Dell Networker vs. Veritas NetBackup

For users with a basic backup system that does not provide advanced data protection this is a life saver in the age we live in where hackers are looking to encrypt and ruin your important backups. I would recommend [Dell EMC Networker] based on its features, price, and ease of use. If you have a similar product already it does not offer many unique features however.

Incentivized

Backuping complex infrastructures (VMware ESXi, Microsoft Hyper-V, Oracle, and MSSQL databases, etc.). Regarding product price, it's not the most affordable for small businesses, but it can handle nearly all infrastructures and systems. With good training people, it's a Swiss knife of company data backup, no stress about keeping backups in a safe place!

Incentivized

• Networker has a UI and set that is relatively easy to use. It has a policy-based backup system that is straightforward as far as configuration.
• Networker has fairly robust reporting on current save sets and easily exportable pdfs and spreadsheets of statistics and metrics
• Networker has a monitoring dialogue which allows you to find out quickly what has succeeded or failed.

Incentivized

• The activity monitor allows me to easily see if there are issues with backup jobs or the environment.
• Community support for NBU is very good. I've been able to research issues with ease and find other users that have been in similar situations.
• Policy management for backups is very easy and there are lots of options.

Incentivized

• Networker terminology is awful. My favorite example is that many required-to-function configuration changes need to occur with the advanced configuration enabled. To make this worse, the 'advanced configuration' I am speaking of is actually called 'Debug Mode'. That's right, you must use debug mode in order to have a functional administrator interface.
• Errors are common and to resolve you often must go to support. You really need to be an expert to fix many errors, the steps usually involve being really knowledgeable in the CLI tools, which I am getting good at, but the public documentation is seriously lacking for troubleshooting these issues. That said, support (through emc) is really good at handling the common issues, friendly, generally knowledgeable, and quick to respond.
• It runs on Java, and sometimes I need to clear java cache to fix interface bugs. Generally this isn't an issue, but it is additional software you must worry about.

Incentivized

• Admin console
• SAP HANA application Templates should also be introduced instead of scripting
• SAP MAXDB application template should also be introduced
• Tape Management need improvement
• MOBILE connectivity is missing
• Admin console is so simple it should be more funcky or stylish
• Small database should also be considered for backup

Incentivized

There are three reasons for not renewing our use of NetWorker: 1) the rising and extremely high cost of support and proprietary hardware needed for deduplication, 2) the complete unreliability of the product (we couldn't recover from a true disaster if we wanted to), and 3) the horrible support from EMC for the product

Incentivized

Veritas continues to keep up with the backup game. There virtual machine backup capabilities are now top notch, and I believe they will prove valuable when our cloud presence demands a backup solution.

Incentivized

NetWorker has the clunkiest interface and unfriendliest CLI with which I have ever had to work. I spent three years hating this application because it took ALL of my time just to keep it running. Even then, I had no confidence in our ability to recover from a disaster because of its unreliability.

Incentivized

NetBackup provides a complete, flexible data protection solution for a variety of platforms. The platforms include Microsoft Windows, UNIX, and Linux systems. NetBackup lets you back up, archive, and restore files, folders or directories, and volumes or partitions that reside on your computer.
During a backup or an archive, the client sends backup data across the network to a NetBackup server. The NetBackup server manages the type of storage that is specified in the backup policy. During a restore, users can browse, then select the files and directories to recover.

Incentivized

The support team has always been good, and there is never an issue that can't be resolved. The techs are competent and know the product. The slightly less than perfect rating I'm giving is because Support shouldn't carry the burden themselves. We hear from Dell sales people all the time, but they never call and ask about this product, nor do they offer to upsell it or make it better. That lack of sales support and coherence hurts the overall rating a bit. When I spend my company's money on your product, I expect you to at least ACT like you care, if not actually care for real. It influences my opinion and future purchasing habits.

Incentivized

Veritas support is very prompt and the acknowledgement/followup is hugely appreciable. They go deep to the issue and provide you satisfactory solutions. Creating ticket in portal is also very easy, does not adhere to severity priority, even if Sev2 response is very quick.

Incentivized

How can anyone build a house without a blueprint? NetWorker was ramrodded into place here without a design or implementation plan. The result was a setup that was doomed from the start and never worked reliable over the full three years of our contract obligation.

Incentivized

Our trust in DataDomain as a premier deduplication technology naturally leads to [Dell EMC] Networker being the appropriate backup application to integrate with. Networker provides the most favorable dedup with DataDomain when compared to other backup technologies, and provides the highest combination of protection flexibility and performance that most other applications cannot provide. For example, Veeam provides excellent VM backup capability, but is unable to protect Meditech. If you go down the list of backup applications, you'll find that Networker is unique in what it is able to protect and in its backup performance.

The software versus the appliance is about the same, the appliance is more convenient in the fact that it is an all in one solution. Using veritas netbackup you have to build out a backup environment with multiple media servers and a storage target for offloading to disk or offloading to tape. Using the appliance versus using just the software means you don't have to build out an environment as it comes with the appliance.

Incentivized

• Now that it's been implemented and the many kinks worked out, we have far less exposure to downtime, but that's only because we didn't have an adequate backup solution in the target environment initially. We used native tools to protect SQL data and a few other tricks, but really didn't have anything proper. In other words, the bar was low.
• We have reduced the load on some of our application servers through the use of Networker's agent for Microsoft. However, compare that with Veeam, which just has a checkbox and no agent required to properly back up a SQL box.
• Agent-based backups require monitoring and periodic updates. This adds complexity and additional staff time to manage.

Incentivized

• When data is lost, we are able to quickly restore and return to normal business.
• When an application upgrade fails we are able to go back to a known good state.
• Large restores are slow at times, so be sure to plan for this in your recovery point objective.

Incentivized