OpenText Data Protector Reviews

We primarily use the solution for our server backup and some Linux system backups as well as a backup for our SQL.

The main reason for usage is to protect our information. However, we've searching for new tools for increasing the volume of information and increasing platform protection. Unfortunately, Data Protector is not exactly the tool for that task.

The stability of the product seems to be quite good.

The solution isn't ideal for big data or large CRMs.

We have been lacking proper training on the solution. This seems to be a weak point of the product. They should offer better training for their users.

Other tools seem to be easier to use.

The solution should offer support for the backup of cloud platforms. The same system needs to work with replication and mirror sites, for example.

I've been dealing with the solution for five years or so.

The stability of the solution is quite good. There aren't bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze at all. It's reliable.

As this is an appliance, the scalability is limited to the sizing. There's only so much capacity that is possible.

It's difficult to get technical support and proper assistance for this tool.

I've only worked with this particular company for eight months and they've had the solution for a number of years previous to my start. I did not play a role in the implementation and therefore can't speak to how easy or difficult the setup or deployment was for them.

I'm not sure how many people the company used for deployment or how many are needed for maintenance.

I don't have any insights into the licensing or costs. It's not an aspect of the solution that I handle directly.

We're currently planning on changing out backup tools. At the moment we're looking at Veeam and Barracuda. We have some systems deployed by Spanish users and they already use Barracuda, which is why we are considering it. We're taking licensing costs into account, however, we're finding that the most visible difference is the user interface as well as the style of use - for example, how to backup and recover data.

We're just a customer and an end-user. We don't have a special relationship with this company.

I'm not sure of the exact version we're using. It may be some iteration of version six.

I'd advise new users to implement the solution using a support person and good documentation and to make sure they are putting the correct data policies in place.

In the past, it was quite a good tool, however, now, due to a lack of training, or due to having a lack of staff that is trained in it, it is likely much easier to have something like Veeam, which isn't as complicated of a solution.

On a scale from one to ten, I would rate this product at a five. In comparison, I'd rate Veeam at an eight.

We use Micro Focus Data Protector for taking backups throughout our entire data center, which includes backups for our SAP HANA, Oracle, and SQL databases, as well as for the Windows virtual instances which also require file-level, user data, and database backups.

Data Protector's granular recovery features make it easy for us to create and restore backups in an understandable and user-friendly manner. With granular recovery, any database or even just a database table can be restored at will.

The new dashboard that has been introduced is also very good because it allows us to easily visualize how many backups have been performed, showing the total number of TB used as well as useful information on our backup schedules.

Also, in terms of basic backup features, it has everything that most other backup solutions provide and the pricing is very competitive for what it offers.

Micro Focus are improving Data Protector with every new version and since we began undergoing training with the latest version we have not faced any real challenges yet. However, their support does need to be improved, in my opinion. In certain critical cases that we've had, they did not provide a satisfactory level of support.

I have been using Micro Focus Data Protector for the past ten years.

It is both stable and easy to maintain.

In terms of scalability, we're already using it throughout our entire data center. There are no limitations when it comes either host or data backups; you simply need to buy the appropriate licenses and scale up as required.

For any issues that we encounter, we escalate to Micro Focus' tech support. Unfortunately, their support does need some improvement because, in critical cases we've had in the past, I don't believe that they have provided adequate support.

Neutral

For me, setting up Micro Focus is straightforward when it comes to the Windows platform, but somewhat more complicated on Linux because I am not very accustomed to Linux. 

It will generally take one month for the planning phase, then another month for testing, after which we can implement it and move it into production.

Everything in terms of implementation is done in-house.

We are indeed getting return on investment from this solution.

Data Protector's pricing is very competitive and we have no issues in this regard. I would give it an eight out of ten in terms of pricing.

There are two main types of license, one being a perpetual license with a one-time charge and the other is a subscription license where you pay every year. With either type, scaling up is not a problem; you can just buy the appropriate license that is in compliance with your needs, and there is no limitation here.

