Veritas NetBackup Reviews

We are an IT company that provides solutions to end users. Most of our end users come from the banking sector, the government sector, and other government-linked companies. When I say that we use Veritas NetBackup, I don't mean to say that we use it internally, but rather that we propose it and use it in solutions that we offer to clients.

Most of our clients use Veritas NetBackup to protect their highly critical workloads, which are often situated in virtual machines with Hyper-V or VMware. The primary workloads are databases ranging from Exchange, Oracle, MS SQL, and IBM Db2. And then it goes on to the application sites such as with SharePoint, NFS data, and all those things. Our users require this type of workload data protection on a full-time basis.

For backups, we use Veritas NetBackup and Veeam, and for virtualization we mostly use VMware. This covers our environment for all disaster recovery and replication scenarios. At times, we also rely on the default replication tools from either Veeam or VMware.

About 70% of our customers come from government agencies, and there are regulations from the Malaysian government that don't allow any data to be transferred to the public cloud. However, that doesn't stop the cloud backup initiatives in Malaysia because the regulation only states that it's not allowed when it goes to a cloud of which they don't know the location. Thus, many of the backup vendors work with local cloud providers to enable cloud backups.

We are quite satisfied with the performance and reliability of the NetBackup product. When it comes to specific features, the most valuable is the Instant Recovery feature, which we call "short-term IR". Instant Recovery allows users to spin up backup images and bring back any VM instantly.

It is called a short-term recovery option because once the backup image has been spun up, the end user can extract whatever data is needed from the image and bring it back into production. This is definitely the most-valued feature for our customers.

Veritas NetBackup has been in the backup and recovery market for quite a long time, but somehow, from my own observations and from feedback from end users, its user interface is lagging behind other comparable solutions such as Veeam.

Our end users are more accustomed to better user interfaces and NetBackup still has a way to go in this regard. The features are great, but the user interface needs improvement, especially when you're looking at the web-based user interface. Most of the operations in NetBackup must be done using their base client user interface, and the feedback from our end users is that it isn't the most user-friendly interface.

Another area where we hope to see improvements is on the integration side. Nowadays, people aren't just looking at strictly backups and recovery features alone. They're now expecting more integration features along the lines of enhanced visibility, dashboard integrations, AI integrations, and so on. The users desire these integrations so that they can make the whole process of backup and recovery less complex, without having to perform any level of scripting.

We've been using Veritas NetBackup for almost 12 years. 

I believe NetBackup is very stable. The only drawback is the subpar operation of the user interface, but apart from that we are very happy with the stability and reliability of the product.

It's quite easy to scale. For every additional workload that you want to protect, you just add it on top of your server as needed. So it's easy to understand how to scale it, and it's easy to actually do so.

I think their technical support is very good. Everything from their level 1 support up to their engineering support is on point.

The complexity of the initial setup largely depends on the client's infrastructure. If they want to protect VMware workloads, then it's quite straightforward because we just integrate it directly with their workloads. In this case, the implementation is simple.

However, if we are required to protect SAP HANA or some Oracle cluster, for instance, that requires a lot more work. It's much more complicated because it's not based on a user interface, and we need to have a high level of perspective and understanding. So, ultimately, it depends on what needs to be protected.

At our company we normally provide end-to-end solutions in terms of the product, for better product absorption. So we'll start early by going to the customer, preaching the positives about the product and the technology, talking about how it will solve their problems, and how it will protect their data. And then from there, our team provides installation and configuration services, as well as after-sales service comprising support and warranties.

When you compare NetBackup's software licensing system with Veeam's, which is simpler and based on instances (or how many physical machines or virtual machines you want to protect), NetBackup isn't that competitive for smaller scale companies. However, if you're running many large workloads, then NetBackup may be the better option.

About seven or eight years back, Veritas and Commvault were considered the de facto leaders in the backup landscape. During that time, there were no major alternatives such as Veeam, and many customers relied solely on Veritas and were loyal to the product.

But nowadays, new customers have options, especially when it comes to smaller scale backup solutions for the small-medium type of companies. With us, we now see a multitude of different clients, from small companies to the enterprise.

The average company that is using multiple virtualization platforms, or physical platforms running Unix systems, will typically go with Veritas NetBackup rather than Veeam because Veeam is still in its infancy period when it comes to supporting these kinds of platforms. However, it does depend on the environment. Some of the smaller clients that we see will only have 4-5 VMs, and in that situation NetBackup typically won't be a good match because it's oriented towards a more sophisticated environment, especially concerning licensing.

