Hello Deb
 
You have fired up this group a little bit. 
 
I do not know networker so my comments will have to deal with NetBackup which 
may not be shared with others at this site. 
 
 
NBU has a wide range of clients. But they only support one release level down. 
So if you install nbu 4.5 they only support 4.5 and 3.4 clients. And Tech 
support says that they do not support 4.5 clients at a higher patch level then 
the master/media servers. 
This makes it fun when one has clients o/s levels that have to remain at older 
levels due to application or hardware issues. An example of a problem child for 
us will be hp/ux which has no client support in nbu 4.5 so it will be 
unsupported with netbackup version 5. 
 
The Tech support on the whole seems quite good. But not if the problem requires 
someone who can read and or write source code. They seem to have a rule that 
they folks that you can talk to can not talk to a developer. Unless you pay big 
bucks for extra support. Of course that might just be for me. 
 
The company does seem to be open to changing the product, and they do take 
suggestions. They said that the readme for a feature pack coming out next month 
is 900 pages long. This sounds like a new release. Many new features. 
 
>From a Unix master you can not install/upgrade the windows client. Our pc 
>folks created an install package from the cdrom image and four patch sets.  
>They can run this package as a post process on the build process for a new 
>server or by itself. 
Of course it was a pain in that they had to use the base install package (3.4), 
then a patch that upgraded it to 3.41, then one to bring it up to 3.4.1.3, then 
another two hot patches. The patches for windows have to be downloaded with the 
nbu windows master patches. Of course a nbu tech support person told me that 
offically they only support windows install from cdrom. 
 
So it is not too hard to push out unix and windows patches. But the patches do 
not seemed to have any easy  way to record that they have a problem when 
batched. 
 
Version logging is almost non-existant. You have to go look in the patch 
history file on each machine and see which patches have been installed. Also 
the place to look for install issues. 
 
Not  unique to Veritas, it seems that many problems require one to purchase 
another feature. 
Too share san tape drives between clients, you purchase sso.
To have an offsite product and/or manage duplicating tape, you purchase vault. 
You have a server with many small files that you want to run incremental 
backups on, you purchase another product (I think that it is called flash 
backup). The client takes so long looking for a file that needs to backup that 
the server times
out the session, but the client does not seem to know about the timeout so it 
keeps on truckin. 
You want reporting, then you purchase advanced reporter
 
For client DR veritas purchased a small Texas company called The Kernal Group 
which did AIX software and a small product call BMR (Bare Metal Restore). This 
product is driven by client exits which query the data such as filesystems etc 
needed to set up a system for a restore and stores it in a small data base. For 
DR one boots a small system which builds a basic system  and then restores the 
data, including the system code. The great thing about this product is that any 
changes in the system layout are picked up during the next backup. Of course 
this is an extra cost. But only for the clients that you use it for. And it 
appears to be less then what the Kernal Group charged. 
 
They do have a problem keeping up with some clients at times. At this time 
their Linux support does not cover Red Hat 8, or anything other then ext2 
support. Unless it is in the readme for MP3 and I could not find it. 
 
They could improve their error messages. The job history for a job reports the 
highest status code, which many times is not the root cause. And for the 
server, one may have something like 10 log files to look at and compare. And no 
structure between many of the records. 
 
They could improve the nbu 4.5 admin gui -- as talked about by others. 
 
They could improve the admin functions by added better support for multiple 
priv levels. Full admin, operator, domain admins. For example unix client 
admins, windows client admins etc. 
 
Regards len boyle
 
 

        -----Original Message----- 
        From: Deb Heller-Evans [mailto:deb AT tickleme.llnl DOT gov] 
        Sent: Fri 1/24/2003 11:25 AM 
        To: veritas-bu AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu 
        Cc: 
        Subject: [Veritas-bu] Considering moving to NetBackup
        
        

        Hello, 

        I'm considering changing our backup software from Networker to 
NetBackup.  

        I know the pros and cons as Legato and Veritas like to present them, 
but I'd 
        be MORE interested in knowing what real users of the NBU software have 
to say 
        about the product they're paying lots of money for and using.  

        For example, Do you like how NBU is set up?  It's GUI?  What are the 
problems 
        you encounter?  Is it totally reliable?  What do you always have to 
watch out 
        for on a regular basis? 

        How is technical support?  Are they knowledgeable, and available?  Is 
the 
        escalation process handled well?  Anyone been to their training?  What 
did you 
        think?  

        I've used Networker for over 10 years (since v3.1) in my various 
incarnations 
        from one company to the next.  I'm tired of dealing with the same old 
issues 
        over and over again, (configuration issues, re-configuration issues, 
client 
        updates, tracking version numbers, etc) and even the same old GUI - 
you'd 
        think they'd update the Unix interface after all this time. 

        I'd be particularly interested in hearing from those of you who are 
familiar 
        with both products, and what you think about them.  Good and Ugly. 

        Thanks, 

        deb 




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