OpenText Data Protector Reviews

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 solution for backup data protection of on-premises, in-cloud, and virtual environments. Also, we use it for the features such as production tab and recall tool.

The solution is easy to use.

The solution's customer support service needs a lot of improvement. Presently, they take a long time to resolve simple issues.

I rate the solution's stability as a four. We face challenges with it, and the support team has not been able to fix them.

We have 2000 users of the solution in our organization. I rate its scalability as a six.

The solution's customer support service for setup and ongoing issues could be better. 

The solution's initial setup was easy, but it took two months to complete the process because of its poor technical support.

The solution's support team executed the deployment for us. It was a time-consuming process.

The solution's price is more reasonable than the other vendors.

If the solution's customer service improves, it will stand out as the best product compared to other vendors. I rate it as a five.

We don't use Micro Focus widely. It's used as a backup-to-tape system. Overall, we have about five users because a couple of our clients use it as well.  

I like that Micro Focus keeps a separate catalog of our data. 

Many of our users complain about the GUI. You still need to rely on the command line interface. Because it originated as a Unix system, Data Protector is still a command line-driven solution, which makes it seem rather dated compared to systems that are built around a GUI from day one. It doesn't affect the functionality, but some people don't find it user-friendly.

I have been using Micro Focus for almost 20 years. 

Data Protector is stable.

Data Protector is highly scalable.

We don't use Micro Focus support often, but it has been pretty good when we needed it.

We also use Acronis Backup, but it's hard for me to compare because I don't have as much experience with Acronis relative to Data Protector. It's also one of those difficult situations because we haven't really pushed Data Protector to its limits. It has a lot of functionality that we don't use. We tend to use more of Acronis' functionality, so it would be unfair to compare them.

The initial setup is fairly straightforward because it was historically a Unix system. It takes about half a day to install. 

Data Protector has an annual license, and it's reasonably priced. 

I rate Micro Focus Data Protector eight out of 10. It's a highly stable solution that does the job. To use this product, you must comfortable with a command line interface, and many people today can't deal with anything that's not GUI. You need to be in control of the command line to use it properly. 

It works excellently only with Oracle.

It has a lot of undeveloped functions like window searching and patent searching, and within the main backup processes like VMware and Microsoft Exchange.

It's completely not user-friendly, and it has no built-in antivirus software. In my opinion, Micro Focus Data Protector is not an enterprise level solution.

I would like to see the quick search bar working without complexities and would like to see the building reporting. I would like to see it deny the architecture of the client and server and work directly via APIs.

I would like to see Micro Focus Data Protector be completely web based with fast HTML files. That would reduce a lot of installation time with all those script integrations and so on.

It would be good to have automation of the broken backups. For example, NetBackup had a great feature when the backup broke for some reason. It would automatically try to resume it eight or nine times and only then would give a fail error.

The stability depends on the environment because there can be some special cases where Micro Focus Data Protector is not stable at all.

The technical support from Micro Focus is terrible in terms of the quality and problem solving. For example, let's assume that something went wrong when running Data Protector in a large infrastructure environment with permanent backups going on. When we contact technical support, they will ask us to provide logs. However, if we turn the bug mode on it will affect all of the systems, and we simply will not be able to collect the requested logs for that purpose. So, it becomes impossible to provide the necessary log files because we cannot stop the critical backups.

I have some experience with NetBackup. It was more stable, user-friendly, and had the best support. However, the decision makers decided that Micro Focus Data Protector was the better way to go, and we had to switch.

As for the initial setup, it's perfect for small- and medium-sized companies.

The pricing is acceptable for enterprise level companies, but it's not acceptable for small- and medium-sized businesses. Micro Focus Data Protector is not an enterprise level solution, and it should cover small- and medium-sized businesses with acceptable prices.

I would advise you not to use Micro Focus Data Protector and would rate it at four on a scale from one to ten.

SAP R/3 Integration is what I like best because our main production systems are SAP based with Oracle database, the “save-delete archive” feature is of ultimate use. It actually saves the Oracle archive file to the disk and after the save is verified it is deleted form the disk. That way you actually keep an eye on archive space on the physical disk and at the same time you are safe that no archives have been delete from the disk without been checked.

We started using this product back in 2000. At that point we mainly used the SAP R/3 Integration along with some filesystems backups. From that point on, the software started getting integrated with Exchange Server, and lately SAP HANA. The Data Protector software is getting along with the growing needs of our company.

