Veritas NetBackup Appliance Reviews

With the NetBackup solution, we have a Flex Appliance in the central data center, which we use to backup remote sites. We will first do a local copy to a virtual appliance, and then to do a copy of the one network to the central appliances.

The most valuable technical feature for us is the deduplication ratio. This is a very important aspect in order to have a remote site backup. The advantage of the solution is that they provide agents for all types of databases and applications that are included in the solution.

The initial setup wasn't overly complex.

Technical support has been helpful over the years.

The initial setup gets easier the more you do it.

If you compare the solution to, for example, Dell Data Domain, it looks that the deduplication ratio is even higher than what we have on NetBackup. If they want to improve, then they should look at the deduplication ratio in future versions.

The configuration can sometimes be tricky during implementation.

If the features could be complete in that they can work on all systems, all operating systems, that would be ideal. We have a lot of diversity and integrations to the cloud. This means, for example, if your Flex Appliances are not sufficient, you, for example, can offload to Azure Cloud. I know in some devices it's already possible. However, it's not universally the case. 

Today, if we have to implement it as software, if we are talking about virtual appliances, we need to implement it as software. However, it could also be developed as a package, so that you just have to mount it and to have the service. That would also be an advantage.

We are a big company, and we have been using this solution already for multiple years. It's my understanding that we've used it for maybe five to six years.

The appliances that we are using with NetBackup are on our virtual private cloud. For a lot of other customers, they are using it as well for the remote site backup. Of course, we have plans to sell it more to customers and to also increase our usage amount - including the number of devices, the amount of software, and so on, that is needed. 

The technical support is not bad. We have a partner contact channel, where we can log cases and communicate with them. We're quite satisfied with the level of support we get and the amount of access we have.

We've also used HPE.

The initial setup wasn't complex. It was pretty straightforward. 

First of all, we have done it already a couple of times. That helps. You get used to it. Also, in one of our latest projects, we received assistance as well, from Veritas NetBackup. They were on hand to configure it correctly.

We have had Veritas help us with implementations. They assist in the configuration aspect of the process.

However, for the most part, we are a consultancy and service company ourselves, and therefore we have the needed resources in-house to handle most implementations ourselves.

We have a contract, a global contract, and we are providing services using that contract to different customers. However, I cannot say how much that costs us on a monthly or yearly basis.

We are an integrator and consultant.

While we tend to start by using the latest version of the solution, we may use various versions. I'm not sure which versions we are using right now.

We have a combination of different deployment types. 

My advice to others is that you should have a solution that can cover a lot of things. Especially if you look for the deduplication functionality. It's very important that you check that it's valid for complete virtual environments or VMware environments or Hyper-V environments. You can use it as a complete solution, meaning that you can have the full chain where you want to have deduplicated data streams and data storage locations. Users need to make sure that it is fitting on everything. Whatever a company chooses, they need to make sure before they start they aren't missing anything that they absolutely need.

With Veritas, you have the deduplication software and you have the Flex Appliances, and so on. I have learned also that there is some interesting functionality in the physical appliance as well, and that's not always known by teams of people. It could be useful as a DR solution, for example.

Overall, I would rate the solution at a seven out of ten. It does fill the requirements. The basic things are there. However, I have learned that other solutions have a higher deduplication ratio. If Veritas NetBackup would also come with a better deduplication ratio in the future I would rank it higher. 

Our primary use case of this solution is for backup and visualization. We are customers of Veritas.

I like the fiber channel transport, and that the solution can make it a media server. It saves us a lot of resources, unlike other products which consume a lot of resources.

The price for Veritas is very high and I'd like to see that reduced. 

I've been using this solution for seven years. 

The solution is stable. 

This is a scalable solution. 

Technical support could be improved, the knowledge base is quite low and it's complicated to deal with them. 

The initial setup is very easy, it took around two hours. We used a Veritas consultant. We deal with the maintenance ourselves.

I would recommend this solution.

I rate this solution an eight out of 10. 

We use Veritas NetBackup Appliance to backup virtual machines from VMware and Oracle Databases. 

The policy-based backup feature is very helpful. We don't really use many other features, but we're looking to use more.

The reporting feature can be improved. At the moment, we can't acquire the exact information we need from NetBackup. We're looking to improve it on the new system. If I were to look at it performance-wise or storage-wise, it's really complicated to see what's going on. I heard that there's an additional software for that problem, but I didn't really examine it.

We've been using Veritas NetBackup Appliance for about four years.

Veritas NetBackup Appliance is fairly stable. There were one or two errors in one backup, and we don't know what caused it. Overall, it's been a good experience.

