked on this issue for a long time. They had our entire environment in their labs and to date have not been able to resolve the IDB corruption. Currently, we are working with one of the HPE consultants to manage the export of the data via a custom script. Time will tell how successful this migration will be, but until then, I will just have to continue managing two onsite production DP environments.

I rate them 4/5. I cannot fault their customer service. Luckily, our customer service team is in the same locale as us, which is very helpful. Small things like this make a big difference to the customer service experience.

Technical support gets 4/5. Mainly, the technical support is very good. You kind of have your preferred support guys working on your cases, than some of the other guys. Some of my own company’s users probably say similar about me and our team, but hey, that’s the way it goes!

The implementation team gets 4/5. Implementation was through HPE consultancy.

Over the course of the deployment I had two different consultants. The first consultant got a promotion within HPE and the second consultant was from Italy. I now have a 3rd local Eire based HPE consultant that will be assisting and guiding me on the legacy IDB migration. I look forward to working with him, as his knowledge of the DP is outstanding.

It’s important to get your licensing right as this will drastically Influence the pricing.

Consider the following:

• How much Data is getting backed up on a weekly basis?
• What are your Data retention policies?
• How many different types of Integrations, i.e. Oracle DB’s /SQL /Exchange /SharePoint/VMware, etc., your company has? (These numbers could influence the licensing model you adopt, as the more integrations you have – the capacity licensing model may be the most cost effective.)

Luckily for me, I inherited HPE Data Protector.

I have evaluated other backup products for some of our overseas remote sites and found Veeam Backup and Replication 9 to be the best product to meet our needs.

Implement the B2D technology, i.e. HPE StoreOnce, depending on your company setup. If a DR/FO is a requirement, consider another HPE StoreOnce in the DR/FO site and avail of the HPE StoreOnce replication capabilities.

Invest in HPE consultancy to help plan out the environment.

Due to some management issues, we're moving to Data Domain.

The solution is easy to use. The management of the product is also easy.

We faced some certification issues after we upgraded to version 10.2.

I have been using the solution for around 16 years.

The tool is stable. I rate the stability an eight out of ten.

I rate the tool’s scalability a seven out of ten. Our clients are medium-sized businesses.

The initial setup is easy. I rate the ease of setup a nine out of ten. The deployment takes around half an hour.

The licensing cost is too high. It costs us a lot when we migrate with the appliance.

We have migrated the solution with an appliance. We are in a transition phase to use Data Domain. I recommend the solution for its ease of use. Overall, I rate the product a nine out of ten.

We use Data Protector for backup and recovery.

The most valuable feature of Data Protector is its integration with VMware. A lot of software these days integrates with VMware, and you can run some of these things on virtual machines. You can even have your backup manager running on a virtual machine and use physical managers to move data around. Their VMware integration isn't too bad, but Commvault has that feature, and many other backup products do.

We're not satisfied with the robustness and stability of the software since Micro Focus took it in-house. The GUI is one thing they could improve. It's still a bit archaic. Data Protector needs a more functional, user-friendly GUI.

I started at this company in 2018, so I have been using Data Protector at this company since then or maybe a little before. They were using the solution before HPE sold it off to Micro Focus. The company was initially using it with MSL Tape Libraries. When I joined, StoreOnce had just been installed.

Data Protector isn't stable.

Data Protector is sufficiently scalable for our purposes, but our site isn't that big.

I rate Micro Focus Data Protector six out of 10. We were unsatisfied with the support, and that contributed to the decision to migrate to Commvault. The quality dropped when they outsourced support. It's not the only company. HPE also took its service and support to Bangalore in India.

You should only outsource if your service level won't drop, but it always drops. When you mention that to management, they say, "Okay, we know, but everybody is doing it." Accenture does it and Cognizant, too. All the big services companies are all down there.

Neutral

The company is considering a switch to Commvault. It's a global company, so the transition will be worldwide, and we don't have a say. I still don't have any hands-on experience, but I know HPE has tightened its ties with Commvault, and they're producing technical best practices for the product. They are even promoting Commvault as their backup solution of choice when providing backup solutions to customers.

Data Protector used to be their product, so they did have the chance. Once Micro Focus acquired them, even HPE was not satisfied with the level of support and gradually started looking to Commvault. At the same time, if somebody asked me which backup solution I would suggest, I couldn't recommend Commvault because I don't have the experience yet.

I rate Micro Focus Data Protector six out of 10.

When it's installed, the most valuable feature is ease of use. It's a little tricky to install straight out of the box and configure, because of the way the licensing module works. Once you get beyond that, it's very easy to use.

We don't utilize it the way it's supposed to be used. It's kind of like a back stop. For example, if an engineer accidentally deletes something, he raises a ticket and with a request to get his file back. Normally, the backup routines are run, and that's what we use Data Protector for. We just dive into that, pull it back, and say, there are half a dozen backups, and ask which one he wants. He says, "I want the one before I made the changes." We can't just apply a mindset here, or read his mind. They can drill it down to specifics. We can then drill the tool down to specifics. It does that process, and it does it well.

I know I am being picky, but the only thing that really tripped us up is the license model. It’s a wonderful product, but if they could change that model, it would be great.