We are currently evaluating similar backup solutions in the market such as those from Veeam and Veritas (NetBackup). 

At the end of the day, Data Protector is a user-friendly backup solution that is easy to integrate with any OS or database. Its main strengths include granular backup functionality and a well-implemented dashboard that tells you all the essential info such as how many backups you've run, how many have succeeded or failed, and how much space the backups are taking up.

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

file backup and VM backup 

Nops, MFDP Solution is outdated in termes of current backup and protection requirements and we are forced to move to another solution 

The world has changed, growth is happening towards cloud capabilities, and this product is not that developed. If you were to ask me what I like about Micro Focus Data Protector previously, I would say that this product is a single platform manager. At that time there was not any competition. You got the backup guaranteed even if it took some time, but in the they recovered the file. It was a really strong backup solution which contained a single license for tender services. But now the world has changed. There is instant recovery available but they're still an application based backup model. They didn't evolve.

Micro Focus Data Protector must improve its overall evolution record. They need to focus on hardware-based instant recovery, client recovery, and cloud abilities. Now there is no cloud ability.

Another thing they need to work on is that they still lack bare-metal VM and bare-metal recovery models.

The third issue they need to improve, and at the top of the list, is that with the RTO and RPO, we cannot come to a customer as an industry best. Because what happens when you sell is that recovery takes the longest time. This is the pain point in the solution, that it takes time compared to instant recovery.

In terms of additional features I would like to see included in the next release of Micro Focus Data Protector, I will be looking for instant recovery features and for better reporting. To sum up, instant recovery and cloud ability (backup to cloud, return to cloud and restore).

I have been using Micro Focus Data Protector in my current environment for about one and a half years and almost seven years total.

Currently, I can only give negative feedback because my experience in its current state is not up to the mark.

It is a traditional backup model. If you talk about file server and the official Windows database, it's a stable product.

But in the VM, nobody is looking for backup for the sake of backup, you are looking at backup for the sake of recovery. It's not frequent, but it happens, so any backup solution should not be focused just on what to backup but focused on how fast they can recover the data. That is the idea of Rubrik. The other competitors don't focus on backup, they focus on recovery. They talk about the instant recovery in backup, the RPO and RTO. When you talk about relation, the focus is towards stability and client complaints. And they still don't have their own dedicated hardware for the backup.

Nops

So I went from the Omni Backup to HP Data Protector to Micro Focus Data Protector. I have seen all three transition products. They have stopped developing. I don't know why that happened.

High in SA renewal cost for not future development 

Yes, at that time they are leaders in the backup

On a scale of one to ten, I would give Micro Focus Data Protector a three or three point five at the highest. If somebody wants to argue, I can go up to three point five, otherwise, three. It is very simple - they have not adopted the latest technologies. Micro Focus Data Protector works, but it's very slow and for the environment I'm running in there are better backups.

What we find most valuable in Micro Focus Data Protector is that it provides Japanese data protection, for example, it protects information such as the full Japanese name, address, etc.

We have a lot of requests for the Micro Focus team, particularly in terms of the Japanese data pattern, as it's not as good now. The Japanese data pattern accuracy of the Micro Focus Data Protector needs to be improved because there are a lot of false negatives and false positives. We are currently testing this and our product team has been communicating with the Micro Focus team.

What we'd like to see in the next release of the solution is better compatibility with other products, apart from a more accurate Japanese data pattern.

I've been dealing with Micro Focus Data Protector for two years.

Micro Focus Data Protector, in terms of stability, is not so bad.

I'm not sure how scalable Micro Focus Data Protector is because the DLP service goes through my company's SaaS product.

There's no need for me to contact technical support for Micro Focus Data Protector because my company's product team is there to answer my questions.

I didn't use a different solution before using Micro Focus Data Protector. It is a first for me.

The deployment for Micro Focus Data Protector was easy.

Pricing for Micro Focus Data Protector is reasonable.

My company and its customers use Micro Focus Data Protector, though I'm not sure which version of the solution is being used. It's deployed on the public cloud and via a SaaS service.

