We have so many specific technological cracks in Micro Focus, but we are not getting the features, facilities, or coordination between the global delivery centers and the R&D team that we need to express our ideas. 

If they can overtake these, either they can go through R&Ds or they can allow us to go through R&Ds it would be helpful. Because we couldn't find certain lab environments where we could just try to succeed in those environments because we can't always go test in the customer environment.

When a technology consultant provides an idea, it is because they have just gone through the customer environment, they have gone through the lock and et cetera, they are well versed with those, and all they need now are some solutions. However, if I need to work with R&Ds, we don't have those solution architects who can help us manage, test, and implement those environments. 

That is where we fall short. We couldn't find an environment where we could simply try to go through testing and then implement it in the customer locations.

DP is a very user-friendly product, and we are transitioning to a web-based environment. It works because we don't have to go through a platform that is dependent on each cell manager individually. Rather, we can try to create a platform-independent solution, such as a portal that can be accessed from anywhere.

That is one option where I can work out in more central environments where I can just try to manage. We have a number of features where if we find a web portal and a good tool managing the number of devices and even just trying to configure along with a centralized medium and database, CMDB, we have a number of features. We have a very good feature going through centralizing media management, centralizing cell managers, and then working on a centralized media where we can just try to manage them to a cloud, which works very well because it is a centralized environment where we can pitch into it.

OpenText Data Protector is more difficult to use and configure than OpenText VIM. The user-friendliness of OpenText Data Protector has to be increased, and the complexity of the tool needs to be reduced. The product is just not easy to use. Teaching OpenText VIM to someone without experience is much easier, but it may take a week to do the same thing with OpenText Data Protector.

It might be unfair, but when I compare it to Veeam, I find that Veeam is more advanced. I've used Veeam more extensively than Data Protector. Data Protector, in my opinion, has a rather dull interface, especially when compared to Veritas and Veeam. I'm uncertain if it supports virtual machine backup and restoration. If they could enhance this aspect, they could gain more support from end users.

We're not satisfied with the robustness and stability of the software since Micro Focus took it in-house. The GUI is one thing they could improve. It's still a bit archaic. Data Protector needs a more functional, user-friendly GUI.

I am not happy with the support structure within HPE when things go wrong.

It takes longer than competing products to get updates to cover a new OS version or product version (i.e., a new version of SQL). This is necessary so that backups within those environments work properly.

The update to Data Protector to cover Windows Server 2012 for backing up the file system took months longer than many of Data Protector’s peers.

We faced some certification issues after we upgraded to version 10.2.

If I compare products from HP to Micro Focus, I do not see a lot of development in Micro Focus like before. The product can be developed by including functionalities like DR, CDP, and SureBackup, which are currently unavailable in the solution. However, one also needs to consider that Micro Focus is used by enterprise-sized businesses that don't care about many features. The solution's data protection features and scalability could be improved.

I know I am being picky, but the only thing that really tripped us up is the license model. It’s a wonderful product, but if they could change that model, it would be great.

I would like to get everything for 60 days, so I can turn on all the features that I want. I can get it all set up and then broadcast a message to somebody at HPE or their distributors. We could sort out our licensing then, because we will have time to work out what we want to do, and get it honed up first. Because we're all moving to a service base, it would make sense to do it that way.

We have a lot of requests for the Micro Focus team, particularly in terms of the Japanese data pattern, as it's not as good now. The Japanese data pattern accuracy of the Micro Focus Data Protector needs to be improved because there are a lot of false negatives and false positives. We are currently testing this and our product team has been communicating with the Micro Focus team.

What we'd like to see in the next release of the solution is better compatibility with other products, apart from a more accurate Japanese data pattern.

I don't like this solution so much because it's very technical and compared to Commvault and Veeam, it's not so user-friendly. The interface needs improvement. 

It was sold to another company, I haven't seen a lot of improvement that they have done. 

In SAP restoration, we faced issues with changing the SIDs and changing the path for every backup object. It is quite a lengthy process to do that. We have to change that individually on every object. We have also provided an enhancement request to the OpenText team.

The backup process for SAP Oracle could be improved. When restoring, the need to alter SIDs arises, particularly in scenarios involving server changes or out-of-place restores. This leads to a requirement for modifying remote checkpoint settings and initiating the restoration process. The situation becomes more complex and time-intensive when dealing with a large number of files.

So, improvements are needed for the backup of SAP Oracle, especially for situations involving CPR codes

Another area of improvement is support. There's room for improvement in terms of the support we receive from the OEM or the technical support team.

