Hello,
We recently completed a RFP on a total enterprise backup solution, with the
2 competing
solutions being Veritas and STK silos, verses ADSM and IBM3494 libraries.
The solutions
were required to be able to backup UNIX (various flavours), NT, and MVS, and
the RFP was
very detailed, and took future upgrade paths, supportabilty etc, to the tune
of 150 different
specific requirements, most measurable, and some perceived (eg support
expertise and
product supportability)
This was a SOLUTION comparison, rather than a direct software comparison,
and the
ADSM/3494 solution won the RFP, but it was VERY close.
On the software comparision section of the RFP, both products were
exceptionally close,
each having strengths and weaknesses.
The main differences being:
ADSM
=====
* tape retention controls perceived to be better
* reporting facilities better.
* support against accidental reads better.
* Could maintain duplicate media management databases.
* Supported cental product license administration.
* Product backup of itself, and its recoverability was perceived to be
better.
* Simple migration of files to different media.
* Perceived expertise and support (within Australia) was better -
might be the other way around elsewhere.
VERITAS
=======
* EXCELLENT protection from accidental overwrites (recognises tar,
cpio etc).
* Supports more operating systems.
* Is more easily restored to a standalone system (without the product
installed)
* better central backup policy administration of servers.
* Can multi stream to a single tape drive (maximising tape drive write
performance)
* Can perform backups and restores using different media formats.
Some of the differences here were small, and varying degrees of importance
were placed
on them specific to our requirements. In the end, with the rate of
development, and if our
requirements were different, we may have chosen the other way.
The primary driver for our RFP was a central backup solution. Had it been a
distributed
solution, the winner may have been differnt.
An earlier post by Kells Kearney to the group regarding this has also been
CUT/Pasted below.
Good luck,
Andrew.
Moir,Betsy wrote:
> I was wondering if any of you more open-minded UNIX administrators could
> share your experiences with other UNIX backup products and your reasons
for
> choosing ADSM. I'm attending a meeting next Tuesday with a group of UNIX
> administrators and managers to discuss why they should get rid of their
other
> UNIX backup products (no, I don't know what they are, but I do know there
are
> several of them) and start using ADSM, and I'd like to have as much
> first-hand knowledge as possible before I walk in there. Among their
> concerns is the backing up very, very large databases in a timely fashion.
Hmmm.... Well, I can't comment on very much long term use (> 6 months),
but in a previous incarnation I worked with both Netbackup and Legato.
For the one installation I did with Legato, my impressions of it was that
it
was
very nice graphically, but didn't have a whole lot going for it scheduling
wise.
You
could choose from a number of different calendaring options, and even set up
a
few different types of schedules. (I was using a slightly crippled one
server
version.)
The only irritating thing I found about Legato was that you couldn't
schedule a
script
to backup a database and have Legato deal nicely with things --- you
basically
were
reducing to shutting down the database in cron, hope that the database could
be
backed
up in the backup window, and then start the database in cron again. Very
ugly.
Having said that, for one install for one server, it seemed to do ok. :)
During the time that I was working with Netbackup, there were a couple of
things
about it that I really liked:
- unless you used MPX format, everything was in gnu tar format. So, you
never
had to worry about database problems, because if you knew what tape was
the
latest one, you could ALWAYS get to your data. (Came in handy -- don't
want
to talk about it, tho... :)
- there were pre and post scripts that ran backups, that were actually
fairly
well
documented. Very useful for backing up databases or other tricky things
that
need unusual care and feeding.
- the hierarchical servers that netbackup has are very nice. The idea is
that
you
store data about clients on the local server, and just back up the
database
information
to the central server. So, you store backup data locally, and inform
the
'most
important' Netbackup server what got backed up. (The ADSM server stuff
seems
a little more than strange in comparison, but it has different design
principles.)
- netbackup is a traditional unix product, in that it lives and breathes
by the
motto
of 'flat files and grep' principles. You want reporting? Write a
script
that tails the
logfile and dump out events to syslog, Tivoli TEC, HP Openview or BMC
Patrol.
You want to do something outside of what's out-of-the-box? Look at the
file
formats and do all of the things that customer support people have
aneurysms
over. :)
- from my few experiences with dealing with the support organization with
veritas, I have
only good things to say about them. Very good knowledge of their
product,
and
within two-hour resolution time AFTER business hours!
Taking into account the fact that I haven't used it in about a year,
these are
my gripes
about netbackup:
- I've seen people shot over better GUI implementations. Talk about UGLY!
(I
think
that it has improved lately.) Unless you use it all the time, it's
actually
difficult to
remember how to navigate through the interface to do some operations.
People
are told "Yeah, it's a bad GUI, but it's a lights out product -- you
should
never
have to touch it." Uh huh.
- Tape management is manual, and sometimes error prone. Trying to add
tapes
to a storage group can be a complete pain. I never got around to
figuring
out
some of the file formats, and then modifying them to add tapes to the
storage
group, but it probably would have been much easier to do!
- Having seen ADSM and its per session statistics, it is a complete pain to
try
to
figure out throughput rates or anything sadistically meaningful using
netbackup.
In regards to large database backup, I think that something that can do
table
backups or incremental backups would be good. Presumably, with a database
that large, you would be doing online backups, so you would need a tool of
some
sort so that you don't back up a huge database file/raw device every day.
The only opinion I can offer on database backup is to avoid EBU. I finally
beat
it into
submission, but I'm not convinced that I could bring it back from something
catastrophic. For a 'recreational impossibility', try doing database
backups and
restores on a cluster (pick your HA software flavour!). Not a very
enjoyable
experience. But who knows, in the year since I used EBU, they may have even
fixed the bug in solaris where you can't get it to delete old archives (not
that
I'm
bitter, mind you. And I'm MUCH better now! :)
IMHO, for a small company, any backup product (including ufsdump!) will
work
just fine. For medium size companies (100-1000 computers), all of the NT
products
start to bomb out, but Legato and Netbackup are still manageable. For
large
companies, I honestly don't think there's any choice except ADSM, due to its
database
and the incremental only policy.
kells
Any coincidence of opinion between myself and Mainland Information Systems
is
exactly that..
> -----Original Message-----
> From: malkit [SMTP:malkit AT UDI.CO DOT IL]
> Sent: Sunday, September 06, 1998 10:59 PM
> To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
> Subject: ADSM Versus Veritas
>
> Hello !
>
> Is there any one on our ADSM list that choose ADSM over Veritas. If so,
> can you please share with me your decisions to go with ADSM and not
> Veritas. It is very important to one of our customers decision !!!
>
> Thank you
>
> Malkit Hayun , UDI
> Application Engineer
> Office:972-3-9233440
> Fax: 972-3-9233441
> Mobile:972-52-834575
> Email: malkit AT udi.co DOT il
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