Netbackup vs. TSM

[luky24]

Hi all,
i am an newbie here but my company is looking for a new backupsoftware.

I need some differents between TSM and Netbackup. What would you chose and why would you chose NBU oder TSM?

We need to backup :

2 Oracle RAC Instances
4 AIX Server
2 Sun Server
15 Windows Server

I hope you can help me to chose the right product


Thx Christoph

 

[moon-buddy]

TSM:

TSM is a Data Management system as opposed to NetBackup which is just what it is: a backup system.

As a Data Management system, you have the ability for DR planning and various Business Continuity options.

 

[Harry_Redl]

Hi,

both are mature, enterprise solutions. Thing is that they are very difficult to compare. TSM is very different from everything you can find and it is its strength and weakness at the same time.
Whichever you choose, be sure you get proper training.
You have to think about more than system types. Amount of data, backup windows, bare metal DR capabilities for various OSs, your HW (space for disk based pools, number and type of your tape drives), LAN free backup requirements ... not an easy task.
And of course there is - money for licenses

TSM is really good if you have plenty of disk space and can take advantage of incremental forever (which is not an option with databases). It is "home" on AIX ....
If TSM wins, do not try to "force" it to classic "full+incr" schema - way to hell (and never back)

Again - training and understanding the product (both) is the key

Harry

 

[crazymad]

I'm working with both of this products. I can't say they are both enterprise. If you call TSM enterprise, they you just can't call NetBackup enterprise product. It has a lot of less features then TSM.

Many times I just think that NetBackup was programmed by a few students that never finished school. There are lots of limitations. TSM is just starting where NetBackup is finishing...

Anyway NetBackup is a good product for Midrange or Hi-Midrange solutions. But not for enterprise...

If I can recommend, unless you have people doing just backups, go for NetBackup - it has a nice GUI, it's quite simple to configure it and do administration.

Otherwise go for TSM - it's much harder to configure it and keep it running in a proper way.. On the other hand it has much more functions and features..

Martin

 

[luky24]

Question over Question

Hello again

Thank you for your answers.

I looking for an great soluotion. This solution should have
- Deasater Recovery for Win an Suse Server
- Backup for Oracle Files an System Datas
- easy to administrade
- good support (Telefon / Email)
- Main Backup Server should easy to backup
- good lessons to manage this system

Normal the Backup should be an one man show so i can chose the best software for our company.

In the answers i read that TSM ist today the best choice because this software is an Data Manage Software....

Is TSM difficult to administrad ? Can we use the WebGui to administrad?

Greets Christoph

 

[max]

wow,

i think the software you are looking for (powerful, easy to manage, good support, etc.) has not been released yet ... anything you choose has tradeoffs.

cheers
max

 

[luky24]

wow,

i think the software you are looking for (powerful, easy to manage, good support, etc.) has not been released yet ... anything you choose has tradeoffs.

cheers
max

okay then i am looking for the best software which is released....

greets

Christoph

 

[max]

i like tsm, but you have to know it well, otherwise you might get in trouble
netbackup is more intuitive, and it may be good for basic and plain implementations.
That is, of course, my personal opinion ...

cheers
max

 

[luisvidal]

I agree with Max. TSM is a beast, if you tame it, it does wonders for you, especially when it is time for DR. On the other hand, NetBackup will be easier to master in a short-term.

 

[kfiresmith]

I personally believe that a new TSM installation into a moderately sized infra deserves at least one capable FTE for the first 6 months. To see if this might be more than you can get into, check out http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/sg244877.html?Open

Hopefully you have someone enthusiastic about learning, there's alot to master.

 

[THE_WIPET]

I agree max... TSM is big/powerfull and versatile... the learning curve is quite steep but with proper trainning it can be less steep. Managing TSm with a GUI or web interface is not everyone favorites mostly TSM admin goes with the command line interface. i've been working with tsm for more than 4 years now and still learning new tricks.. our TSm env have more than 300 serveurs but we have small sites(less that 15 servers) and we use netbackup cause it's the learning curve is smaller and more intuitive.

 

[nbs03]

Chris,
If you are comparing products, you may also consider CommVault. I am not endorsing Commvault but have heard positive things about it and it may fit your environment better than TSM or NBU.

Cheers,
Neil

 

[Christoh]

Hi Luky24, I've been a TSM fan (And it's predecessor ADSM), since the early 90's - so I'm a little biased towards TSM. With that said up to 3 years ago all I did was Storage and TSM, since then I've been involved in Netbackup at a customer site - looking after day to day backups. My honest opinion, stay with Netbackup for the number of servers you wanna backup. TSM is a long-term investment in training and skills that might be overkill for your requirements. This is just my 2cents worth - you can PM me if you wanna discuss in more detail....

 

[rusmanhg]

TSM vs Netbackup

Hi.. if you are windows person I think netbackup is more appropriate for you as it is easier to figure out based on easy to understand the windows interface

If you are unix person, and get used to memorize and keep checking the command then TSM i think best for you as the overall backup for normal data and database until disaster recovery is quite comprehensive yet you need several years to master it.

You can still utilizing the Web-GUI facilities of TSM, but it's not straightforward hence you might get into trouble if you expect to be master of TSM only within couple months.

Once you are ok with the several years time-effort to master TSM then go for TSM,
If you want speed pace to master backup software then you go with NetBackup.

Cheers
Rusman Hadijanto

 

[chad_small]

I'd like to know what NetBackup you people are using...we use both at my company and Netbackups is a nightmare. OK so I am biased being more TSM centric but TSM can be relatively low cost to deploy. If your list of servers is not going to grow then TSM could easily handle this many servers on a Windows box. As for Enterprise capabilities, when I was at IBM I was lead for deploying TSM at Honeywell US (A Fortune 100 company). The truth is the abilities of any product depend on the skills and knowledge of the administrator.

 

[n9hmg]

A good TSM implementation can be nearly zero-maintenance. daily tapemonkey intervention (if your DR is tape), a couple queries every day or so (easily scripted and delivered via email) to watch for growing trouble, and actions when clients are added or deleted. Your operations team will probably be your first notification of urgencies - no DR, failed restore, etc..
If things break, you may need some closer management until the issues are resolved, and of course, if the business asks for anything fancy, you might spend some time developing and babysitting.

Managing windows clients, though - .... 1% daily failure rate means 3 or 4 miss sked every night, eating close to 40 minutes every stinking day for me.

 

[rusmanhg]

TSM good implementation good results

I'm agree with you about good implementation of TSM can be equal to very low maintenance.

I was interfacing with various backup software in the past such as data protector (omniback), connected (ironmountain), backupexec, netbackup, arcserve, tsm, and overall the most stable one is tsm (considered if you have implemented it properly). But again compare with all number of backup software i have mentioned above, TSM is the one which took me quite sometime to master it, but when you already master it then it's really awesome.

I heard the next coming TSM ver 6, will have the de-duplication facilities whereby this is quite new technology where sold separately. I have never experienced this dedup things, but many people say it can save more than 20 times of data..
eg. normal backup 20gb, this time round 1gb only...

best regards,
Rusman Hadijanto