Siobhan

From: Davina Treiber <DavinaTreiber AT PEEVRO.CO DOT UK>

Reply-To: Legato NetWorker discussion <NETWORKER AT LISTSERV.TEMPLE DOT EDU>, Davina Treiber <DavinaTreiber AT PEEVRO.CO DOT UK>

To: NETWORKER AT LISTSERV.TEMPLE DOT EDU
Subject: Re: [Networker] Moving away from Networker
Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2006 08:23:54 +0100

Matthew Robert wrote:
> This email is to be read subject to the disclaimer below.
>
> Pardon my ignorance, but what is an ATSP/SEP?

That's a good question. I always thought SEP was "Someone Else's
Problem" (courtesy of Douglas Adams), that actually fits quite well into
the context but somehow I don't think it's correct.

SEP also means "Single Engine Piston" when referring to light aircraft.
Still not right?

>
> Thanks,
> Matt
>
>
>
>
>
> Shyam Hegde <hegde.shyam AT GMAIL DOT COM>
> Sent by: Legato NetWorker discussion <NETWORKER AT LISTSERV.TEMPLE DOT EDU>
> 24/06/2006 02:25 AM
> Please respond to
> Legato NetWorker discussion <NETWORKER AT LISTSERV.TEMPLE DOT EDU>; Please
> respond to
> Shyam Hegde <hegde.shyam AT GMAIL DOT COM>
> All email is logged and may be reviewed - Refer policy FP206
>
> To
> NETWORKER AT LISTSERV.TEMPLE DOT EDU
> cc
>
> Subject
> Re: [Networker] Moving away from Networker
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Dave, This is relavent to me too and surely to lots of people around who
> are
> now EMC customers since they have been using Legato NetWorker.
> These are the things which have made me to think something else than
> Legato
> NetWorker also to make my professional carrier (now outside a Legato
> Distributor and ATSP.) Thanks to this list and good souls who help each
> others to make their life easy. This is what is keeping the spirit up
> after
> all these odds u know !
>
> Do all these mean that NetWorker has gone in to wrong hands? :(
>
>
> Regards
> Shyam
>
> On 6/23/06, Siobhán Ellis <siobhanellis AT hotmail DOT com> wrote:
>> Ryan,
>>
>> that is why there are ATSP's, or now called SEP's.
>>
>> In Australia and New Zealand they are IDATA and XSI. Support costs from

