Veritas Backup Exec Reviews

The solution is integrated with the Exchange, so it's an online backup.

There is no need to choose which file, which directory, or which components are required to select for the backup. Once the solution is integrated with the Exchange, you just click Exchange to back up that file.

The solution can be improved by adding the ability to restore individual mailboxes. Currently, the solution does not have the capability to restore a single mailbox, so you lose a lot of time having to restore for example ten mailboxes just to recover one. 

I have been using the solution for 12 years.

The solution is stable.

The solution is scalable.

Technical support is good. Our company is a support partner with Veritas.

Before using the solution we used Legato Backup and Symantec Backup which are both run with Linux operating systems. We switched because this solution is easier to use.

The initial setup of this solution is very easy. We require just half an hour for initial deployment, and for post-deployment.

The implementation was completed in-house.

I give the solution a six out of ten.

We currently have over one hundred people using the solution including L1, L2, and L3.

A single team is required for maintenance. A team of 10 people on multiple scales is managing that particular customer, not only specific to Exchange or specific to any backup or specific to any Windows operating system. We have a team of people with multi skills, looking at starting load balance, SQL, and data works like that.

The interface is intuitive and the documentation is good.

The solution is integrated with the Microsoft SQL database.

I use it in many uses, for example for Microsoft Exchange and for databases, for active directory and file servers. I use Backup Exec because it has agents for different software and is based on your infrastructure.

I remember in the 2010 version you needed to have two jobs per data source; one job for full backup and another job for a differential. But now you can merge both of them into a single record and have different schedules for them. The results and the interface are better now, and there is no extra knowledge needed for using this. It is very simple.

I prefer to use a tape library and Veritas Backup Exec is fully compatible with different tape libraries. So I prefer this software.

Of course, all of the solutions are agent-based, but granular recovery, GTR, works well in Backup Exec. It was Symantec in the past. I can easily recover a user or a file. It mainly works directly to the original location, which is why I prefer to use it.

In the past, it was not user-friendly. But nowadays it's very user friendly. But it could be better if it had a web-based interface. 

A web console would be great because nowadays a lot of products are web-based and you can access the console from various environments. So I would recommend bringing this feature in the next solution.

I want to have a user-friendly interface for virtualization. Now virtualization doesn't have an extra interface. A great interface would be good. And maybe it would be better if they launched a virtual appliance.

I have been using Veritas Backup Exec for at least six or seven years.

I am still working with it on daily projects.

It is stable. It's like other Windows based services. You turn down the tape library and want to restart services. I think it would be better to be more intelligent about these changes. For example, when I want to turn off the tape library and turn it back on, it would be better if there was no need to restart the services. Sometimes I need to restart services or even sometimes I need to restart the server in order to bring up the tape library or ABS.

I don't know how compatible it is with a cloud environment, but for scalability for SMB companies it's good because you could have one central management and deploy different servers in different areas and manage it in a single, central point. I think it is good for SMB's.

Generally, I use this solution for servers and not for clients.

It is good for small and medium clients. Although I think that it would not be popular with enterprise companies. I don't have experience in a closed environment. But I think if you don't have this environment, it would be good and suitable for them too.

Generally, Web Backup is more complex, but Backup Exec is easy to use. 

The initial setup is not very complex. I've deployed in different projects, but installation was the easiest part for me. Having a good plan for the backup solution is more complex than installation, I think. You have to consider the concurrent back-up jobs and the speed and data growth. 

It is good that you don't need to install an extra database.

On a scale of one to ten, I would rate Veritas Backup Exec an eight.

I would advise that it's not important which product you use because I think most of the products are good quality and nowadays have at least a standard because of technological enhancements, but it's more important to understand the concept of back-up and recovery. For example, how many jobs are needed, what is your infrastructure, what storage do you need, things like that. Having knowledge of data and back-up recovery is more important than the actual solution.

It's not important which tools you use, because nowadays all the solutions, for example, Veeam, are good. It's better to know what you want and to have good knowledge of back-up and recovery concepts, for example, storage, data, data growth, SQL, etc.

We use this solution to backup MS SQL databases, backup NAS servers, backup virtual machines, and directly backup clients ( on windows servers).

All data sources are covered by a backup process which is very stable and fast.

A big advantage is that it can backup direct to tape.

It has good stability. Its interface is very good, responsive, and easily restores data. I use it for backup, encryption, and restore operations, and it works.

The possibility to back up and restore directly to/from tape is valuable.

I am using many agents from VM to LMDP. I also use an agent for SQL Server, which has advanced options because it is the Enterprise version.

It is currently missing the dynamic backup feature for virtual machines, which is available in NetWorker. I can create politics in NetWorker to add virtual machines with specific tags, but I cannot do this in Backup Exec, which is a minus for me. Currently, a user has to send a request to the Backup Administrator to add a machine to the backup, but I should be able to create rules to automatically add a new machine to the backup. This kind of functionality is very important in current times, especially when we are using cloud solutions.

I should be able to create more than one stream in a policy and specify how many streams I want to run in parallel in one policy. Currently, I have to manually create more policies to back up more than one virtual machine at the same time.