The reason for seeking improved support is mainly due to extended response times. Mostly, I've encountered situations where an engineer has to wait until the end of their shift before passing the issue to the next level of support. This process takes too much time to resolve any issue. Unfortunately, we frequently do not receive dedicated support from the Micro Focus team.

Another area of improvement is stability of the application on Windows.

The GUI could be updated. The GUI hasn't changed since version 6. It's on version 10 now. The reporting could also be better. Also, while Data Protector is excellent for backing up physical hardware, it needs more features for backing up VM images because many environments use hypervisor. 

It's not as good as some of its competitors. One image backup job should be able to restore the file or database level, but Data Protector has to create three separate jobs.

I do not think that this solution is relevant in the current IT market. They have not upgraded their features and functionalities which makes it difficult for them to remain competitive. 

The VMware GRE is still limited and complex to implement with differences in behavior between Windows and Linux mount proxies. 

ZDB has too many constraints (e.g. it doesn't work for Linux volumes mirrored with software different from LVM). 

Microfocus needs to build a partnership with other vendors in addition to HPE as far as cloud consolidation of backups. 

With the 11.0 release, there have been improvements in terms of security (Secure communication) however, the bar is still not high enough. 

Data Protector advanced scheduler should be replaced with a more reliable scheduler such as the Veritas One.

In general, you can say that Micro Focus Data Protector is behind in capabilities when compared with other backup solutions, such as Commvault, Symantec, NetBackup, but it is very strong for certain use cases such as array integration. We are using it in production even now.

There should be some kind of cloud integration and archiving solutions. I think this is the area they need to focus on.

The online backups of Office 365 have room for improvement. This is now available for the Exchange Online part of Office 365, but we're still waiting for SharePoint Online, Teams, etc. We know that it's coming, but it takes time.

Hyper-V backups need improvement so they can do GRE.

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

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.

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 solution isn't ideal for big data or large CRMs.

We have been lacking proper training on the solution. This seems to be a weak point of the product. They should offer better training for their users.

Other tools seem to be easier to use.

The solution should offer support for the backup of cloud platforms. The same system needs to work with replication and mirror sites, for example.

Micro Focus are improving Data Protector with every new version and since we began undergoing training with the latest version we have not faced any real challenges yet. However, their support does need to be improved, in my opinion. In certain critical cases that we've had, they did not provide a satisfactory level of support.

Micro Focus Data Protector must improve its overall evolution record. They need to focus on hardware-based instant recovery, client recovery, and cloud abilities. Now there is no cloud ability.

Another thing they need to work on is that they still lack bare-metal VM and bare-metal recovery models.

The third issue they need to improve, and at the top of the list, is that with the RTO and RPO, we cannot come to a customer as an industry best. Because what happens when you sell is that recovery takes the longest time. This is the pain point in the solution, that it takes time compared to instant recovery.

In terms of additional features I would like to see included in the next release of Micro Focus Data Protector, I will be looking for instant recovery features and for better reporting. To sum up, instant recovery and cloud ability (backup to cloud, return to cloud and restore).

I don't use it today on a regular basis, but there are always feature improvements that our customers are looking for, such as more integration from an API perspective with different applications and cloud platforms. Also, broader integration to the ecosystem as it relates to the cloud and the application API.

For me, the main weakness of Data Protector now is the Granular Recovery integrations, as they just don’t work as smoothly as they could.

The scheduler setup could be better. We are facing some issues scheduling the job based on our requirements. Furthermore, if we want to change something, we have to run it through all the policies one by one. They don't have a central place to modify and apply it to all the policies. The virtual environment backup could also be better.

It's annoying that you actually have to pay for the deduplication feature in order to use it.

Starting at around 2010, they haven't really changed their interface or added many new features. The console is dated. they need to make it more modern, add colours and better UI to make it more user friendly and attractive.

If you compare the solution with the same specific features and enhancements on another solution, Data Protector is expensive. This is especially true when compared to, for example, Veeam.

They are starting to create a cloud version of the Data Protector. The thing is, it's very hard to convince an administrator like me to switch to it, due to the fact that they are basically a hardware designed software. It was designed by a hardware engineer, that's why it looks and feels and operates like hardware. To change it to a software doesn't sit right. In comparison, when you use Veeam, you feel like you are managing a cloud. You feel that you are managing something on the top. When you're using Micro Focus Data Protector, on the other hand, you feel that you are directly communicating with the device. It's just as bumpy and not as satisfying as compared to Veem, which is compact and light.

