Compare Commvault vs. Veritas Backup Exec
Commvault is ranked 2nd in Backup and Recovery Software with 27 reviews while Veritas Backup Exec is ranked 9th in Backup and Recovery Software with 18 reviews. Commvault is rated 8.8, while Veritas Backup Exec is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Commvault writes "Enables me to work on other things because I know the system is handling backups by itself". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Veritas Backup Exec writes "A solution with a good maintenance interface and excellent backup features". Commvault is most compared with Veeam Backup & Replication, Rubrik, Veritas NetBackup, Cohesity DataProtect and Veritas Enterprise Vault, whereas Veritas Backup Exec is most compared with Veeam Backup & Replication, Veritas NetBackup, Acronis Backup, Veritas System Recovery and Arcserve UDP. See our Commvault vs. Veritas Backup Exec report.
Most Helpful Review | |||
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 Find out what your peers are saying about Commvault vs. Veritas Backup Exec and other solutions. Updated: July 2020. 430,223 professionals have used our research since 2012. | |||
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros | |
We use Commvault IntelliSnap a lot. It's a very good product and has the functionality to enable a snapshot of a vendor's storage... It really helps to speed up the backup process for some of our environments. Its compression and deduplication allow us to store more backups and save storage space. The reporting is great; we are able to obtain critical business reports and infrastructure/usage information very easily. The solution’s user interface for managing the on-prem environment is good. What I find valuable is restoring the complete server. Restoring files is also valuable, but I like restoring the server because you don't have to rebuild a new one. One of the most valuable features is the encryption which helps save you from ransomware. Because the data is already encrypted, it cannot be encrypted again. The Command Center is provided from the web interface. You can back up the data for everybody, but also you can give everybody the ability to view and restore their data. For example, if a laptop, machine, or environment is owned by X, then X can look in and see the environment and data that he has backed up. He can see everything that he owns and can manage the environment as he wishes. It gives him an excellent view of his environment and infrastructure. Also, if you are a service provider, you can back up data for multiple companies and give everyone an interface for their environment to manage, backup, and restore data. Commvault has done excellent work in this area. The data is well-protected. It doesn't age off until it's copied. That's a big feature right there. When you reach the end of your retention, it does not expire until the secondary copy is completed. That allows you to hold onto data that otherwise would have aged off by retention. I like that feature. It's hard to just delete or lose data using the Commvault platform. Commvault software is a single platform where you can enable whatever you want to use, like endpoint protection. You can enable those licenses on a single platform screen. This is where I see the value ad. This is a single management tool. | Good open file option feature, SQL agent, and EM agent. Veritas Backup Exec is fully compatible with different tape libraries. This solution is not complex and you do not have to be too technical to use it. The beauty of the solution is that you can rely on it. It offers a quick recovery time when it's backing up items. The way it recovers data is excellent. This solution has a very good technical support department that is very responsive. Veritas is simple and easy to deploy. In terms of the presentation and UI, they do their job well. I have not seen another backup solution as scalable as this one. The solution is very scalable. Whenever we grew, it was just a matter of adding new licenses, so it's easy to grow. |
Cons | |
The software is good, but I always have issues with the documentation and, especially, the communication regarding new functionality. Commvault has a new maintenance release every three months, and it's always hard to know exactly what has changed in the software. They have improved a bit on that topic by communicating what has changed, but there is still a lot of room for improvement on that side. The solution requires constant attention. Commvault is very complex. We are constantly making adjustments and working through hotfixes, updates, and issues. Suppose I am restoring a particular file. If I want to restore the permissions only from that particular folder, that is not possible. I have to restore all the data for that particular folder. If there was an option to just restore the permissions, that would be better. We get an alarm if a lot of files are deleted, for example. That could look like ransomware, even if it is not. It takes a lot of technical expertise to implement. Commvault could increase the training it provides to customers and partners. I would like them to keep working on the new web interface to migrate out of the old interface because the old interface is a bit complex. It was driving customers away because of the complexity. If they migrate everything (100 percent of the features), this would make the product be perfect. Commvault likes to be ahead of the game when it comes to merging with other platforms, but sometimes it's before they have the solution truly baked in. Office 365 is an example. I feel that my company might be a litmus test for their solution, because we have such a large environment. Some of the promised solutions that we received from Commvault were more like testing solutions. They weren't really validated, meaning they were possibilities. There have been a lot of hot fixes for the solution that we're using right now, more than we expected. They don't market their products well. They don't do a lot of marketing to enable them to move forward. | Doesn't include disaster recovery. 