As a current CommVault administrator who administered and handled
architecture for a Tivoli environment for 8 years, I can vouch for
everything Wanda says here.
I would also add that their documentation and support pales in comparison to
IBM. I find their support pretty difficult to deal with, and a recent
survey from Storage magazine indicated that a lot of users feel the same
way. Also, they issue a dizzying number of hot fixes and patches. There is
a way to automate download and installation of these updates, but it's an
all-or-nothing feature so if you have any kind of change management in your
environment, it's tough to use.
I have not been impressed with the reporting. The native reporting in the
CommServer Console itself doesn't impress me - it's all canned and not
really all the flexible. They have an add-on product called ROMS, which has
some pretty lights and slick "Executive Summary" type information. I don't
like it because it can only be accessed on the CommVault support website,
and alerts are frustratingly vague and can only be cleared by CommVault
support.
Good luck,
Brett McGlasson
-----Original Message-----
From: ADSM: Dist Stor Manager [mailto:ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU] On Behalf Of
Wanda Prather
Sent: Tuesday, June 23, 2009 7:31 AM
To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
Subject: Re: [ADSM-L] TSM vs CommVault
I haven't looked at Commvault in about a year, but this is what I know from
this time last year:
1) Commvault still requires you to do full dumps. They have lots of
verbiage (single-instance store" and "synthetic backup") that they will use
to make you believe they don't require fulls, but they don't have a central
data base like TSM that tracks data at the file level. The software doesn't
have the intelligence to identify files that are already backed up.
I have customers that literally CANNOT dump all their petabytes of data
across the network. And I've talked to Commvault users that have had to
plan entire backup networks, with all the costs associated with doing so, to
keep pushing all that data.
For my customers with large numbers of "typical" servers - Windows or UNIX
file servers, print server, app servers - the average change rate is 5-8% of
data per day on non-DB data. That means with TSM, you are sending 5-8% as
much data across your network. And that means you have a lot fewer
failures, which makes your life much easier and your costs lower.
2) With Commvault, like any other product that requires full backups, every
client is a new pain point.
3) Because Commvault is constantly resending the same data, they take more
tape media.
4) I believe their dedup capability is an extra-cost option. (And just like
everybody else, the dedup is done AFTER that data is sent across the
network, not before. They will try to make you think it's done at the
client end.)
5) Commvault does not have the capability to assign different retention
rules to different data, the way TSM does.
That being said, Commvault is very pretty. They have nicer GUI interfaces
than TSM. They make setting up the clients (especially the TDP's) much
easier and far fewer steps, whereas TSM has no "wizards" for installing the
TDP's, it's a very very geeky manual process. Commvault is much easier
to set up initially, and their web marketing pages are much, MUCH better.
Commvault has focused much of its development on pretty, nice GUIs, ease of
setup, and great marketing. TSM focuses its development on architectural
function, not ease of install. What I tell customers is yes, TSm is harder
to set up. But the idea is that you shouldn't NEED a pretty GUI to drive
backups day to day, because with TSM you "set it and forget it", and let TSM
automate everything, which makes life better in the long run.
But It's very frustrating for me, because TSM marketing materials are very
poor, IMHO, and don't explain well what the impact of TSM's features will be
on the user's long-term management and support costs. IBM"s sales force, in
many cases that I've seen, have very poor understanding of TSM and can't
explain it well, and have no training whatever in the differences between
TSM and Commvault.
And so I see sites being lured into Commvault, without underanding that
easier setup, does not translate into easier day to day management, and
bullet-proof backups.
Just a personal opinion.
W
.
On Tue, Jun 23, 2009 at 2:45 AM, Christian Svensson <
Christian.Svensson AT cristie DOT se> wrote:
> Hi Guys,
> We have a Business Partner coming to us on Friday and wanna talk about
> CommVault and tell us how much better it is then TSM.
> Can anyone give me some awesome questions that will kill them? Like NDMP,
> Redbooks and the unique support error code that TSM has so it is much
easier
> to find a solution for our trouble tickets and of course you guys is a
great
> benefit. :)
>
>
>
> Best Regards
> Christian Svensson
>
> Cell: +46-70-325 1577
> E-mail: Christian.Svensson AT cristie DOT se
> Skype: cristie.christian.svensson
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