Every time there is a backup running, I cannot predict anything, so I cannot say if it will back up the first time. Data Protector has a status bar. You need to wait and see.

Their flexibility of their reporting needs improvement. You cannot save. You need to copy/paste. It may have appeared flexible in the 1990s, however, it's 2020 now. We need a flexible reporting of all that is happening on the Data Protector. We don't need to focus too much on the data, we need to focus on the maintenance of the machine. There needs to be a focus on analytical reports. We need answers to questions like: "Am I going to lose capacity?" "Do I still have enough space?" "Do I still have enough capacity for the cloud?" Data Protector should analyze these things for you, and alert you if you need to increase capacity.  

The solution needs more mobile capabilities. If I cannot see your product on my mobile, you're not worth considering. Nowadays, that's a basic requirement for an administrator.

There is no place in the world that is not connected to the internet or IoT. There is a lot to be done that the competitors are already doing for the last four years. 

The solution needs to change their support agreement. It was changed from traditional to capacity. That means the product is now only targeting big companies. As it stands now, they cannot really market to smaller organizations because their capacity is not that much. Licensing should be flexible for small businesses all the way up to enterprise-level businesses.

Once you perform a backup for a huge amount of data, you cannot browse it. You cannot browse a specific characteristic of that data on the database in order to find a file. If the file is large, you need to restore it. With Veem, you can view it even if it's inside the archive. It gives you the assurance it's actually there. The solution needs to have a good explorer for administrators. I need to have the flexibility of viewing where I put my data. When it is going to the tape, the tape is totally encrypted. You need to restore it before you know what is inside. It's a big waste of time.

Integration with the market applications must be improved, such as MS Exchange, MS Active Directory, SAP and Oracle. Other backup tools are more efficient with the integrated backups.

Data Protector's main single point of weakness is its GUI. While being very easy to use and intuitively constructed to present users with a minimal learning curve, nonetheless:

• It can occasionally be inaccurate in its backup/recovery time estimates
• It can sometimes reflect incorrect data quantities for a specific source stream

In the next release, I would like to see more integration with VMware and HPE Recovery Manager Center (RMC). We don't have RMC, unfortunately. We are planning on getting it.

I have asked about the Data Protector and its integration with RMC. It is only integrated for managing and doesn’t go much deeper. This tool is also missing some configurations and functionalities that I want.

The solution is not intuitive enough. I think they should work on the user experience and the graphical interface. These can be a lot better.

Reporting on scheduled backups via the advanced scheduling option are non-existent, and this needs to be available.

VM backups needs to be improved. They need to make it similar to the way Veeam and Commvault are doing the virtual backups.

A couple of years ago, I said that the reporting wasn't sufficient. There should be better reporting within Data Protector, rather than making you turn to an additional HPE software application.

I think that no company can get reporting right. Whatever software I use, we are always looking for reports that they just can't provide.

Our data footprint has grown massively, and we're asking a lot more of it than it can do. When I started back in 2012, it was perfectly fine. It was the hardware that was not capable of providing us with what we wanted, not the software. Now it seems that the hardware is providing us with what we want, but the software is not.

I think the GUI needs a vast overhaul. DP has looked the same since its inception. The functionality has improved, but the interface is not attractive and a little clumsy.

Better documentation on how to backup the device itself through a flash drive or CD.

I'm sure Data Protector has improved because we have an old version and I think the new versions have many new features but I'm not familiar with them. The version we are using now does not work with virtual machines and it lacks many features. I'm sure the new version is better. It has many functions that can compete with Veeam, but the problem is that its price is more expensive. It's very expensive compared to Veeam and other similar solutions.

We changed Microsoft to a virtual environment, so in a virtual environment, we could not do a backup with the version we're using. It doesn't work with a virtual machine. In addition, we could not restore the machine. This is the main problem with it. 

We are switching to Veeam because Data Protector is lacking good virtualization features and because the cost is very high.

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.

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.

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 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.

Make it simpler to use, integrate with as many applications as possible, and improve the dashboard.

It would be ideal if they could improve their level of support.

The reporting capabilities of HPE Data Protector are very limited and is the main area I feel that HPE Data Protector needs to improve on. The standard report options available with the product are adequate for generic reporting.

However, if you’re like me and want to get customised reporting, you then have a problem and you will need to purchase another licensed product: HPE Data Protector Reporter.

The biggest area of improvement for Data Protector would be the proper functioning and ease of configuration of clients behind firewalls and other security mechanisms.