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. The price of this solution is very high. The licensing packet is confusing. If Veritas could do a better job of clarifying it, that would be helpful. Expanding is difficult because if I want to add, for example, a terabyte of data, then I have to buy a disk shelf and it will cost me a lot. Maybe they could improve reporting capabilities and predictions. The user interface needs to be improved. In terms of improvements, I think the pricing model could be improved. They charge you by port, for every port that you have even if you're not using all of them. |
Pricing and Cost Advice | |
We work with Commvault and a partner on our environment needs according to capacity, licensing, pricing, components, modules, etc. Additional costs depend on your backup needs. We have checked some other products, but we are not testing them because price-wise, Commvault is better than the other solutions. It is cheaper than Veeam. It was not very popular because of its previous cost, but they have been working on the pricing, and now anyone can afford to use Commvault. They changed the modeling criteria for their pricing. Previously, there was only the capacity modeling based on your content capacity. In this case, they would give you a license and you would have to pay it. Now, most of the environment is virtualized so you can have the best CPU, VMs, etc. You buy whatever you need and pay for what you need. We went from Veritas NetBackup to Commvault. We switched due to upfront licensing and costs. We have more visibility into what we're actually purchasing. It seemed like, overall, the cost of Commvault was cheaper. The complete license gives us options for all the features. Commvault does not license based on storage or the management components. It can integrate with any storage vendor. That means that when we are out of storage and need more, we can integrate without additional licensing. In my opinion, Commvault needs to reduce the licensing cost by 20 to 40 percent to make it cost-efficient. Commvault licensing is a perpetual license so only the support is being renewed yearly. There is a bit of cost involved with signing up the entire solution. It's not a cheap solution. | There is an evaluation license available to test this solution. The price of this solution is a bit high. It's a good price for the product. We are satisfied with the price of this solution. Veritas licensing is somewhat expensive. They have to decrease the price. I would like to see a better licensing model. They changed it and it's just horrendous. |
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Answers from the Community | |||
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Ranking  | |||
Views 34,762 Comparisons 23,275 Reviews 25 Average Words per Review 1,223 Avg. Rating 8.7 | Views 14,927 Comparisons 12,031 Reviews 17 Average Words per Review 471 Avg. Rating 8.5 | ||
Popular Comparisons | |||
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Also Known As | |||
| Backup Exec, Symantec Backup Exec | |||
Learn | |||
| Commvault | Veritas | ||
Overview | |||
Commvault can help you transform your data into a powerful strategic asset, with data protection and information management solutions that enable you to protect, access and use all of your data anywhere and anytime. | Backup Exec delivers powerful, flexible, and easy-to-use backup and recovery to protect your entire infrastructure whether built upon virtual, physical, or a combination of both. Backup Exec is licensed per media server, agent and option. | ||
Offer | |||
Learn more about Commvault | Learn more about Veritas Backup Exec | ||
Sample Customers | |||
| Aberdeenshire Council, Acxiom, BAM Group Ireland, Catholic Education Diocese of Parramatta, CI Investments, Clifford Chance, Alliant Credit Union, American Municipal Power, American Pacific Mortgage, AstraZeneca, Dongbu Steel, Denver Health, Dow Jones, Emirates Steel, Penn State Health, Prime Healthcare, Sonic Healthcare, Sony Network Communications, TiVO, UCONN Health, The Weitz Company | Beta Offshore | ||
Top Industries | |||
Comms Service Provider19% Energy/Utilities Company10% Government10% Healthcare Company10% Computer Software Company44% Comms Service Provider11% Government6% Media Company6% | Energy/Utilities Company14% Manufacturing Company14% Retailer14% Engineering Company7% Computer Software Company35% Comms Service Provider15% Government10% Media Company7% | ||
Company Size | |||
Small Business30% Midsize Enterprise28% Large Enterprise43% Small Business6% Midsize Enterprise10% Large Enterprise84% | Small Business52% Midsize Enterprise10% Large Enterprise39% | ||
Find out what your peers are saying about Commvault vs. Veritas Backup Exec and other solutions. Updated: July 2020.