My rating for Micro Focus Data Protector is eight out of ten.

I'm a reseller of Micro Focus Data Protector.

From a data protection standpoint, HPE Data Protector reduced our and our customer’s recovery time. It also gave them an advantage in the industry in that they are able fall back quicker.

Reduced backup times, and it helped with security mitigation from a data protection standpoint.

I don't use it today on a regular basis, but there are always feature improvements that our customers are looking for, such as more integration from an API perspective with different applications and cloud platforms. Also, broader integration to the ecosystem as it relates to the cloud and the application API.

We didn't have too many problems. It was fairly stable.

We contacted technical support a couple of times during upgrades, but I wouldn't say that the issues were anything out of the ordinary or systemic.

The initial setup was fairly straightforward. We did not have any difficulties.

There's always a bake-off process between competing products regarding feature sets, like Symantec. Customers typically go through a list of criteria as they relate to applications, and how they're trying to protect data, such as how it's encrypted at rest and in flight. These are decisions we all have to make. Other issues are whether there was encryption inflate, was it encrypted at rest, how many GO's did I need to protect that data, and what the replication scheme looked like.

With respect to HPE data protection, you need to do the mapping with respect to what you're looking for. From my own personal experience, HPE was a pretty seamless install from an operational perspective.

But, I never want to be involved in data protection again. It's a thankless job, but a necessary evil.

• VMware level backup
• Exchange integration
• Flexibility
• Cost

We now have a common enterprise backup product across all our infrastructure and services. We have also extended this by deploying HP Data Protector VMware level backup capability VEPA, (Virtual Environment Protection Agent) across both Data Centre and Divisional services.

For me, the main weakness of Data Protector now is the Granular Recovery integrations, as they just don’t work as smoothly as they could.

I've used up since March 2013.

Not really. However, I have extensively used HP Data Protector in other roles with other organisation so I know the product very well. This was key consideration in the initial selection as it reduced costs and risks for the deployment.

We did experience a major issue when we first deployed Data Protector 8.10, but HP support were able to help.

No, we still two Data Protector installations, (known as Cells in in DP terminology). One cell manages the Data Centre backup/restores and the other the divisional side of things. At some point in time, we will probably consolidate into a single cell, (or manager of managers) configuration, but we have no current technical or business driver for this move.

It's excellent.

It's excellent, very prompt and professional.

In autumn 2012, we had two important backup issues in our enterprise data centres. The organisation was about to deploy MS Exchange as our corporate email system, (replacing Novell GroupWise) and our portfolio of VMware guests was increasing. We needed MS Exchange integration and NDMP backup capabilities to meet our data centre backup needs. At that time our IS organisation had a split between remote sites, (divisions) and the enterprise server data centres. We used Symantec NetBackup in our Data Centres and Symantec Backup Exec in divisions to meet our backup requirements.

The cost to license Symantec NetBackup for MS Exchange and NDMP was too large. So, we looked for alternatives. I had used HP Data Protector in a previous organisations and I knew it was a cost effective drop in replacement for NetBackup. So we looked at HP Data Protector and EMC offerings and eventually chose HP Data Protector and cost and functionality. This is just for the enterprise/data centre environment. Data Protector did all we wanted for our data centre backups.

As stated earlier, our technical IS had two teams/areas, data centre and divisions, (remote sites/hospital). The divisional team supported site based infrastructure and local services, (file & print etc.). The divisional servers were backed up using Symantec Backup Exec, and following an upgrade to Backup Exec 2012 we had several critical issues with backup at our divisions and the team evaluated HP Data Protector as replacement for Symantec Backup Exec and selected HP Data Protector.

For us, it was easy, as I had extensive previous experience of the product. I first used the product when it was called Omniback I, (not Omniback II). And, as stated we deliberately built the initial deployment as a drop in replacement for NetBackup in the Data Centre.

Just me.

It's difficult to calculate this as we didn’t have a plan to implement an enterprise backup infrastructure, we just used the cost and in-built flexibility of the product to meet our needs.