I also think that the license model should be more open and flexible.

The license structure for advanced features, such as backing up to disk or compression, can make the license pretty costly. That’s the main thing because we use it in a very simple way with just a client on servers, and then do backups. That license structure was really simple and cheap; but if you want to do a little bit more, then the structure gets pretty expensive.

That is really a question for my Data Protector experts, but this is what I think:

• As far as the functionality, I think it has everything that we need right now.
• Some security aspects in Data Protector could be improved. It’s not enough to say that some people will have only a few rights and exclusions.
• The reporting is not good. That's something that HPE can improve.

The downside of the flexibility on offer is if you over-configure it, it may fail to function as some configurations may not match. That said, it's a very flexible tool to use it. It helps to start with minimal configuration to avoid misalignment of parameters.

The scheduling could be better. We thought they had made some improvements, however, the scheduling of backups needs to be more flexible and we need to be able to apply different policies at different times.

The new backup systems are using new mechanisms for the recovery phases; for example, VM, recovery and testing the backup before recovering it. These features are not available in Data Protector. What we need to see is fast recovery and testing of backups.

The second thing is the license type. Because in Data Protector, if you need extra features, you need to buy the agents for these features. Some of the features are Terabytes, some of them are agents. There's some complexity in the pricing and licensing.

I would like to see it incorporate all of the new forms of cloud backup and similar items, absolutely. With the transition from on-prem to obviously cloud solutions, our backups need to be more cloud-ready, so to speak.

This product is lagging behind most of its competitors. It is still expensive to add features and the ESXi integration is terrible -- you have to restore a whole VMDK to then get the ability to restore a file. There is no library of ESXi servers and the plug-in fails most of the time.

The integration into core products -- Exchange, SharePoint, and VMware, being some -- is just not as good as other vendors.

I have SUSE XEN virtualization set up in my environment. HP Data Protector does not provide integration with it, and I would like to see it integrate with XEN in a future release. I would also like to see an improvement in its user management. I am still not able to integrate its user authentication with Active Directory even after talking to support from HP.

The Virtual Environment backups still need major improvements. They are working much more smoothly now, but we still get error messages without explanations. More often than not, the jobs fail when other products on the market actually excel at these types of backups.

Granular Recovery and Smart Cache are huge improvements but don’t always work perfectly, and Granular Recovery is really difficult to install and configure. The documentation makes it sound easy, but it never works on the first attempt.

The UX dates back to a very historic past. They need to bring it into this decade. Easy to say – difficult to do.

I would like to see more integrations with virtual environments and more integrations with platforms like SQL Server, Oracle, and SAP.

I would like to have more capacity. This can be done by having more deduplication and compression. If they can compress the data more and more, we will save more space. We won’t need to pay for more and more space, especially in the Oracle databases, where we don’t get much compression.

I would like to see them address this issue, so we can have the Oracle database compressed to the maximum level.

I'd like the ability to search backups a lot easier. I'd like the ability to search for a particular server within a backup because people come to you and ask for the backup of a server. They talk about it in those terms. You end up trying to find out where that server is located for a particular job that you might have set up months ago. It would be good to have a search feature where you could ask, "Server X, what backup job is that?" That would be helpful.

It would be good if it worked properly and it actually gave you usable error codes.
A large percentage of the time, you get very vague messages, or it just turns off, and it never tells you why. It's very difficult to decipher what happened and what has gone wrong.

When you unplug a laptop with the GUI version from the network, the restoration status will be terminated and will not update even if you try to connect it back. Which means to say, that I need to leave my laptop on and connected throughout the whole restore process, so that I can keep track of the restore status. There could have been an existing workaround for this, not that I know of one.

Data Protector is a fairly complicated product and some of the terminology is quite complex. There is a bit of a learning curve for new administrators who are working on it. Some of that could be eased by having a better GUI, which is not very good. There isn't much good reporting built-in to the GUI. For example, to see the status of yesterday's Exchange backup you have to click on and view all of the possible numbered backup sessions from yesterday until you find the one that relates to Exchange.

The user interface as the GUI is out-of-date and should be updated in the next release.

I would like to see a better user interface in the next release. 

They could really improve on the integrity. A lot of times I get the log error or no log message. To get my data, I have to scan the tape. It's not really the best way to go with the product. It should be more robust.

This product needs a lot of improvement both on the technical side and in its pricing and compatibility.