Their support can also be improved in terms of response time.

I have been using this solution for forty years.

It is a stable product. There are no issues with its stability, but I am facing an issue with QNAP storage. 

I use two types of storage for backup: Data Domain and QNAP. With QNAP, the backup server connects through iSCSI, and sometimes, I had problems with the stability of storage on QNAP through the iSCSI interface. I didn't have any such issue with Data Domain. I am trying to find a solution to this. I have tested the storage from Quantum, which is a good solution. Very soon, I will change from QNAP to duplication storage from Quantum.

They are helpful, but they are not very fast. They respond, but it takes them 24 hours to send the first response, which is not good. I am using their standard support. They might have another better support.

Positive

Its initial setup was complex because I had an old version of Backup Exec, and I could not upgrade directly to version 20. I had to do a new installation and migrate the data. It was nice but complex.

We used an in-house team to implement the solution.

We save six hours.

It has a good price-value ratio. Its price-value ratio is better than Veeam.

It has good replication, and it is better than other products. It is good for backing up not only VMs but also clients. It is also good for SQL Server and NDMP data servers.

I would rate Veritas Backup Exec an eight out of ten.

It is for backup and business continuity. You have a technology in there that allows you to start virtual machines on the backup set of data, which is really cool stuff. It also allows you to have an image of your environment. You can drop an image onto a virtual machine and just spin that environment up.

It supports cloud and on-prem deployments. If you have the infrastructure in the cloud, you can deploy it there. If you want an on-prem solution, that also works. The cloud provider is usually Amazon, but it doesn't really matter.

Synthetic backup is valuable. It gives you the possibility to do a synthesized backup, which means that it combines a full backup and incremental backup data and gives it to you in one stream. So, you don't have to restore the full backup and then later go and restore the incremental backup. You can do that in one go. 

It has also got some backup lifecycle policies that allow you to do different things in one backup definition. So, in one backup definition, you are backing up data, copying it to another place, and probably creating an image of the data. You are doing multiple things in one backup configuration, which is very good because it simplifies the way administrators work.

I wish that they have an outlet for the other products from Veritas built into the Backup Exec product. For example, Backup Exec does only server backup. Currently, it is possible to read the backup of one other product, but if they can add more products so that you can just go into the dashboard of these other products by clicking on a button within the Backup Exec product, it would be great.

They should also increase the number of applications that it is backing up currently.

I've been working with this product, in general, for about five years.

It is very stable. I would rate it a ten out of ten in terms of stability.

It is scalable and manageable. Some of the solutions can scale but become complex to manage. This is scalable and easily manageable.

They provide great support. I would rate them a ten out of ten.

Positive

It is very simple and straightforward. It is done in 30 minutes. One engineer is enough for its deployment.

The whole implementation in a small-sized or medium-sized environment takes a maximum of three days. In a large one, it depends on the number of machines and different use cases that you're looking at, but usually, in a week, you are done. In the first two to three days, you would have done quite a lot of the deployment. It is just more about having conversations with the backup admin to understand, for example, how often they want the data backed up and other little things, but in terms of getting the solution to work, it is pretty straightforward.

The ROI is really good, and it is better than most of the other competing products. I would rate it a four out of five in this aspect.

It is affordable, but I hope that the price will come down a lot because of other competitors. It is a good price for the customer, but sometimes, the competition provides a much lower price. 

There are two ways to license it. You can license it per instance or per terabytes of data that we are mocking up. It is enough because it is not so complex. It is good when you're working with customers.

OEM has always been a data company. They've always wanted to protect data. The methodology, the idea, or the concept behind the Backup Exec application is that you can back up and restore your data, and you can go to sleep. There are other newer solutions on the market. Of course, they also do the job, but when it comes to working in a simple manner, Backup Exec does the job well. So, one should not just say that Backup Exec is a product that has been around for a long time, and it is not modern. Backup Exec is very modern, very fresh. You should at least try it out before you make any decisions.

I would rate it a nine out of ten.

We use Veritas Backup Exec mainly to backup virtual machines (about 120), and also Exchange mailboxes (about 1500).

I have found the overall features of the solution very good.

There is the option to backup to the cloud (we don't use it for now).

I have experienced some errors. From time to time the backup of one VM fails.

I have been using Veritas Backup Exec for approximately 15 years.

Overall the stability of the solution is good.

The scalability of the solution is very good.

I am the only one really using the solution in my organization. But I have 2 other colleagues able to do most of the tasks required when I'm away. 

The technical support is good.  It does not take too long to receive an answer. 

Positive

I have previously used another solution, Arcserve.

The installation is very easy.

In house.

The price of Veritas Backup Exec is fair and we pay annually for the license. Compared to other solutions, such as Veeam, it is less expensive.

For a time we were, long ago, we were using both Acserve and Backup Exec (it was physical
servers at the time, some servers were backed up with Arcserve and others
with Backup Exec). We decided to simplify this and kept the best of the two.

I recently was asked to evaluated Veeam. My conclusion was that for our needs Veeam did not bring anything that backup exec was perfectly able to do, and Veeam was significantly more expensive.