Initially in the data centre our first quote for NetBackup licenses for exchange integration and NDMP was about AU$200,000. Our complete Data Centre HP Data Protector deployment was AU$46,000.

Since our deployment HP has introduced capacity based licensing for Data Protector. I would advise any potential customer to look at this option, it may work better for their organisation. On balance if deploying today I would tend to prefer the capacity based licensing model. But do the sums and make sure it work for your organisation. The other point is even traditional Data Protector licenses is very flexible and relatively inexpensive, this allow an organisation to build an Enterprise backup architecture over time and allows in to evolve to meets changing requirements.

Plan, and call in outside help if required. Get the production evaluation mode and try it (it comes with a complete 60 day trial license). Get to know the product and plan. One other really nice feature of HP Data Protector that I haven’t mentioned up to now is Reporting. Data Protector has a whole load of built-in configurable reports, it really covers most use cases and when it doesn’t Data Protector has an extensive CLI, for when you just need that extra special something.

We use Micro Focus Data Protector to back up all our infra servers, plus file share and some VM backup.

The normal file system backup is easy to manage, and our success rate is quite high.

The scheduler setup could be better. We are facing some issues scheduling the job based on our requirements. Furthermore, if we want to change something, we have to run it through all the policies one by one. They don't have a central place to modify and apply it to all the policies. The virtual environment backup could also be better.

I have been using Micro Focus Data Protector for four years.

It's a stable solution, but every upgrade is such a headache. For example, we currently have to upgrade to a new version, but somehow the connection to storage isn't happening because there are issues with the library.

Micro Focus Data Protector is scalable. It's quite simple as we can just add on more media to fulfill all the requirements. Right now, a few thousand people use this solution in our organization.

We had a few cases through email, but one pain point is that they always go through to level one, go to level two, and so on. They spend a lot of time explaining what's going on before the problem is solved. 

Previously, we used Veritas Backup Exec. So, compared to Veritas Backup Execs, it's a little bit cheaper.

The initial setup is quite straightforward, like Master Media Server. 

Our licensing is on a capacity basis.

I wouldn't recommend Micro Focus Data Protector to be used as a cloud backup. But for on-premise and file share use, it's quite okay.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give Micro Focus Data Protector a seven.

 We primarily use the solution for data backups.

On the interface level of managing the backup, especially the history of the files that we are backing up, Data Protector is pretty good.

Implementation is pretty easy, depending on the number of clients.

The data deduplication is great.

The solution offers easy device detection. It's great for detecting devices you attach to the network. It doesn't matter if it's HPE StoreOnce or Data Domain, this solution will pick it up.

The catalog if very complete. Even if your file is eight years old, you'll be able to see it there.

Data Protector is very good at automation. From the time of the backup, verification, and copy to tape, it is very good. I don't need to touch it, it will do it by itself. 

It's annoying that you actually have to pay for the deduplication feature in order to use it.

Starting at around 2010, they haven't really changed their interface or added many new features. The console is dated. they need to make it more modern, add colours and better UI to make it more user friendly and attractive.

If you compare the solution with the same specific features and enhancements on another solution, Data Protector is expensive. This is especially true when compared to, for example, Veeam.

They are starting to create a cloud version of the Data Protector. The thing is, it's very hard to convince an administrator like me to switch to it, due to the fact that they are basically a hardware designed software. It was designed by a hardware engineer, that's why it looks and feels and operates like hardware. To change it to a software doesn't sit right. In comparison, when you use Veeam, you feel like you are managing a cloud. You feel that you are managing something on the top. When you're using Micro Focus Data Protector, on the other hand, you feel that you are directly communicating with the device. It's just as bumpy and not as satisfying as compared to Veem, which is compact and light.

Every time there is a backup running, I cannot predict anything, so I cannot say if it will back up the first time. Data Protector has a status bar. You need to wait and see.

