ADSM-L

Re: ADSM Versus Veritas

1998-09-08 05:57:03
Subject: Re: ADSM Versus Veritas
From: "Sanders, David" <DSanders AT INTERNAL.MASSMUTUAL DOT COM>
Date: Tue, 8 Sep 1998 05:57:03 -0400
I'm courious, based on your criteria for acceptance, why the products from
Innovation weren't included in your analysis??

Dave Sanders
Sr. Technical Consultant
DSanders AT massmutual DOT com
MassMutual / The Blue Chip Company
1295 State St, E060, Springfield, MA 01111
413-744-5095




> -----Original Message-----
> From: Andrew Swift [SMTP:Andrew.Swift AT CENTRAL.COLESMYER.COM DOT AU]
> Sent: Sunday, September 06, 1998 7:49 PM
> To:   ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
> Subject:      Re: ADSM Versus Veritas
>
> 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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