Scalability is very good. 

I think they're helping us as much as possible, but they're just saying the problem is with our setup or maybe the internet, or something else. Those problems aren't with them. They say that it's with us, but we can't figure out the problem.

I would tell potential users that it's only worth it if they can use all the features.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give Veritas NetBackup Appliance an eight.

We have heard from many of our customers that they are very satisfied with NetBackup. Also, our technical engineer is very satisfied with the options and with the flexibility of the system, as it can be integrated into many hardware and software technologies.

NetBackup is based on really good architectural hardware, and Veritas has the best backup and replication technology in the world.

The price needs to be improved because it is really expensive.

I have been working with Veritas NetBackup Appliance for approximately four years.

We have not had any problems with stability.

There are between 40 and 50 users.

The technical support is good. The team in Morocco are very professional and they help us every time, with no problem.  

I would also recommend using Nakivo because it is a competitive product. It handles replication well.

However, if the customer wants an appliance then I recommend Veritas because it is more stable and more efficient.

In summary, this is a good product but it is very expensive.

I would rate this solution a four out of ten.

We have a library attached that we back up and store off-site, on a weekly basis. 

It only offers NDMP backup capabilities, we follow a traditional method. Mostly, we are creating backups of NetApp's shares.

We think the latest products and hybrid solutions are great, but considering the amount of data backup we have to perform — hundreds of BB data —, the hybrid model is not that efficient if we want to off-site data; it takes a lot of time to upload the data on a regular basis. 

The reporting is very good compared to other tools. Even though Commvault has some better features, the Veeam/Veritas center is a very good feature; it's really helpful for our reporting purposes. To clarify, I am referring to Veeam and Veritas NetBackup, as we have applied them both.

Because Veritas NetBackup Appliance is integrated with the cloud, it's hard to say. The block-level backup features could be improved.

I have been using this solution for three years.

This solution is both scalable and stable. Everyone in our company uses it and there are no issues.

The technical support is very good; I would give them a nine out of ten.

They have a standard two-hour response time but sometimes the response times vary. That needs to change.

We have been using Veritas NetBackup Appliance for a long time and never switched. Initially, we were using NetBackup. 

The integration was easy.

Overall, Veritas is a good solution; the problem is the cost. For a large enterprise, it's great.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give this solution a rating of eight.

We do not have a dedicated NetBackup Appliance.  Instead, we deploy through VMware.

We are actually in the process of migrating everything to the cloud and we are trying to bring our on-premises exposure down to zero. We have yet to see where we will end up with that effort.  

Our primary use of NetBackup is for backups. But there are all different types of data that are less critical in the backup requirements in any organization. We use Vertias for on-premises data backup. Gradually, we will have more need for cloud data backup.  

We are looking into appliances for running things on the Docker Container. If we do not have a large number of servers and MSDP (Multicast Source Discovery Protocol), basically we can use service tools or fixed appliances that will allow offloading or streamlining our backup solutions.  

Most organizations are going to the cloud. The on-premises backup solution is not very interesting anymore.  

In our legacy system, Veritas was the number one product for us in many ways to fill our backup requirements. If you have got something like IBM mainframes, for example, then you want to definitely use a Veritas type solution. It has been our go-to product for on-premises backup.  

If you have got a NetBackup Appliance, then you have many options. For example, you can do LTR (Long Term Retention) busted out to the cloud. If you have got longtime retentions then you can do that as an option.  

When you use appliances then you need to make the investment. They do not give it to you cheaply. So, this investment is an RTO (Recovery Time Objective). People who would like not to have this as their objective prefer to go for more of an on-demand solution, like the cloud. Most of the organizations I see are going to the cloud and they escape the physical architecture to minimize investment in their local data center as much as possible.  

So we, in turn, are currently using the VMware on an appliance, but we are planning to go through the process of decommissioning as much hardware as possible for our solutions. We would like to do that as quickly as possible.  

We have got sufficient backup windows to complete proper backup points. That is not a critical issue for us.  

Scalability is about having the data volume metrics and backup windows available to complete the process. So you need to have sufficient backup windows compared to your volume metrics. Other scalability issues may come into play when you want to just recover with a given RTO (Recovery Time Objective). But it is very uncommon in reality that you will recover from the backup. In the last three years, there was not a single case of recovery from backup. The backup and recovery end up being more for legal obligations than for reality.  

We did our own VMware-based deployment.  

On a scale from one to ten where one is the worst and ten is the best, I would rate Veritas NetBackup Appliance well. Going from our experience and the popular reports, it is one of the top three backup solutions. But the higher ranking is also based on being an appliance and that is not a growing part of the market.  

