We performed a comparison between NetApp SnapCenter, Oracle Data Guard, and Veeam Backup & Replication based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about Veeam Software, Zerto, Commvault and others in Backup and Recovery.
"The most valuable feature is that it's centralized. In the old SnapManager days, we had software for each server. Now, with a centralized system, we're able to manage all systems remotely, and all agents remotely, and update them remotely. That's a huge benefit for us."
"A feature that stands out is cloning databases. If you have a SQL database and it's huge, like one terabyte, the classical SQL way would be to do a backup-restore to create a clone of your database for test purposes. With SnapCenter now, we can clone a database but through the Snapshot technology, which means if you right-click and you click Clone, the one terabyte database is there instantly."
"I like the instant backups and recovery feature that SnapCenter provides within NetApp storage systems."
"The backup features are the most valuable because they allow the DBAs to replace SnapManager for Oracle (SMO), which is going away, and to do cloning as well. We can also clone to different servers and have the actual backup clone mounted on different servers. And we can split easily too."
"The most valuable feature is the RBAC, the Role-Based Access Control. In our managed service, we can have different layers of security."
"The way that it interconnects with VMware is really handy, because you can go right into your vSphere client, where you spend a lot of the day anyway, right-click on one of the VMs where you have backups running for however long, and you can restore either some files or restore the entire thing."
"Being able to add everything in as resource groups is a valuable feature... Having all the SQL servers put into specific buckets, based on their year of release - 2008, 2012, 2014 - allows us to get almost immediate backups that are easily seen and reported on."
"Restoring and cloning are easy to do."
"One of the most valuable features is real-time replication. The version we're using is reliable and easy to deploy."
"Technical support is very good. If at any time we write a ticket, we get the appropriate answer on time."
"Oracle Data Guard is scalable. I rate it a ten out of ten."
"Oracle Data Guard has a nice feature called the DataGuard snapshot to open the solution in the read-write mode and make some changes to the database."
"Oracle Data Guard is a free solution. When you apply for Enterprise Manager, it comes for free with the solution."
"We use Data Guard for online replication from data center, to data center for high availability. This is the most important feature."
"The most valuable feature is the flashback standby, which allows us to test without scrapping the database."
"If you have a problem with your primary site and can't access your primary database, you can continue working with the database that you have as standby on the other site, by changing its role to primary."
"This solution is very flexible and user-friendly — it's very good. It's very good with our virtual and physical infrastructure."
"The WAN accelerator feature has been the most valuable for me. That feature reduced the time needed to complete the task from 25 days to less than a week! This is compared with the original tools used: ntbackup, robocopy and Windows Server Backup."
"The initial setup was very easy."
"Before Veeam, we had backup infrastructure sprawl. Veeam was able to reduce our overall backup windows while reducing our dedicated backup infrastructure."
"Replication is most valuable."
"It's fairly easy to manage and set up."
"The instant VM recovery feature is the most valuable. It is a very good tool for disaster recovery. It is also easy to manage."
"One of the most valuable features is the simplicity of the solution's administration."
"Some of the minor functionalities from SnapManager did not transfer over to SnapCenter. These should be added in future releases."
"I feel a little bit that during the whole process of putting this software into production we were like a beta program. It was full of bugs... For example, we had a problem with truncating our Exchange log files... It has improved over time."
"Since the solution's initial setup is complex, it should make training documents available in the public space."
"The product lags in terms of availability."
"I would like to see replication support between systems. Right now, it's kind of limited. We manage them separately from the storage system interface, not from SnapCenter. It would be nice if it was integrated into SnapCenter."
"Plugins should be developed in shorter times. Performance generally could be a little bit faster."
"If it was possible to create backups on non-NetApp storage, that would be helpful."
"Groups might be helpful for each site or data center so that we know a given data center has these resources while another data center has those resources. It's not always easy to group hosts by type."
"For every standby server you have, you must pay a licensing fee, which is the main disadvantage."
"The initial setup is complex."
"There is an issue with their application on ODG. There were a lot of edits in the logs. Sometimes, we only get a little cue from the Data Guard Broker logs if there's an issue."
"The deployment cost is expensive."
"The database administration needs improvement. With Oracle, we have a lot of features for administrating data, but it might be too many. It needs to be simplified. It should be automated. Looking at Enterprise Manager, there are too many KPIs in place."
"The implementation is complex for anyone who's jumping into it without any experience. It's all command-line driven implementations. For some, that's a turn-off."
"Overall, there are some operational issues that need to be dealt with."
"The usage of block storage devices in the cloud or migration of a type of storage from one site to another site can be improved. Currently, we have to use multi-node to single node because of the lack of storage support on the Azure side. It did not really work. Our DBA had to spend a lot of time tweaking the Data Guard tools, or the underlying Oracle VMs, to make sure that Data Guard would run on top of different types of storage. So, if it can support transporting or getting from one type of storage to another type of storage in a different site or a different technology, it would be very helpful."
"When you have some small issues, you should be able to go through it by yourself and solve the issue instead of opening the ticket and waiting for the engineers to troubleshoot."
"I would want them to improve some technical features that are still missing because we are working with NetApp NVMe and they're not fully supporting it yet. But both NetApp and Veeam know about it and they're working on it."
"The initial setup of Veeam Backup Replication is straightforward. The process took approximately two days. The setup could be streamlined to take less time."
"Could offer a better conclusion of the backups."
"If you upgrade too quickly, you may have issues."
"The data duplication should be improved."
"They can improve the features and Veeam Enterprise Manager. The interface and features are kind of limited. It would be good if they can provide more features and a better interface. For example, if I want to provide certain users with the privilege to back up and restore and do day-to-day tasks, I cannot do it in the current version. It is like you either give everything to everyone or no user can have access to anything. In version 9, a lot of features were missing, and it wasn't clear. Version 10 is easier from the communication perspective, and the disk backup option is very clear."
"There should be better use of the external hard drives."