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Hi, I would recommend Veritas NetBackup if the environment heavily has physical components instead of virtual components. I find NetBackup more user friendly and more technological. NetBackup has also appliances which provides media server role as a whole (including storage network, Red Hat OS etc). Dedupe technology is very good. With 8.1, there are many good features such as cloud catalyst which provides less data to the cloud provider. Moreover, I recommend to look at 360 data management philosophy.
Frankly, we don't use any of above 2 software. We are using Veeam Backup, a rising star, as the mainline now.
Like man other collègues i would recommand you to go with veeam!
My Commvault and Veritas Netbackup experiences are quite dated. My team and I were going to do a Commvault POC last year but voted against it as Commvault would have required a lot of time and infrastructure resources just to do the test.
We did a Veeam POC which also proved to be more resource intensive than what we were willing to use in our environment.
After working with Rubrik, it was a no-brainer. We invested 2 days from racking the test unit to backing up 450 VMs. Even though Rubrik is a fairly new player, it provides most of the functionality we need at this time and in the future.
Another new player I just had the opportunity to play with is Hycu. This solution was designed from the ground up to fully integrate with the Nutanix Hyperconverged infrastructure we deployed to replace our Cisco UCS / NetApp / VMware Flexpod.
So, in conclusion, one of our goals was to find an environment that would free up our time from daily administrivia and complexity so we could focus more in proactive system administration and projects.
I hope my comments provide some value to the colleague. The best approach to decide what is right for a specific company is to put some effort in POCs and testing the products in their specific infrastructure to make sure it meets their needs and fills their requirements in terms of their immediate and future plans.
Commvault is better for cloud
if you use virtualisation I recommend Veeam Backup
Whatever backup/recovery you use, it all depends on the administrator. Perseverance is key. All backup software are designed to recover data. It is up to the administrator to make it work and ensure that data is recoverable. I've been using/working with a different backup software, one that is "feared" by most backup/recovery administrators. It is said that this software is the most difficult to implement and operate. But, in the last 15 years, it has been running, securing and recovering data for my clients.
I am not sure if I am qualified to answer on CommVault extensively as I have only encountered it when replacing It with NetBackup.
At a location I worked at they were using CommVault 6 I believe it was and had issues all of the time or a good portion of the time with the corruption of the server’s databases. In a 1 year basis because things were not monitored or fixed as I would think they should have out of 45 TB of data supposedly backed up only at 15 TB were actually restorable without major resources to try and work around it. The way that it was doing duplication is a job would not be deleted from the server until such time as the tape copy was completed. This caused a large backup of files waiting to finish duplication to tape (which is the way it should be) but when files that should have been deleted 6 months previously are still waiting for their copy to tape, that kind of defeats the purpose. Another issue was backing up agentlessly VMs. We had to configure a proxy server to do that then could not bill the customer accurately because the backup reports only showed the proxy server. Whether an optional product could have helped I do not think so because of the way backups are reported. This could have changed in the last couple of years but I would not be surprised if it was still an issue. If you wanted to use an appliance like a Data Domain you have only one of two ways to backup to the Data Domain and that would be as a VTL or CIFS/NFS mount points. That is not an efficient way to do it especially trying to get away from tape. I do not feel that CommVault is what I could classify and Enterprise Class close but not yet.
Veritas Backup itself is very stable. Most issues with stability come from running too many parallel operations and the hardware itself can’t handle it." I have used NetBackup quite a bit over the last 15 years. I have seen it go from 3.4 all the way now to 8.0. I agree that NBU has its issues and the support is not what it use to be. It has a great deal of flexibility with the type of backups you can do with it. A good example of agentless backups in NBU can be set up to back up automatically by using an annotation field in vCenter or the Tag field in the future. This allows the for the automatic back of VMs with no backup person time required as long as when the VM is created the annotation field is added. If NetBackup is setup properly and sized properly a lot of issues with parallel operations go away. In one environment that I know of right now they are backing up 900,000 jobs a month going to tape for the majority of them and that includes SQL, Oracle, Unix/Linux and Windows. Most problems that I have come across are misconfiguration, and lack of proper planning with the environment.