I would like to get everything for 60 days, so I can turn on all the features that I want. I can get it all set up and then broadcast a message to somebody at HPE or their distributors. We could sort out our licensing then, because we will have time to work out what we want to do, and get it honed up first. Because we're all moving to a service base, it would make sense to do it that way.

To be honest, I don't think Backup Exec comes anywhere close to this tool in terms of stability. When you match it, and you use Backup Exec and Veeam together, you can get kind of close to this tool. However, you still don't get the granularity of the data. This solution is awesome. It is leaps ahead of Backup Exec, leaps ahead.

We haven’t had to scale it, but the way it's set up, it can be scaled. Although my distributor will correct me, I do think it comes down to the licensing. The current license model isn’t complicated, but then it's not straightforward either.

What you have to do, and my distributor will shoot me down for saying this if I get it wrong, but you license the box or your data. Then you license the device you want to put your stuff on. If you want to scale it, you've then got to jump through the hoops to get the right licenses, and then go from there. That's one of the things that we hit first off. Once we got it up and running, it’s easy to use.

What we wanted was disk-to-disk replication. After we got that nailed down, we then wanted to replicate from disk to tape. We were told that we can't do that. We asked why not, and then we were told it doesn't let you do it unless you buy it with a license. That's what hurt, because then we have to go back through the loop of giving the business justifications. This just added to the frustration.

To be honest, I didn't actually talk to anyone. The information that we needed was on the HPE website, so it was good that we didn't need to talk anyone. I dare say we would have had to talk to somebody in a different time zone. My distributor, who shall remain nameless, was actually quite helpful because what he said was, "Right before we start dialing numbers, eight hours back that way, jump on the HPE website, and see if you can find it there." We did find it.

We viewed several things. We initially started off with Backup Exec, and then we had a homegrown thing which didn't work. This tool and Backup Exec will only run when you tell them to. We were frustrated with that because the engineers, being engineers, don't care. They just want their data and they want it now.

You can't do that in a backup environment. You have to plan, schedule, tell it what and when to monitor. We went forward with that. The only thing that even came close to doing what we wanted was Data Protector. So that is what we purchased.

We proved the tool as follows. We took quite a few of the senior management and told them we are going to stage a real-life crisis, without the rest of the staff knowing. We just turned the storage off. Everybody screamed and we asked, "Who needs what? What do you need? When do you need it?” We starting using the Data Protector service and we retrieved what they wanted. It took us two hours, but that two hours proved the point that Data Protector was the tool for us.

The setup was a little complex. You follow the steps, which are very logical and straightforward. However, once you get beyond that, you start to define your backup process and that's when you fall over. If you haven't put a lot of thought in that up front, such as defining that you want to perform disk-to-disk backup and then replicate to tape.

In our justification, we didn't make that clear. When we went to talk to our business distributor, we were then given our disk-to-disk setup. Then we wanted to change to disk to app, so we had to repeat the painful process again.

We kind of matrixed it out, and said, "These do that, this does that." Every time we asked, "What's this Data Protector? What's that Data Protector?" By the time we'd done that little exercise, it became very clear how to proceed.

I suggest getting Data Protector or lose my friendship. All kidding aside, if a colleague asked me for advice, I would say to seriously consider it.

Other tools come close, but what you have to realize, with everything that's happening, going forward, you'd be daft to consider other options, especially if you're on a HPE platform.

If you were running this tool on a Dell site stack, instead of HPE, it might be a different scenario. The HPE site stack can guarantee that there are no “gotchas” in there. If you're running Dell, then you would see that maybe it's not the product for you. Maybe you want something that is Dell equivalent, but I would still suggest giving Data Protector a darn good look. This solution does exactly what it says on the tin. I know that sounds cheesy, but the solution works as advertised.

When looking for a vendor, I look for know-how, support, and ease of use.

The GUI is nice. However, the command line options are more important when setting up customize backups and restores in a custom scripts routine.

We are required to send sensitive information offsite, and Data Protector has made it easy to meet this requirement.

Better documentation on how to backup the device itself through a flash drive or CD.

I've used HP Data Protector, formerly OmniBack, since 1997.

No issues encountered.

No problems after I upgraded to v7. On version 6.10, it would not bar-scan a pool correctly. After upgrading, I no longer had the issue.

No issues encountered. What I like about it is that you are licensed per drives not how many clients/agents are installed. It can support various filesystem types (HFS, VXFS, Windows, etc.), and use a databases utility like RMAN to backup to other disk or tapes.

9.5/10.

9.5/10.

For the projects I support, I used Data Protector. Other projects used BackupExec. However; Backup Exec is very limited of what it can support in filesystem types and even operating system support matrix.

It's straightforward for me.

We implemented it through an in-house team of only one member. They were very knowledgeable, with over 20+ years of system administrator experience and knowledge.

My personal satisfaction is that the products work as intended.

The licensing is based on your primary purpose, what type of cloning environment you are utilizing, and if it is a disk to disk copy etc. The technical assistance should help with your decision.

Evaluated Backup Exec and it is limited in what it supports.