The product itself, I think, would be nine-out-of-ten. But the future market for the product will dwindle.  

NetBackup helps system administrators and solution architects to easily replicate and back up data from one site to another site. It is very flexible and suitable for mix environments. it has many advanced features which are needed for my customer's data centers. Most of our clients are looking for stable and sustainable solutions for protecting their data.

Most of our customers are using this software. We help to implement this solution for our customers. Most often, I use this solution in private-cloud and on-premises environments.

We can create a unified solution for our customers, in many data centers.

For example, one of my customers has some important data that needs backing up, and we had to use several solutions at the same time. These included Veeam and some backup scripts for their Linux environment. This solution has allowed them to unify their backup solution. The others were removed, leaving them with a single solution that was well suited to their requirements.

Another one of my customers had experienced a virus a few years ago, and most of their services were affected. Most of their data had been encrypted by the virus, and they were unable to decrypt it. This solution helped that company to restore their data in less than one week, and they were thereafter able to continue providing their services. It was an amazing event at the time.

This solution is flexible, powerful, and fast. It is very capable of scaling and very good for heterogeneous environments.

The day-to-day operations including imaging, backup, and restore, are very easy to do.

This solution includes many good features such as:

NetBackup Accelerator
NetBackup Replication Director
Synthetic Backups
Multi-streamed Backup
OpenStorage (OST) support
Bare-metal restore, supports P2V as an option
Automatic robotic/tape drive configuration
Broad tape device support

And also replication, compression, and integration with VMware. Many of the features it has are not available in other solutions.

This solution is very expensive, which is a problem for many companies. Some of them rule out this product because of the price.

I would like to see support for databases such as MySQL and MongoDB. This solution would benefit from integration with new operating systems. 

I have been working with this solution for more than twelve years.

This solution is really stable. It worked very well in the case of my customer who was attacked by the virus, and it is not dependent on other solutions.

This solution is designed in 3 layers Master Server, Media Server, Clients. This flexible architecture helps customers protecting their data across multiple data centers with maximum flexibility replication data across two sites also integration with the other storage such as EMC Data Domain and NetApp is very helpful for replication management, deduplication, and staging backup data.

Due to sanctions, my customers are often unable to use support from the original companies.

I have not had any experience with their technical support, although two of my colleagues have worked in Australia and have experience with their team. The level of support varies depending on the contract.

From what I understand, customers were satisfied with the support.

When it comes to the initial setup, this solution is not as easy as others when you are implementing it for the first time. You need to have experience with solutions such as Oracle, Linux, Exchange Server and the Malware Agent, otherwise, you will not be able to implement this solution at all.

This solution is easier to implement and configure than the software versions of NetBackup. You need to connect the channels, and then install the agents on your operating systems.

My customers generally implement this solution using in-house consultants.

I have implemented this solution, and it took me less than five days.

This solution is more expensive than HPE Data Protector and EMC NetWorker.

It costs more to license support for this solution, compared to others.

We routinely evaluate solutions in this area. One of them is EMC NetWorker, which is a good solution. IBM TSM and Veeam are also good solutions. However, none of these compare to Veritas in large projects.

This is a very good solution for Enterprise-level companies. One of my larger customers has been using this solution for more than five years. Because they didn't have experience with NetBackup, they preferred this appliance version. They have it deployed in their private data center.

While this is one of the best solutions in this space, the price is expensive compared to other solutions.

I would rate this solution a ten out of ten.

Over the past seven years, we have been using this backup solution. However, over the past year, we have begun to integrate Commvault, and have stopped worrying about upgrades for Veritas.

We are using an on-premises deployment and it has been used for our data center. We have various operating systems including Solaris, Windows, and Linux. Our databases include Oracle, MySQL, MongoDB, and Informix. We also have virtualization. This solution is responsible for everything in the data center.

We have good data backup coverage.

This solution has to have better integration with the cloud, as well as with other solutions such as Business Intelligence products.

They need to simplify the backup licensing model, as it is really complex at the moment. We are having problems with them because of the licensing, and this is why we are changing solutions.

It is not easy to manage the environment, and you need the expertise to do it.

The backup catalog is very complex and takes a lot of space compared to other vendors. There is an important need for a better catalog management system.

We have 99.9% completion of the backups.

At one point during our migration, we experienced a loss of all of our backups. It took approximately one week to restore all of them.

This solution is able to scale within an environment without a problem.

We back up more than two thousand servers.

Technical support for this solution is good, as long as you are paying for the high-level support. Otherwise, you will be dealing with somebody responsible for supporting many different products.