Reporting is definitely an area for improvement, as well as scheduling and the way that pools are created and grouped. Some of these are fixed in v9.

It seems to me that HP is not focused in their backup and recovery division. They're going to release other products which integrates with Data Protector and which use special licenses for functions that Data Protector already can do. I wish they'd focus on one product that does everything, and that product should be Data Protector.

One particular improvement I'd like to see with Data Protector is the user management. A user in a group is limited to only some rules without rights to do more backup and recovery functions.

The solution would be improved if it would work with OpenStack.

People prefer Veeam because the interface is easier, and Data Protector is difficult in comparison.

Data Protector is beginning to integrate virtual machines. Customers, however, find it more comfortable to work on a virtual machine, for example, with Veeam Backup. They find it easier, once again, because the interface is easier.

Actually, we're moving away from Data Protector due to lack of support on newer operating systems and latest products. For example, it takes time to support new products such as Windows 2016. Since we want to move faster, we're moving towards Tivoli Storage Manager. The reason being our infrastructure partner is IBM.

Improvements should be brought about in regards to the support for VMware. There is limited support for VMware, but it's not as good as other products.

The product could be better in a "policy assignment". Each job requires you to have your own device selection, and it takes a lot of setup work in a large environment.

• Reports
• Possibilities to personalize the GUI adding desired columns
• Windows image backup (similar to Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery that allows you to restore an entire Windows system through the network without the need to create DVD or boot devices)

I would like to see an improvement in the reporting feature of this solution as it is really bad. It needs to include important views and dashboards so that we can configure the functions we need. They should also improve their technical support to make the response time faster.

The software needs to redesign the UI and they should organize the functions so that they are much easier to use. It's very hard to understand how to use the software.

We have a disaster recovery site and I'm trying to figure out how to export the internal database from our named site manage to disaster recovery site manager, that took some time. I wrote a script that's working, but it's kind of a cumbersome script to export the internal database and import it in our disaster recovery site. I have that script going everyday. If something happens, we have the latest database with our recovered data at a different site. But this is not a good process, so it would be good to have it streamlined.

In terms of what can be improved, I would say integrations with MongoDB. We use MongoDB and we need to go to scripts to do backups. We need more integrations.

The feature I would like to see in the next release is only more integration with new databases.

• Technical Support
• Troubleshooting
• Restore using multi-path
• Restore for Microsoft Exchange
• GRE

There are several areas for improvement, including the database, the stability, ease-of-use, and the interface (which is too old).

The graphical interface needs to be improved.

We could use the ability to do snapshots for mass storage systems.

It works with virtual machines, but it's way too complex right now. Also, the licensing structure is not very good.

The interface has been the same for many years and needs to be updated. The dashboard has changed, but that only deals with part of the backup process.

It has a reputation for bugginess.

It integrates with the 3PAR product well and with other major vendors such as EMC and NetApp. We use 3PAR, but we haven't fully integrated it with Data Protector yet. Data Protector itself is pretty complete. I'm on version 9.05, the latest version, and I haven't really encountered any deficiencies.

While technically it's a good product, the technical support is an area that could use a lot of improvement. We've had communication issues with support staff being unable to speak English, though I understand that HP's been working on this.

The GUI needs to be easier to administrate.

Also, it should have better access to more materials to help understanding the product (like the different between INCR, & INCR1, etc. and how it works).

We would like to have a direct plugin to VMware.

It could also be simplified, made more usable and manageable.

We didn't know exactly where this solution would go a few years ago. It was in a storage department and then later in a software department. There was some kind of confusion about that, but now it is better. I would like to see integration with hypervisors.

The Virtual Environment component needs to be improved.

Technical support process could be easier/technical web site.

• The operation is not so friendly for new users.
• The GUI could also use improvement.

Virtualization.

The ability to schedule and to select backup options on a per-server basis.

By comparison, Backup Exec has a nice way to select what to backup and where to backup.

It would be great if the software could help with optimizing the device. Also, the web interface needs improvement.

The Disk Agent feature is pretty basic, for instance, with the included wildcards.

Old bugs or old issues should be implemented in the new releases if they are discussed with the technical team.

We think troubleshooting is one of the most difficult parts in this product. It is hard to find any signs for job errors and why a job did not run successfully.

• Reporting functions
• GUI

- Find a way to protect the IDB (internal database) from corruption without the user interaction

- Improve the Graphical interface look

• I'd like to be able to pause a job rather than to abort it; and
• I'd like to know which file or folder is being backed up while the job is running.
• Faster VEAgent Restores