Their flexibility of their reporting needs improvement. You cannot save. You need to copy/paste. It may have appeared flexible in the 1990s, however, it's 2020 now. We need a flexible reporting of all that is happening on the Data Protector. We don't need to focus too much on the data, we need to focus on the maintenance of the machine. There needs to be a focus on analytical reports. We need answers to questions like: "Am I going to lose capacity?" "Do I still have enough space?" "Do I still have enough capacity for the cloud?" Data Protector should analyze these things for you, and alert you if you need to increase capacity.  

The solution needs more mobile capabilities. If I cannot see your product on my mobile, you're not worth considering. Nowadays, that's a basic requirement for an administrator.

There is no place in the world that is not connected to the internet or IoT. There is a lot to be done that the competitors are already doing for the last four years. 

The solution needs to change their support agreement. It was changed from traditional to capacity. That means the product is now only targeting big companies. As it stands now, they cannot really market to smaller organizations because their capacity is not that much. Licensing should be flexible for small businesses all the way up to enterprise-level businesses.

Once you perform a backup for a huge amount of data, you cannot browse it. You cannot browse a specific characteristic of that data on the database in order to find a file. If the file is large, you need to restore it. With Veem, you can view it even if it's inside the archive. It gives you the assurance it's actually there. The solution needs to have a good explorer for administrators. I need to have the flexibility of viewing where I put my data. When it is going to the tape, the tape is totally encrypted. You need to restore it before you know what is inside. It's a big waste of time.

I've been using the solution since 2007. It's been well over a decade.

When the Micro Focus acquired this product, they changed the way it was supported. Before, when HP was doing it, technical questions were handled by after-sales support. Usually, they would take three days, at the minimum, to get help if you have of any trouble. 

The good thing about Data Protector is that they now have levels of support. They have three levels and you can request it personally. Basically, if the first agent doesn't detect your problem or solve the issue, the customer can take the initiative to say to the agent, "Now, we want to go level two". The agent does not make that call for the customer. 

As of just this year, technical support has really stepped up their game. They've changed. They're amazing.

We have had backup solutions before, with another vendor, before we started with this solution in 2007

The initial setup is mostly straightforward. An example of a complex installation for me, would be Microsoft Exchange. Micro Focus Data Protector is still a bit of a gray area, but it's easier. It's not modular. You always need to copy the whole SAN in order for you to achieve success.

It's an easy deployment. It's a basic server from the client to the device. It's a little bit of a two-step pattern compared to the Symantec Back Exec deployment, which is the simplest way to install your backup solution. With Data Protector, there are a few additional steps. That said, implementation is easy once you know what you're doing.

The length of time it takes to deploy is approximately 45 minutes for a single server. With clustering, it might take two hours. Now with SAN storage, it might take you a half-day, due to the configuration.

Give me a basic set up, and I can do it within 30 to 45 minutes. I can set the servers up, install the binary, have it detect the media, and then I can deploy the agent and backup any machine.

I don't have the storage inside my server, the storage is connected somewhere else. Connecting the configuration, depending on how I presented the device to the Data Protector, could be 30 minutes to half a day.

For maintenance, ideally, one site should have three engineers. However, in our environment, I am the only backup administrator for five sites. I would say that's understaffed for the solution.

Recently, we've seen a huge improvement in the licensing team. They're now phenomenal.

I've also looked at Veem and have downloaded both solutions for free.

We have a service level agreement with Micro Focus.

I cannot say that Data Protector is the perfect tool for my aim. Data Protector is losing to the competition day by day due to the fact that there are so many other features on the market. Data Protector doesn't need to copy their competition, but they at least have to have an offering that's equivalent. Especially now, looking at the console, there's been no money put into updates or UI, especially if you compare it from 2007 until the present day.

The technology itself is proven and it is working fine. 

I have a lot of machines, so I have room to play with the solution. Data Protector is great, however, after using Veem, I can see now where it could be improved. I'd rate it overall seven out of ten. If Data Protector offered a cloud version with better graphical interfaces, plus more analytics and reporting, I'd give it higher marks.