Evaluate your need first of all. We are a small government shop, and the needs are limited here. However, Data Protector can do much more.

We use the OpenText Data Protectoras an enterprise backup solution. It performs backups for various company setups, including servers and storage systems.

The tool's most valuable aspect is its ease of management. It was not complex. In terms of features, I can mention a couple of things. For example, if you need to restore a VM, you can do it with multiple streams in OpenText Data Protector, which is an advantage over Commvault, from what I've noticed, having worked with multiple tools. Another thing is the Oracle backups; configuring Oracle backups is much easier in OpenText Data Protector.

Automated backups run on their own schedules, which happens automatically as planned.

The challenge is that we can't restore a single file from the VM in the data process when we do VM backups. But with Commvault, you can restore a single file even if you have a VM snapshot package. That's one drawback of this tool. When we do VM backups, it should help us browse the VMs to restore a single file instead of doing the complete VM restore.

I've been working with the product for a couple of years. Throughout this period, I haven't been focused on just one tool; I've worked with multiple solutions.

The solution is stable. 

The product is a scalable enterprise solution. 

The tool's support is good but not the best. 

Neutral

The tool's deployment is simple. To implement the OpenText Data Protector solution, we first assess the size of the data and the number of servers that need backup. Based on this, we estimate the requirements for setting up the tool framework, including the media servers.

We allocate the necessary space and RAM for these servers. Once this is done, we proceed with the basic installation of the server, add the licenses, and configure the backup services.The initial setup may take around two hours, but the full deployment duration depends on the number of servers that need to be integrated and set up for backup.

The process doesn't require many people or resources. One person can easily handle the setup. If it's a large enterprise, a few extra hands might be needed, but the initial setup can be managed by one person.

The cost-effectiveness of the data protector solution depends on what the customer needs. If it matches their requirements, it's cost-effective. However, if they need more features, they might have to buy extra solutions, affecting cost-effectiveness.

The product is cheaper than Commvault. 

The tool  is easy to manage and offers centralized management, a major advantage. You can use one console to manage multiple locations. We don't currently use AI in our strategies, but we may explore it in the future. Integrating AI with OpenText Data Protector could help ensure that our backups are clean and free from cybersecurity threats or corruption. This would enable us to perform clean restores whenever necessary.

I rate the overall product an eight out of ten. 

I am a manager at a mid-size non-profit and we use this to backup HPE UNIX servers.

I like that it supports HPE UNIX servers since many backup solutions do not - this is the main reason why we chose this solution.

I do not think that this solution is relevant in the current IT market. They have not upgraded their features and functionalities which makes it difficult for them to remain competitive. 

I have been using this solution for about fifteen years.

It is a stable solution, we have not experienced any bugs over the past fifteen or so years.

I would say that it is scalable.

Support could be better. Right now, for us, their preferred communication method is via email which takes quite a bit of time to resolve even small issues.

The initial setup in general was simple. However, if you want encryption, you need to install something else, and there are other models for reporting. This can get a little complex since it is not a single solution that gives everything out-of-the-box.

We have four or five guys from our backup admin team who work in here regularly.

The solution was implemented by a partner of Micro Focus and it took about one to two days to setup for our mid-size company.

There is a perpetual license involved in addition to support which needs to be renewed annually.

I would rate this solution a six out of ten.

The primary use case is integration with the HP storage unit. There is an HP product line called HP High-End Storage. We are primarily using Micro Focus Data Protector for SAP RT application, which is an earlier version. 

Integration with HP storage is a very strong point for Micro Focus Data Protector. 

It is the best solution for general operations like backup and restore. Zero downtime backup (ZDB) is one very important feature, which is basically the integration with the storage array. It is a very strong feature. We're using storage with snapshots with this integration. 

In general, you can say that Micro Focus Data Protector is behind in capabilities when compared with other backup solutions, such as Commvault, Symantec, NetBackup, but it is very strong for certain use cases such as array integration. We are using it in production even now.

There should be some kind of cloud integration and archiving solutions. I think this is the area they need to focus on.

We have been using Micro Focus Data Protector for six to seven years. 

We have been using HP solutions, comprising HP servers, storage, and even the HP operating system unit, for five to seven years. Micro Focus Data Protector was configured and installed during the last tech research around six to seven years ago, and it is still in production. Currently, we have replaced the solution with some other solution, but for the older tech research, Micro Focus Data Protector is still working.

We're relying on this backup for our very critical core application. It's really good all the time for backup and restore operations. We never faced any issue. You can say it is a very smooth and stable experience.

Scalability of Micro Focus Data Protector is good. There may be tens of thousands of users currently in our company.

The technical support is really good. They're always very cooperative and really very good. The support experience is actually very good.

I was not there at that time. It shouldn't actually take much time, maybe a few weeks or one month.

It was deployed by HP. Their deployment team installed and configured everything.

It is a very good product if you want to go for the ZDB backup or the array integration with HP products. In general, when comparing Micro Focus Data Protector with other backup solutions, such as Commvault, NetBackup, or any other vendor, they are much more comprehensive and have much more capabilities.

I would rate Micro Focus Data Protector a seven out of ten.