>> these companies are about the same as EMC. I know for certain that IDATA

>> has
>> very experienced people providing support, I do not know about XSI.
> Maybe
>> you should look at them to see what you get for your money.
>>
>> Siobhan
>> (who is about to join IDATA as a consultant)
>>
>>
>>
>>> From: Ryan Tassotti <Ryan.Tassotti AT BRISBANE.QLD.GOV DOT AU>
>>> Reply-To: Legato NetWorker discussion <NETWORKER AT LISTSERV.TEMPLE DOT 
EDU>,
>>>   Ryan Tassotti <Ryan.Tassotti AT BRISBANE.QLD.GOV DOT AU>
>>> To: NETWORKER AT LISTSERV.TEMPLE DOT EDU
>>> Subject: Re: [Networker] Moving away from Networker
>>> Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2006 11:43:16 +1000
>>>
>>> I found this to be relevant for me:
>>>
>>> ------------------
>>> Support seems to answer the quick questions very
>>> quickly, but after the first years I quit asking those -- and my hard
>>> questions (about MSCS backups, or oddities relating to index restores,
>>> or quirks moving server platforms,) either stalled on for longer than
>>> I'd liked, or were resolved but in ways that left me dissatisfied.
>>> ------------------
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>> Ryan.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>>> mussulma AT UIUC DOT EDU 23/06/2006 8:30:14 am >>>
>>> There's a general feeling of disatisfaction with EMC/Legato in terms
>>> of
>>> their products, their vision, their customer notification and
>>> involvement, their technical support, and their cost/value ratio.
>>> These
>>> factors have made my group decide to not renew our support and
>>> transition to new backups software in the fall.
>>>
>>> I'm a little disappointed to come to that, since I have 5 years of
>>> experience as a daily Networker admin.  We've built a substantial
>>> secondary system of scripts to ease operational duties and generate
>>> reports.  Given our relatively simple client/server data model, I'm
>>> really comfortable with my level of how to get things done with
>>> Networker.  But recently, and I think that means about three years ago
>>> when they raised their support/maintenance costs, there's been a real
>>> split between Networker not giving me what I want, and charging me
>>> more
>>> for what I don't want.  I'll try to enumerate here.
>>>
>>> * Since I mentioned it, I feel their basic, entry level
>>> maintenance/support costs are really expensive.  Legato dropped their
>>> 9-5 support for 24x7, and hiked the price up to justify it.  They
>>> claimed most of their customers wanted 24x7 anyway and didn't like the
>>> per incident charges.  That's not true in our environment, but we had
>>> to
>>> pay the price.  And because that price was so high, getting it through
>>> purchasing every year is a pain.  My last support renewal was $35,000
>>> for one server and 400 clients.  And we're not doing anything really
>>> fancy -- I'm sure with storage servers or NDMP, it'd be more.
>>>
>>> * I'd like to add D2D backups in our environment.  At one time, that
>>> was
>>> included, but now it's an extra addon we'd have to buy.  Additionally,
>>> I
>>> understand there are still concurrency issues with adv_file types that
>>> makes their inclusion seem unnatural.  Really, it's the irk that it's
>>> yet something else I need to buy when it's standard now in so many
>>> other
>>> packages (and backups designs.)
>>>
>>> * Making copies of data for offsite use is another complicated task in
>>> Networker -- one that people find their own homebrew ways of
>>> executing.
>>> Various threads on this list, some even very recently, show some of
>>> the
>>> quirks to getting commands and flags into and out of Networker to
>>> assist
>>> this process.  I am not comfortable that my offsite DR operations are
>>> written outside of Networker -- with self-written, potentially
>>> invalid,
>>> verification scripts that the offsite copies are complete. Moving data
>>> through backups and making copies of it should be complete, fluid and
>>> easy.  It isn't in Networker.  I'm not sure it's ever gotten any
>>> better
>>> in the 5 years I've been using it.
>>>
>>> * Our support experiences have not been good, and certainly not worth
>>> what we paid in maintenance.  This list has gone further to answer
>>> some
>>> the questions and enhance my understanding of Networker than anything
>>> EMC/Legato has done.  Support seems to answer the quick questions very
>>> quickly, but after the first years I quit asking those -- and my hard
>>> questions (about MSCS backups, or oddities relating to index restores,
>>> or quirks moving server platforms,) either stalled on for longer than
>>> I'd liked, or were resolved but in ways that left me dissatisfied.
>>> For
>>> example, some of them involved deleting temp directories and
>>> restarting
>>> the server.  Others involved putting oddly named files in certain
>>> places.  I never got a good reason for why that solved my issues, or
>>> how
>>> it got into the bad state in the first place, or what the side effect
>>> of
>>> those special files were, or when I could remove them (perhaps after
>>> something changed, or an upgrade.)  It's not because I didn't ask.
>>> Support didn't know, and didn't try to figure out.  The support people
>>> were nice, but I would have liked to see them more knowledgeable (or
>>> allow customers to talk with the product specialists/developers) to
>>> get
>>> answers.
>>>
>>> * VSS backups.  This bothered me in a few ways.  First, VSS only works
>>> for applications, not for files on file systems that are snapshotted
>>> via
>>> VSS.  So I could backup Oracle via VSS, but not a large file share
>>> local
>>> to the system (which still use the normal file APIs.)  That still
>>> doesn't seem right to me.  Second, it's another new license that needs
>>> to be purchased -- and it's per client, when everything else I have is
>>> a
>>> clientpak that works globally.  When I tried the evaluation code for
>>> VSS
