On 11/20/2006 8:26 PM, Paul Robertson wrote:
> From a software 
> perspective, we're content with Netbackup, but we're not sure it offers 
> the best value anymore. We're also a little skittish after reading 
> negative comments on this list about Netbackup 6.0.

NetBackup 5.1 was stable (as was/is 5.0).  6.0 had some issues out of 
the gate for some people (it ran fine for other people).  6.0MP4 was 
just released today.  We've been running 6.0MP4beta for a while and it 
fixed almost all of our problems, and one remaining major issue was 
supposed to be fixed in the GA release.  We've just installed it and 
we'll see this week how it's behaving but I have no reason to believe 
that it will not have fixed the bug we reported.  Veritas has 
demonstrated to us that they were serious about stabilizing 6.0 and I do 
believe they've done so with MP4.

> After a preliminary investigation, we've narrowed our options to 
> Netbackup, Networker, or CommVault Galaxy. I'm interested in learning 
> from list members about their opinions of these products. I understand 
> that this is a Netbackup list, but I'm hoping to hear stories from 
> people who have used these competing products, and can share light on 
> the relative merits of each.

I know of one local site that started a migration from NetBackup to 
CommVault.  If you want your master server to run on Windows, and only 
Windows, then it might be an option.  I believe that one of the major 
advantages of CommVault over NetBackup is that users can do their own 
restores because it integrates with AD.  How it works in multi-AD 
domains I don't know, and I doubt it would help with non-Windows 
clients.  I've never used it.

NetBackup has a pretty good past and I believe it will remain one of the 
market leaders for a long time.  6.0 had it issues, but so have a lot of 
other .0 products.  That's not to forgive the developers and it clearly 
demonstrated a lack of suitable test environments, but I firmly believe 
that MP4 will be the turning point that sees a large group of users 
finally start the upgrades from 5.x and be happy doing so.  I've also 
heard that Veritas will be beefing up their test environments although I 
expect that NetBackup is used in so many weird and wonderful ways on so 
many platforms that it just can't be tested properly in a lab.  It's 
like testing Windows on the various hardware combinations that it 
supports - it simply can't be done any more.

        .../Ed

-- 
Ed Wilts, Mounds View, MN, USA
mailto:ewilts at ewilts.org