I haven’t found any issues that need to get improved. The main purpose of this software suite (safely backup and restore main systems) is fully achieved. It was already implemented as the company’s first backup and restore solution. As the company evolved and the technology implemented evolved along, it seemed that the software adequately supported our systems.

I've been using them since 2000.

Generally no, but there were some issues that appeared when we first tried to deploy the software to a HANA database environment. However, they happened mainly because of the HANA database Linux environment.

Mainly, I can’t say that I have encountered major stability issues. At some point in time, patches fixed some minor issues.

No issues encountered.

Customer service is excellent with a ticket per call.

Through the fifteen years of support from HP, you realize that many things have changed. But, above all, I have to say that technical support has remained at a constantly high level. Depending on the issue, each time, the support may be local or international. Nevertheless you will get your job done.

This was the first backup and recovery solution.

The initial set-up is very straightforward. Nothing special to be done, as it's got very friendly user interface.

Back in 2000 the software was implemented by HP. I wasn’t present for the implementation, but after that, some upgrades and migrations has happened. Both HP Greece and an in-house software engineer have performed the projects. I have to say that the level of their expertise is more than adequate.

As we have most of our systems integrated to HP Data Protector, and because we have many daily and even hourly backups, I must say that we have a high ROI in our case.

Pricing and licensing clearly depends on the systems that you plan to backup. How many systems do you have to backup (licensing), what kind of support do you prefer for your systems (24/7, 8/5) (pricing).

You have to check the needs of your systems before you decide on your backup solution. Do you have many different platforms? Do you want to integrate the backup solution with a SAN environment? Do you want to use integrations (SAP R/3, Exchange Server, SQL, etc.)

The best thing I find with Data Protector as opposed to other products was the inter-compatibility with all different OSs. It's very OS agnostic; doesn't matter whether it be Linux or Windows or AIX or whatever. It just seems to work. That's useful, very useful. The GUI interface is very intuitive as well, I find. It's very easy to use.

The centralization of all the backup data is a valuable asset, and the ability to recover data quickly. It doesn't happen very much these days, to be fair. It's not very often we have to recover. We don't use Data Protector for data recovery. It does have that functionality, but because we're a 95% virtualized company, we use VMware replications for DR. But there is DR functionality within it. It needs work. It's not a simple thing to roll out. Of course now, it offers de-duplication which is big. The backup functionality is very, very good.

One of the things that they need to look at is the scheduler. At the moment, there are two ways to schedule a backup. There's a simple scheduler and an advanced scheduler. You have to do one or the other. Using the advanced scheduler is the only way to prioritize the backups. I'd like to see that merged into just one single scheduler that allows you to prioritize the backups. At the moment, backups come in and they queue with no priorities. For example, if you have four backups queuing, you can't say I want backup one to run before backup two before backup three. If they're in the queue, you can separate them with start times, but if they're all in the queue and all their start times have passed, any of them can start in no particular order. So that's one thing I would like to see.

I haven't looked at the VMware integration yet, but I'm just about to. I understand the VMware integration is quite good. That's obviously an essential thing for us.

We have been using it for about 7 or 8 years. We started at version 6. We're at version 9 now. Version 9 is very stable.

It's very stable. It wasn't in its earlier guises. But now it is.

It is scalable. It's not as scalable as HPE would like to think it is. I think the biggest problem we have with backups now is network utilization. Most backups will throttle your network, because you're shipping a lot of data around. Because of that, I've had to break up the whole service into smaller segments in order to back it up more easily. You've only got 24 hours in a day, ultimately, so you can only backup so much data in that time. That was a problem we were having, where backups were taking more than a day to run. As we scale, the backups are more challenging time-wise. Now, there are ways around that. I'm just about to start a new project on Data Protector to look in at the VMware plugin because we are virtualized. I believe that will help a lot with my network throughput.

The technical support for Data Protector is good actually. I have no problems with that. We log calls, and they get back to us straightaway. I've had a couple of P1s that have moved around the world with the time zones, so it's always been worked on. That's been good.

At various companies that I've worked for, I've used different backup solutions. I've used Veritas NetBackup and Backup Exec. That was a proprietary backup. They're the two main ones that I've used recently.

The most important criteria to me when selecting a certain vendor is not so much the vendor as the product itself.

I've been involved in redesign and all the upgrades, not the initial setup. It's quite straightforward.

I know that Veeam is becoming a market leader in backup software. But, I haven't recommended anybody else but HPE. It just works for us at the moment, so no need to change.