>>> support, "it was a bug" that happened to make that single license work
>>> server-wide.  When we decided not to purchase it, and deleted the
>>> license, we get odd failure messages for VSS-capable clients -- the
>>> solution to that is to turn VSS off, per client, which also doesn't
>>> seem
>>> right to me when I'm not licensed for it at all anyway.
>>>
>>> * CustomerNet, while in some ways was an improvement in terms of
>>> online
>>> knowledge bases, was problematic for us.  There were always issues
>>> getting accounts associated with the right support contract, and when
>>> we
>>> did get a successful login, it was slow and akward to use.  The recent
>>> email from EMC looks like they're phasing that out for the next
>>> generation of online crappy CRM software.
>>>
>>> * A minor point, but it's a little disturbing I had LTO3 drives online
>>> for a long time before LTO3 media options were available.  Afterwards,
>>> I'm not sure what the impact would be of changing my drive types, so
>>> I've left it be.
>>>
>>> * I'm more than a little surprised with the lack of
>>> concern/communication EMC/Legato has with its customers.  If I even
>>> think about letting my Consumer Reports magazine subscription relapse,
>>> I
>>> get 30 renewal letters and about as many emails.  For my annual
>>> Networker maintenance, I always had to remember to call to get the
>>> quote
>>> (and finding the right person to talk to wasn't always easy,) and then
>>> follow up on the processing of it.  You'd think for $35k/year, my
>>> support rep could contact me.  When we decided not to renew, we didn't
>>> hear anything from them.  I guess they didn't miss us.  When I do get
>>> an
>>> email from EMC, it's almost always on their other products (Xtender,
>>> or
>>> Documentum, or whatever.)  In terms of innovation, it looks like
>>> they've
>>> put Networker on the back burner.
>>>
>>> * Except when they do decide to upgrade Networker, it's a doozy.
>>> These
>>> are old rants we're all familiar with.  The big ones I have about this
>>> are some of the ones that have come up in conversation today -- the
>>> fact
>>> they broke their previous release rules.  This should have been an 8.0
>>> instead of a .3 release, and the impacts of what an upgrade would have
>>> brought should have been more defined.  I'm not faulting them for
>>> trying
>>> to modernize the product, but woe to the admin who doesn't subscribe
>>> to
>>> this list to know what the jump from 7.2.1 to 7.3 means.  Also, if it
>>> weren't for this list I wouldn't know about most of the patches and
>>> upgrades that are available.  That's a great resource -- it's just too
>>> bad it needs to come from outside EMC.  Inside EMC, it's hard finding
>>> anything on their website.
>>>
>>> * And there are countless other quirks that I have about Networker
>>> that
>>> I've just internalized and don't even stick out anymore.  Hostname
>>> based
>>> client assignments, ad hoc backups not integrated with the server
>>> scheduled backups, the green/brown classic GUI which has terrible UI
>>> pieces that I've just gotten used to (as one example, Cancel meaning
>>> close even after the process has finished.)  The inability to easily
>>> see
>>> media dependencies to tell why a tape hasn't recycled, etc.  If you
>>> only
>>> looked at what the GUIs allowed (Windows or Unix,) you'd miss out on
>>> some of the best functionality of the product - yet most people look
>>> at
>>> the command line last.
>>>
>>> Really, the best thing about running Networker is this listserv.  The
>>> talented, passionate, helpful souls on this list go quite a ways to
>>> making up for a product with lackluster support and a divergent vision
>>> of where things should be going and how.  But, if I may, I'd even go
>>> so
>>> far as to notice a change in attitude in some of the pillars of this
>>> list -- those dedicated few who leave no list message unanswered
>>> (Theirry, Stan, Carter, Teresa, Terry, Tim, Darren, Joel, Davina,
>>> Maarten, George - others I'm sure I'm missing -- you know who you are,
>>> and you're all great.)  There's less of a feeling of empowerment and
>>> capability and more uncertainty and discontent than ever.  As always,
>>> EMC/Legato is noticably missing from these discussions.
>>>
>>> So it's not any one of these issues, but all of them, that made the
>>> decision for us not to continue using Networker.  Right now, TSM is
>>> the
>>> contender for the replacement.  It's initial cost is cheap (thanks to
>>> state contracts with IBM), and its maintenance costs are marginal
>>> (compared to EMC.)  The differential style is different than the
>>> levels
>>> we'd been using, (most notably the full separation between backups and
>>> archives) but probably works better for our diverse client model.  The
>>> feature set I need is there -- data migration, duplication,
>>> reclaimation
>>> (what a concept!), the split between hostname and client definition
>>> allowing mobile clients, as good as Networker user restore tools, etc.
>>> Support for all supported OSes and D2D backups comes with the core
>>> product.  TSM has a few user support lists, at least one of which has
>>> active participation by IBM developers.  If anyone has any comments
>>> about transitioning from Networker to TSM, I'd like to hear them.
>>>
>>> I apologize for the long post, and other than me venting it doesn't
>>> really do or help anything.  (Okay, maybe I feel a little bit better.)
>>> I
>>> don't expect everyone here to agree with me, but I do think I'm not
>>> alone and my swan song rant is a decent Zeitgeist of problems with
>>> Networker in 2006.
>>>
>>> Dave
>>>
>>> --
>>> David
>>> Mussulman                                      mussulma AT cs.uiuc DOT edu
>>>
>>> TSG Research Programmer / Sys Admin
>>> Department of Computer Science                 office: 217.333.6231
>>> University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
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