Veritas Backup Exec is a good solution. It can take a little time to get used to the GUI, but once you've understood how it works, it's really great to use. You can quickly do what you want to do, or get the information you want. 

I rate Veritas Backup Exec an eight out of ten.

We deploy Veritas Backup Exec for customers where they have a production site with between 10 terabytes and up to 50 terabytes of data where they then backup the data to their local storage and then replicate it to their site or to the cloud.

I work with partners and end customers, Backup exec is improving yearly and they are introducing new features which enhance things like quick recovery with forever backup, global dedupe, etc.

The one thing for the last 12 months which has been very good for Veritas was the instance-based license. This means that you're able to license per instance, not only per physical server. And also, the incremental backup which they introduced for virtual servers, where it makes it much quicker to restore, it just automatically is able to mount it back to the original backup. This makes it much quicker when you're doing the restore.

The one thing which could be improved, which we have informed Veritas about, is the ability to plug in to the cloud. Meaning, instead of using local storage if we're backing up a small user or end user, we want to be able to make it so they can direct the backups directly to the cloud. It can't be done at the moment. We can only back up to the storage then replicate to the cloud, but we cannot use the cloud as a source of storage.

In terms of features, myself and my team are quite happy with most of the features. The only feature which we need is the plugin to the cloud. That's it. They've been doing a lot of improvements. The other part which they need to look at is the replication feature. In this case, we're talking about replicating between server to server. We do have a lot of competition from Veeam because of that. A lot of people want to have one server in the production side and one server at the other side, and replicate the servers across.

In my current position, I have been using Veritas Backup Exec three years, but I used the product previously when it was still under Symantec for four years.

100%. It's got great stability. In South Africa, it is widely used and it's got very good stability. Just that, as I said, only one improvement they need. Otherwise, the product itself is great.

It is scalable.

For one site you only need one person, max two. The administration or console is very easy to accommodate. One person is able to do that. That's no problem.

I work with technical support a lot whenever there are technical issues. They have been very good. Although they sometimes do battle with something, they eventually get it right. So I will rate them nine out of 10.

The initial setup is very easy.

Normally we take about two hours. It's just that sometime if the environment is old then you have to fix the environment first. But if everything work 100%, two hours, max four hours and then you're done.

For customers, the main point is to make sure that the skill of the solution is readily available in the county. That's the reason why it is an easy product to adopt or to onboard in your environment, especially here in South Africa.

On a scale of one to ten, I'll give Veritas Backup Exec a nine out of 10. It's just one point I'm taking off because of those two small issues. We feel that the competition is using it against Veritas.

We have an on-premise deployment with a master server and five media servers. There is also Tape Libraries included and the maturity of the solution let us backup everything with assurance. 

Veritas is the main backup solution in our company. We have hundreds of virtual machines that we back up. They are VMware, Windows, and physical servers. It makes our backup process so stable and robust. Everybody with every kind of OS and service depend on our backup structure.

The most valuable feature is the SLP, and using it has been very beneficial.

The user interface needs improvement. When comparing the user interface to other backup and replication products, it is greatly lacks in UI. In some cases when I have an error, I need to use the command line. I prefer to have access to the logs of different services through UI and even to the services itself.

About the stability, It has occurred to me sometimes that I have crash on the master server. Sometimes in Device monitor you lose a device but after recovery the state doesn't change and you need to restart the application. But about the Backup processes, it is stable like 99.99. I suggest this solution to those who would like to run backup up solutions.

This is a very scalable solution. If you want to scale outside of our building then it can be done easily. It just requires installation of a new media server that is then joined to the master server. I have not seen another backup solution as scalable as this one.

I have been able to learn how to use this solution on my own, without training. Where I am, in Iran, we do not have an official Veritas branch. Therefore, most of the teachers are self-taught and have not used official technical support.

When I encounter an error, the first thing I do is visit the Veritas forum. Usually, I find a solution to the problem based on the type of error. In fact, the backup forum seems to be full and complete because there is no error that I have not been able to solve.

The installation of this solution was easy. Before the installation begins, you have to know the structure of your company and what scenario fits. For example, we are a company with master media, and we install it on our servers. We have about five full-size media centers and a master server. The installation is straightforward for an IT person.

I and one other person made up the team responsible for implementing this solution.

I have suggested this solution to four of five people. For big companies, with more than fifty people, I recommend this product completely. However, for companies with less than fifty people, I don't suggest it.

For the installation, you need at least two servers and a tape librarian. This is a good enterprise-level solution.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

We have never had any problem with storage and backups. It works very well and is a user-friendly solution.

The scalability could be improved even though the solution is targeted to small customers.

I've used this solution for almost eight years.

In terms of stability, the volume to backup is not very big, and we have never had any problems.

With regard to scalability, Veritas Backup Exec is a good solution for very small enterprise clients. If you have big systems, you must move to NetBackup if you stay with Veritas.

We have 10 to 12 people who use this solution.

The technical support is very good. Veritas is one of the best at providing technical support.

There were no problems with implementation.

I think it's sold at the right price. It's not expensive. The license is usually for a year.