Dave,
Your response to John's question is well-worded and full of incredibly
valuable information from a valuable point of view: someone who has used
actually both products.
Your comments on NetWorker's licensing couldn't be more spot-on. FWIW,
MOST backup products are similar; TSM is one of the very few with
licensing as simple as it is. One other, although completely different,
product with a simple licensing model is Asigra, where it's pure
capacity-based - no agent/client licensing, no CPU count, just GB
protected.
I wanted to make one minor point about something in your post. You said
you'd been using NetWorker since it was Budtool. Legato NetWorker and
PDC BudTool were actually completely separate products from two
different companies that existed at the same time in the space-time
continuum. Legato acquired PDC and its customers, and then proceeded to
migrate them ASAP to NetWorker; it sounds like you were one of those
migrated customers. That may have given you the impression that BudTool
became NetWorker, but that wasn't the case. Legato acquired it and
dumped it. (Why they acquired then dumped an entire product line is a
conversation for another day.) I only make this point because some
people may have negative (or positive) opinions about BudTool, and I
wouldn't want them to think they were getting anything related to
BudTool if they buy NetWorker.
Again, very thoughtful, well-worded message.
---
W. Curtis Preston
Backup Blog @ www.backupcentral.com
VP Data Protection, GlassHouse Technologies
-----Original Message-----
From: ADSM: Dist Stor Manager [mailto:ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU] On Behalf Of
Dave Mussulman
Sent: Monday, July 30, 2007 12:00 PM
To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
Subject: Re: [ADSM-L] TSM vs. Legato Networker Comparison
Hi John,
Here's some perspective from someone who's currently transitioning from
Networker to TSM. My first blush is I'm a little surprised EMC came in
at such a dramatic discount: Saving umpteen thousands of dollars is the
main reason we switched from them to IBM. (Although I think the state
IBM contracts give us an advantage.)
It's probably important to understand how Networker is licensed. The
quote may not map to your environment, and might explain some of the
cost. EMC nickel and dimes you to death. You need individual client
count licenses for each system. You need a blanket license for each
different operating system (Windows, Linux, Solaris, MacOS, etc.) You
need the server license. You need a license per jukebox (varying costs
depending on size.) You need a license for disk storage (varying costs
depending on size.) NDMP? VSS? Clusters? Those are individual
licenses too (per system, not blanket for all systems.) Also,
investigate their maintenance costs... Ours were on the order of 10x
what IBM offered. This list might complain about the idiocay of CPU
licensing (which I agree with, especially for a storage-centric
product,) but it's night-and-day better than the ala carte menu
Networker requires.
It also means that when that next new gotta-have-it feature comes out,
it too is probably not included in your software maintenance and will
need a new license. We'd been using Networker since it was BudTool, but
to add the software licensing for the advanced disk objects (B2D) and
MacOS support (another thing we were adding,) on top of our yearly
support, was enough to justify investigating other products and deciding
to purchase TSM. So, if your costs are too good to be true, they might
just be.
Also, as you surmised, the transition is hard. Getting up to speed on
new backup software, learning its quirks, documenting it for
administration and user-level docs, different reporting needs, etc..
Dealing with the hardware juggling to support an old production server
and a new server that moves from evaluation to semi-production to
production is a challenge. I'm a year into it, and I don't foresee
shutting down our Networker server in 2007; probably not entirely until
next summer. (Of course, this is a problem that throwing money into can
solve, but you're in this situation because you wanted to save money,
right?)
In terms of functionality, both software packages will probably meet
your objectives, but introduce unique quirks on how to do them.
Networker's advantages are less per-file management, so you can put more
clients and more files on a single server. (The relatively low
supportable file quantities per server is one of my big hovering
concerns with TSM that didn't exist entirely with Networker.) Networker
also allows multiplexing sessions to a single tape, so provided your
network/disk pipe is big enough, I'd say it's easier to keep the tape
drives streaming. The disadvantage to switching to Networker from TSM
is that a lot more media management is required. There's no
reclaimation, so when it's on a tape, you're locked in and if you want
that tape to recycle appropriately, you need to make sure the
dependencies on it also cycle appropriately. That can be a pretty
manual task, especially as clients go on/off the network. You'll find
the staging and cloning tools in Networker require much more work than
in TSM (although I understand that's improving, most admins I know
control this with their own home-brew scripts, which is questionable
when off-site copies are critical to your backups.)
Other than that, that software's pretty much the same. It backs up and
restores your stuff. It runs on almost anything (client and server.)
Both companies have new upgrades that force new graphic admin tools on
them their customers don't like. Navigating either product's support
tools/websites can be menacing at times. Both have listservs with
passionate, sharp, seasoned admins willing to help others. Both are
exorbitantly expensive because, well, they can be.
I was a little disgusted with EMC when we decided to purchase TSM, for
more reasons than I've listed here, so maybe I'm a little biased.
(Contact me off-list if you'd like to know more.) I think it's
important to toe the waters with backup software and hardware every few
years to find out what other products are doing, evaluate your costs
against new pricing, etc. but I would caution to really spend some time
investigating what the new software will cost you in terms of support,
functionality, daily maintenance times, transition times, etc. and
decide if those umpteen thousands are worth it. Ask me in a year or two
if they did in our environment. ;)
Dave
On Fri, Jul 27, 2007 at 01:06:10PM -0500, Schneider, John wrote:
> Kelly,
> Thank you for your post. There is no reason to say we are
> unhappy with TSM. Since I inherited this environment about a year
ago,
> due to lots of hardware and software version upgrades, and help from
the
> Windows and AIX teams, our daily backup completion status (neither
> missed nor failed)has gone from 95% to 99%. That is less than 10 out
of
> the ~1000 clients daily, which is quite good by industry standards.
> No, according to management, cost is the driving factor. The
> proposals between IBM and it's closest competitor are, over a total
> three year cost, umpteen thousand dollars apart (I won't say the exact
> figure). It is enough to make everybody take notice.
> Of course, no one has figured in the cost of conversion, both in
> software and manpower. That will be huge. Not to mention the huge
> distraction and lost opportunity cost and risk of outages that could
> result.\ I agree that IBM ought to go back and sharpen their
> pencil, and bargain away this threat to their territory.
>
> Best Regards,
>
> John D. Schneider
> Email: schnjd AT stlo.mercy DOT net
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