When we do pre-sales with our customers, we tell them that they need to have back-to-back support from their executives, and we always teach them to allocate their reports to the OPEX budget, because they will need to have at least the latest supported version at all times running alongside their production servers. Unfortunately, somehow, there are always one or two customers who are still using unsupported machines.

I would rate Veritas NetBackup an eight out of ten. 

We are a solution provider company and we have several support contracts with our customers. We try to select the best solution for each. In smaller environments, we prefer using Veeam Backup. For our larger enterprise customers, we use Veritas NetBackup. This solution is very stable and flexible for experts who wants a feature full backup solution.

Veritas NetBackup is implemented as a primary tool in the organization for making backup a huge landscape of Aix, Unix, Virtualization, and Windows machines. This includes Oracle, DB2, and SQL Database, and etc.
We mainly looked at a trusted long-timer in the market to be able to invest to ensure the solution is proven to be trusted.

In my view, it's been a reliable backup solution for all of our enterprise customers. Our maintenance cost has been reduced and we were able to have more time to service more customers.

As one of the best data backup and recovery solution worldwide, NetBackup gives enterprise IT a flexible and powerful way to ensure the integrity and availability of their data from the edge to the core to the cloud.

The main feature Includes:

Flexible Deployment: Support for any workload, any cloud, any architecture at any scale.

Operational Simplicity: Orchestrate and automate discovery, protection, and recovery.

Enterprise-Grade Resiliency: Ensure recovery of business-critical data with near-zero RPO and RTO.

Veritas integrates well with the cloud, all databases, all operating systems, all hardware, and all software. Veritas also has solid malware and ransomware protection features. From time to time, we face a new kind of attack, and Veritas has always proven to be the best protection solution for some of my customers. Our customers who have faced ransomware attacks were able to recover their data in less than one day without any stress. Veritas is ransomware resilient and because of its implementation, it is not dependent on the operating system to work. Most of the functions of the Veritas software are isolated from the operating system and it's not dependent on the operating systems involved. This is very important. When some of our operating systems are infected by a virus, Veritas still works perfectly and protects our data. This feature is very well implemented in Veritas NetBackup.

Main features of Veritas NetBackup are:
Log management and truncation.
Third-party integrations.
Hypervisor aware.
Physical and virtual protection.
Cloud system security.
API integration.
Database consistency preservation.
Integrated appliance.

Like the other enterprise solutions, Veritas NetBackup isn't easy to implement. It's a little bit hard compared to other solutions like Data Protector for HPE. You have to struggle to learn a lot of features that Veritas NetBackup offers to customers. I don't think it's impossible to simplify this solution. Some solutions like backup solutions are mandatory solutions and they are inherently complicated because you have to integrate them with other services. We have a lot of services and each service has its own conditions. After several years, every engineer can learn most features of this solution and in some companies, they could use support from the source company. As such, I think it's not challenging for all customers. 

I have been using this Backup solution for more than 15 years.

In Veritas, I'm hoping for a better price. Veritas NetBackup is very expensive, and I think price is the main reason which some customers don't want to use this solution. 

When evaluating and choosing a solution, it depends on the situation. We choose the best solution for our customers, so it's hard to say if I would recommend Veritas over Veeam. In many ways, Veritas is a unique product. It has advantages when you want to transfer your data over SAN. SAN backup solutions are very important in some environments. Where window time is very limited for them and a huge amount of data needs to be transferred in less than five or six hours a day, we have to use a SAN backup feature. In this area, Veeam is not good compared to Veritas NetBackup. When you want to use this feature, you have to share the mainline of your storage with Veeam Backup, and many customers refuse to adopt this method of SAN backup. Many customers don't want to compromise their source of data, so they prefer Veritas' SAN backup in this area. I think it's one of the best, like IBM TSM.

I would rate Veritas NetBackup nine out of 10. I can't find any problems. I think it is the best. I think it's perfect.

We are a solution provider and Veritas NetBackup is one of the backup and recovery solutions that we implement for our customers.

This is a product that I recommend for enterprise environments with mixed servers.

It supports Unix, Linux, Solaris, and AIX servers very well. It supports multiple, heterogeneous platforms.

This is a good product for backing up Oracle databases.

The interface is very easy to navigate. I could step away from the product and not use it for two years, then return and find that I can easily navigate all of the features.

The deployment time is longer than it is with other products.

I have been using Veritas NetBackup since 1998.

This is a very stable product.

This is a scalable product and it is the one that I recommend for large environments. I like the combination of Veritas and Data Domain.

In my new company, where I am now, I have three or four customers who are using this product.

