Howdy,
If you’re considering CV you
may want to look into Backup Exec as well.
The key question missing for this
forum to really help you is; what itch is your management trying to
scratch? Are they looking for cost breaks, a more reliable tool, or a Windows
centric application? Give us the reasons they’re asking you to
spend cycles and we can help you better.
If there is a change, as with any
application (i.e. Notes to Exchange, Oracle to SAP, etc.) the learning curve is
steep and 2nd and 3rd line support is reduced until the
experience is gained. As I was once told, “You know the uglies of your
current product and the new product comes with blemishes as well. The
difference is you know where to put the make-up to make your current product
pretty!”
If you must evaluate other
products, the meetings with the sales teams, and management will consume time
and the phone calls will always arrive at the ‘wrong’ time.
So make sure you allocate the ‘intrusion time’ into your day-to-day
duties.
When you do the evaluation make sure
as a minimum (and I am hoping others will add to this list) the following:
1.
Ease of installation
to include all required agents (Exchange, Oracle, MSSQL, SAP, etc.)
2.
Documentation, both
with the product and through other forums and medium (internet, RSS, etc.)
3.
Responsiveness of the
Sales and Support teams. (Open a support call, even if everything is
fine, but a get feel for the support you’ll get after purchase.)
4.
Ease of initial job
configurations
5.
Ease of complex job
configurations
6.
Media handling
processes
7.
Operations interface
and comfort with administration consoles
8.
Troubleshooting
capabilities, such as logs, self-generated reports, and custom generated data
reports
9.
Cost to purchase,
implement, and maintain
10.
Ability to provide
users with operation instructions commensurate with their rolls (i.e. Tape
handlers, DBA, 2nd line support, etc.)
At the end of the day, you need a
product that protects your company’s data in a manner that ensures in a
catastrophic and daily failure you can recover completely and a product that
will grow with you. You need something you and your managers are comfortable
with and that will let you go home at night, sleep soundly knowing your
covered. Lastly you will not want to increase head count because you’ve
got something new.
Please keep us posted and remember
we’re all in this data-protection boat together and are here to help each
other. Good Luck!
Thanks,
Rockey J. Reed
Professionals make
the difficult appear easy; that’s why Monday morning quarterbacks never
lose!
From:
veritas-bu-bounces AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
[mailto:veritas-bu-bounces AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu] On Behalf Of jim fred
Sent: Thursday, November 08, 2007 8:54 PM
To: Veritas-bu AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] Dilemma...need some info.
If a business is going to change backup products you
have to consider managment of the backup services that are retired.
They have to be operational during the transistion for DR any user
requested restores plus archival restores. You may have to
have the old backup system around for sometime in order to recover from old
baxckups.
Some people like to bundle backup into secuirty because of
"data protection". There are SOX implications for
data recoverability from old systems once the new service is in place. I.E
spread the political workload.
On 11/9/07, Chris.Romano AT lazard DOT com <Chris.Romano AT lazard DOT com> wrote:
My management was thinking of doing the same thing, so I can sympathize.
I told them we would always need to pay for a Netbackup license anyway to
recover old backups.....that didn't convince them.
I told them we would all require retraining...expensive! They were
not swayed.
I complained about the huge effort to switch....they told me I could handle it.
I bitched and moaned that Netbackup was the best...why switch to an inferior
product....this didn't move them.
Finally Veritas (now Symantec) came to my rescue...they matched the
competitor's
low-ball bid with a matching low-ball bid for our new SAN-based environment.
My bosses could not defend moving to a new vendor's product if they weren't
going to save any $$$...
Of course afterwards, my bosses (and I) soon found out about all the options
they needed to pay for from Veritas...too late though because Netbackup had won
the day!
Chris.
"Cruice,
Daniel To
(US -
Glen Veritas-bu AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
Mills)" cc
<dcruice@deloitte
.com>
Subject
Sent
by: [Veritas-bu]
Dilemma...need some info.
veritas-bu-bounce
s AT mailman.eng DOT aub
urn.edu
Nov 08 2007 11:59
AM
Well, I have a dilemma and need my fella NBU guys to provide me some
ammo. My
management is looking into alternative backup solutions. I am ok
with looking
at other vendors that specialize in one or two products…we are looking
into
CommVault and dare I say it…Microsoft's Data Protection
Manager. I saw a demo
of DPM quite some time ago and almost instantly was not a fan. It is
a total
Microsoft support platform so it will work well with other MS
applications. At
the moment I cannot remember all of the down falls I thought it had but the few
I can remember are:
Won't backup Oracle
Won't backup SAP
Won't backup ESX hosts
And while I was in this demo, I drifted off since I really did not realize that
management was seriously considering it. And as most Executive
managers, they
see the bottom line. Their main driving focus is the fact that since
we pay so
much for MOM and SMS, we would be getting DPM for
free. GREAT! But my
philosophy is you get what you paid for.
So I reach out to all of you to help a guy out and start throwing me items that
I can punch holes into DPM. I really, really do not want to support
another
Microsoft product. I beg all of you, please help me out.
My environment is mostly MS servers, Oracle, SQL, VMware, SAP, Exchange, some
UNIX.
Thanks
Dan Cruice
Deloitte Technology Service
Deloitte & Touche Tohmatsu
Direct: +1 610-479-5179
Fax: +1 610-479-6179
E-mail: dcruice AT deloitte DOT com
www.deloitte.com
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