We did not use another solution prior to this one. We have used different versions of this solution over the past seven years, and we are now moving everything over to Commvault because they have a simple licensing model.

The initial setup of this solution is not simple. It is complex, and you really need a professional technician to assist. In the end, however, you have a really stable solution.

The deployment took place over time, where we have been improving things over the years.

We have perhaps twenty administrators and operators who manage this solution. It is not used by the end-users.

The price of this solution is very high compared to other solutions.

This is a really good technology, but they are missing some key, important features.

The biggest lesson that I have learned from using this solution is that there is always something that can be improved.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

The primary use case of this solution is to manage the backup of our very large infrastructure. We have five thousand servers on virtual machines used for several applications such as Oracle database, SAP, SharePoint, and other enterprise software. 

Our experience is in the manufacturing industry. The workload includes lifecycle management, manufacture execution, and software to support the manufacturing processes.

The most valuable feature is that the backup and restoring process is very fast. It is very resilient and it is quite easy to manage. I only have an architectural perspective, but another feature is the new multi-tenant feature available on the Flex system with the Veritas 5340 Appliance. This is a very appreciated feature, and we are required to maintain segregation between tenants.

We had some problems with the backup of the physical server. With the virtual machine field, the virtual server area was very strong. We had some difficulties with the physical server, the IBM Power, and the AIX operating system. The problems were with both the server-side and the storage-side. There were also issues in doing the back up for a physical server with others, like Windows server.

This is not a very complex problem in a Virtual environment, but we are facing a Legacy infrastructure, and we had some problems with Veritas and integrating with the Legacy hardware.

The interface is very poor. Currently, they are working on implementing a new web interface that enables the multi-tenancy directly on the user. The new features that they are implementing are faster and in terms of functionalities, they cover a lot of enterprise challenges.

This solution is stable, and we haven't had any problems. We have experience with other back up solutions such as IBM, DOT rep-storage manager, now known as the IBM Spectrum Scale. These are quite similar in terms of stability. It is also very reliable and it's not difficult to implement or to deliver an availability solution or a disaster recovery solution.

This solution is scalable. We can add a storage shelf to scale the storage capability. You can scale the master server to give you more computation of resources. The management of the infrastructure is scalable. We currently have a multi-tenancy limit where you can manage a maximum of eight tenants. If you require more than eight then you have to scale out. We have not yet been faced with this issue but there is quite a bit of mutation of this product.

We have ten users as backup administrators.

We have a relationship with backup support. Any engagement with technical support is very easy and quick. I have had good experiences when I have been faced with any problems. I have never had to call the help desk directly or the support team. I have always gone through the account manager for a solution.

The setup was not complex, it was straightforward. We had a delivery team very specialized in it, so it was not at all difficult. 

The deployment took about two to three weeks from the shipment of the hardware to the release of the solution in the production system. We are currently phasing another project stream in September. We were supposed to plan two weeks of activity to set up and configure the solution. I am currently the project manager of the project.

This is an available and reliable solution, which is very good to set up for enterprise systems. We had some issues with the management of delivery where we were only provided with a technician to implement the solution, which delayed the planning of installation. However, the technician was highly qualified.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

For example, in the past, we had to upgrade the operating system and then the software, but now we have everything bundled so that there is one upgrade for everything, which is a great improvement for us in management. It saves us time.

The features that are most valuable are the ease of integration in deployment and updates. Everything is packaged when you do the upgrade, so it's quite easy to manage. 

The price could be improved.

Also, sometimes when you have multiple appliances, you have to physically manage them one by one. It's okay if you have a few, but when you have ten or more, it's a bit annoying and takes more people/time to handle the management.

The scalability isn't great. Every time you want to add storage, you can't just add a little bit, you need to add a lot.

In a future release, they should make it NetApp storage, that's something there on the roadmap that's not available now.

Compared to a homemade installation, this appliance is very stable.

The solution is not very scalable because when you want to add storage you need to add a lot of storage. You cannot just add a few discs. Every time you add storage, you must add a huge amount of storage. In the future, we do plan to add some appliances, so we will increase the usage and replace some old appliances with new ones.

For specific appliances, support is very good.

The past four years we have used dedicated appliances. Before that, we were using homemade servers.

The initial setup was straightforward. I found it very quick and easy. For maintenance, we just need two people.

We're using the on-premises deployment model.

I would recommend others to consider the solution if they're using a lot of workloads. It's a really good product.  However, if you have only a small workload, it's a huge fixture for nothing. 

I would rate this solution eight out of ten.