The most important criteria to me when selecting a vendor is not so much the vendor as the product itself.

I would recommend it, absolutely. Just check your network can cope with the product and the backup throughput.

Restarting the failed session, where you don’t need to run a whole selection list backup.

Newer DP versions even have a resume feature, which should allow you to continue from the point of failure, instead of ruining the whole partition in case of a “restart failed objects“ error.

There are lots of bugs around; inability to downgrade version, issues with version upgrades, etc. For example, Data Protector version 8 didn’t have a properly working restore feature; the next upgrade came within week. All kinds of small things required workarounds and support engagement to find some tweak within the config files.

When comparing other backup software, such as BackupExec for example which I have used at the same time as Data Protector. For BackupExec our backup team did raise one vendor case throughout four years, while for Data Protector, we had three to four vendor cases opened every month. That is just in general, as I really do not remember all the details for all those, I dont know, but hundreds of cases opened with HP Data Protector support. What I remember we didn‘t have a single patching/upgrade of Data Protector version without issues, which could only be solved by HP Data Protector vendor support. While for BackupExec it was always smooth and any issues we encountered we were able to solve them on our own.

I have been using it for 4+ years.

I have not encountered any deployment, stability or scalability issues.

Customer service is great.

Technical support is great.

We switched because of company policy, the tapes aged, etc.

Initial setup was straightforward.

I was within the support team, which did implement as well as support the solution.

Huge. Simply eliminating the need for tape changers returned the cost of the hardware within less than half a year.

Get an expert who knows the products, so you can get the best prices possible for both DP and StoreOnce. Because there are some things that can work for the same solution in different ways, hence they are differently licensed as well as priced.

Make sure architecture is planning properly, e.g., centralised or decentralised HPE DP Cell Managers give you some quite different options and etc.

The primary use case is mainly for data protection for both short-term and long-term retention. We are resellers of Micro Focus and I am a storage and backup engineer.

Many colleagues complain about poor and complicated implementation of VMWare granular recovery

The feature I like the most is the deduplication implementation with CAPA. It's very good. 

I think the VMware backup integration and the cloud recovery is lacking. I also found it difficult to implement the granular recovery solution with Micro Focus for both VMware integration backups and for exchange integration backups. Implementing this solution was a big challenge. Other products like Veeam, or NetBackup have a simpler and more user friendly solution than Micro Focus. Implementation really should be more straightforward. I'd like to see stronger integrations, and an easier setup for granular recovery. It's a feature that plays a great role for data protection.

I've been using this solution for 11 years. 

Stability depends on the platform. It's quite stable on a Linux platform but I've had bad experience in the past with Windows. I don't know if there is more stability with the new releases, but we abandoned the Windows platform for the core services of Data Protector. We're using Linux.

The scalability is okay although there are issues regarding the database. If you're installing the solution in a physical machine, and you have to extend the database, it's not so easy.  With virtual machines, it's easy to extend it. Scalability depends on the type of installation. I suggest deploying the core as a manager that contains the database, then if you need to scale up storage, you can easily extend the virtual disk in a short time.

Technical support has not been good recently and in several cases, I have found the solution myself. I would expect support to be able to manage these issues. 

We currently also use NetBackup and Veritas which are both more open to other systems. There is also the Veritas fast solution for appliances together with the pro. With Micro Focus, you need to contact the vendor for equipment for the storage device, and for the new servers and the physical middle servers. NetBackup and Veritas only have one vendor and we get everything from them. It makes it easier to prepare bonds and to design a solution for customers. Veritas also has integration for cloud-native backup, and we have integration for the backup storage before the middle server. There is also good integration with VMware and Data Protector. Micro Focus is not like that. We need three different vendors to provide the same solution.

The time it takes to set up a virtual machine with the software operating system is very quick if it's a new installation. But if it's an upgrade, it is quite difficult, because it takes time to convert the database to the new user. The performance of this product in the Windows platform is not great so we usually don't install it. With VMware, it is easy to attach the kit, the package ISO file. Then the setup is quite easy. In that sense, it's like the other products for this. It's probably more difficult than implementing in a network environment, with firewalls in between middle servers and clients, or between some manager and the new servers.

Implementation was in-house

This solution is a manager service. We resell this product with the manager service in our private cloud that we provide the customers so for us, it's a good price. However, I do think they should lower the price as there are other, better technologies available.

EMC Networker

I would rate this solution a six out of 10.