Commvault vs. TSM

[TSM_Needy]

:up: Hey Ladies and Gents :down:,

Does anyone have any input, thoughts or comments on comparing TSM to Commvault as an enterprise solution? When I say input, I mean functionality and multiple platform support. Are there any major issues to consider?

Thanks!

TSM_Needy

 

[moon-buddy]

Recently, there was a thread on this. Search the forum.

Commvault does not run on any other platform except Windows, does not backup Mainframe or AS400.

Your choice what you want to use but for me, only TSM passes the critieria of being an Enterprise Data Management system.

 

[orangeman]

Limitations of the TSM database to scale
TSM Version retention methodology causes media waste and additional
High infrastructure cost especially around reclamation process
Inc Forever approach leads to very long restore processes impacting SLAs
Independent solutions stacks for HSM and further broken up across Windows and Unix
Lacks Commvault rich media mgmt features
No Single instance
No media sharing
Inadequate reporting
High TCO around management and implementation
Lack of granular restore functionality around common enterprise applications like lotus notes, Exchange, sharepoint etc

Commvault's Commcell (meta data repository) is based on SQL 2005 Enterprise hence Windows. Media Servers can be Solaris, AIX, HPUX, Linux Windows, Netware, True64.

Scales in excess of 15,000 servers and 10's Petabytes

If your enterprise is this big, don't consider TSM.....

 

[moon-buddy]

Another Commvault user or rep joining our Forum: Welcome orangeman!

Obviously, orangeman is not up to date on the new TSM features in version 5.4 and 5.5.

SQL from MS is not the database I want to be using. Had horrors on it. Believe me when I say that I am a trained Commvault person, and I have not been convinced to this day that Commvault can be a Data Management enterprise solution.

Incremental forever only is a myth with TSM - you can choose to have other backup methods.

By not sharing media in Commvault, you end up with thousands of media. My former company is now feeling the pain. If you want this on TSM, you can do so by using Active pool and collocation. The result: faster DR restores.

This will go on and on.

Just take it from the top Fortune 500 companies that have been using TSM for the longest period: they are happy with it.

 

[backupmonkey]

commvault in the enterprise

It seems that the features of CV did impress British Telecom, as they forked over 6M to convert from Netbackup. I think it was due to their de-dupe ability and cloud api that NBU can't do just yet.This is compelling news if your looking at switching.
I did a CV simpana 7 implementation for 600 servers, three sites in 2007. All windows and Linux. By fate, nowI am consulting and doing an entire state with the same set of problems. Siloed solutions for archive, backup, E-discovery etc. This time Disaster Recovery is required of the backup. I am looking at CV again due to thier SQL database and its ease of failover to a disaster recovery site. Netbackup needs a manual and a long time to failover, CV does it in fifteen minutes with a few mouse clicks.
CV doesn't do IBM z/os backup but I heard it can backup a dump file. I am not sure how it can do this for IBM z/os mainframe and if there is anyone out there who knows lets hear about it.

 

[moon-buddy]

It seems that the features of CV did impress British Telecom, as they forked over 6M to convert from Netbackup. I think it was due to their de-dupe ability and cloud api that NBU can't do just yet.This is compelling news if your looking at switching.
I did a CV simpana 7 implementation for 600 servers, three sites in 2007. All windows and Linux. By fate, nowI am consulting and doing an entire state with the same set of problems. Siloed solutions for archive, backup, E-discovery etc. This time Disaster Recovery is required of the backup. I am looking at CV again due to thier SQL database and its ease of failover to a disaster recovery site. Netbackup needs a manual and a long time to failover, CV does it in fifteen minutes with a few mouse clicks.
CV doesn't do IBM z/os backup but I heard it can backup a dump file. I am not sure how it can do this for IBM z/os mainframe and if there is anyone out there who knows lets hear about it.

Good luck with Commvault! You will never get the results as simple as you can with TSM.

 

[cwilloug]

Time for a bump!

We are on TSM 7.1.4.100 and have spent the last few months implementing TSM for VE on both HyperV and Vmware. Needless to say, we are not pleased with the problems and shortcomings of the VE implementations.

Now management wants us to looks at the possibility of replacing TSM with product "X", and Commvault is one of the potential products we are researching. Has anyone else switched from TSM to Commvault and still visiting this forum? Or any other enterprise solution?

The major issues we have with VE are:
No Compression
Manual configuration on pretty much anything that needs to be done so more babysitting
Getting errors on backing up VMs that we never experienced before and unsure of the solutions to fix them, poor IBM documentation
File level restores are clunky causing way more work without the ability enable Catalog Search so will cause multiple mounting of iSCSI drives
Data Protection for Hyper-V cannot backup Cluster Shared disks so it will skip the whole VM
We cannot exclude vhd/vhdx disks from a VM backup as its everything or nothing
File level restores are not allowed for GPT and Differencing disks. These will need to be performed from a central location and then shared out as a iSCSI drive or files moved by us to the end user
Compression of the VM cannot be performed unless we also do client side deduplication which in our environment without a VTL is not possible
Cannot backup VMs with local host disk
VSS errors that can not be resolved / explained, again, poor IBM documentaion

And then, on top of all this has been the dismal support from IBM in the last few years. Whenever I open a PMR with IBM I spend most of the time "gathering logs" than getting any helpful responses from IBM.