The technical support from Veritas is good.

I have experience with several backup and recovery solutions, including products by Veritas, Commvault, and Veeam.

Installing Veritas is okay and I find it easy. It can be deployed by one engineer.

Deploying Veritas will take longer than other products, such as Veeam. The length of time it takes depends on how big the environment is, and how many servers there are.

The licensing fees are expensive. It is a capacity-based license that is billed on a yearly basis. I renew it every year.

I know this product well and it is very good. I definitely recommend it for others if they have a very heterogeneous environment. This is not a product for smaller customers. I have other recommendations, such as Backup Exec, which is very cheap and good for SMB-level customers.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We are using NetBackup for our file server. It is not being employed by end-users for their backups. Rather, it is being used for infrastructure.

The most valuable feature is the ease of use. It is very easy to back up and recover files compared to other products.

Technical support is somewhat slow and is in need of improvement.

We have been using Veritas NetBackup for the past ten years.

I can say that NetBackup is 95% stable. There are positives and negatives, with 5% here or there.

From a scalability point of view, it is fantastic. It is even possible to scale up in the newest version of this technology.

The technical support has had a major impact on us. Sometimes, they do not support us properly. Support is available, but it is not immediate.

Our last problem was approximately one year ago. They were slow to respond so I continued to research the problem, found the solution, and implemented it myself.

Since my last contact with them was about a year ago, I don't know if things have improved or not. These days, I am more familiar with the product and don't need any support.

We are also using Veeam, although it is for a different scenario. Veeam is what we are using for virtual server backup, whereas we are using NetBackup for physical servers.

The initial setup is straightforward.

Price-wise, most of the backup products are similarly priced, and NetBackup is the same. There is perhaps a 10% difference in price between solutions.

I received the most recent version one week ago, and it seems that they have covered all of the loopholes. This is a very competitive product because all of the latest features and technology is in there.

Product-wise, this is a good one and I recommend it.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

The security of the solution can be improved to include a secure backup feature with full encryption capabilities.

I have been using the solution for about one or two years.

The solution is stable.

The solution is scalable.

It is important, when we chose a solution, that the customer service/technical support team could help us when we needed it, but the support was good.

I previously used Dell EMC Avamar and NetWorker.

The initial setup and deployment can be done in one day and one night.

The implementation of the solution was done in-house. The implementation involved having someone from the network team, and someone for the storage and backup.

I do not really like NetBackup as it is coming from a mix of other software packages.

It helped us to:

• Improve the backup success and recovery rate.
• Reduce the window to backup.
• Automate database backups.
• Automate the disk-based offsite to the other location as part of the disaster recovery plan.

The Replication Director, Auto Image Replication, Accelerator, Oracle Intelligent Policy, synthetic and VADP backups are the most valuable features.

The virtual environment, cloud integration, copy data management features need improvement.

There were no stability issues.

There were no scalability issues.

Technical support is excellent.

Initially, we were using IBM TSM and Legato Networker (now EMC NetWorker). However, due to the support and legacy of the product features, we switched over to this solution.

The setup was straightforward, it is easy to configure and user-friendly to administer.

Pricing is pretty costly as compared to the other products but worth investing for the long term and high ROI.

We looked at HPE Data Protector and Commvault.

It is an excellent product, i.e., if you are looking for a stable and performance oriented backup infrastructure with improved RPO and RTO.

By reducing the backup window the organization has more time to run batches.

The client side deduplication reduces the backup window.

So far I can only say that the license structure could be looked at to be aligned as either capacity-based or traditional.

We did not encounter any issues with stability.

We did not encounter any issues with scalability.

I would rate the technical support at 10/10.

We did not use a previous solution.

Start on a capacity model. You can't go wrong as it covers all the requirements for backup.

My primary use case is for disaster recovery or recovering anything from our other data center.

The most valuable feature is that you don't need any special connectivity - you just need to give your seller name, and then it automatically discovers all your virtual machines, which is a great benefit, especially in a bigger environment.

The product could improve the user-friendliness and comfort of its environment, especially for those unfamiliar with it. There is also an issue with glitches in the network, which forces us to check the connectivity. In addition, some solutions are only available to internal Veritas users, not to customers or partners, and you have to allow Veritas to test your network before they give a report. This is a problem, and Veritas needs to add functionality for customers to test their own networks.

I've been using this solution for ten years.

The scalability of this product is good.

The technical support is good.

Deployment was fine, though there is an issue with seeing skills certificates.

NetBackup provides end-to-end support for all your workload and gives good support overall. I would give this solution a score of eight out of ten.