Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Why does NetBackup Suck?

Our implementation was done around April of 2008. It consists of roughly 16 servers, two NDMP (read EMC SAN storage systems) and a handful of MS SQL backup jobs.

Things ran OK for a while, and while seeing a problem here and there would be no cause for great alarm this small and non complex setup has generated about 20 cases or more. In one year I've surely spent at least a month of work hours dedicated to troubleshooting and getting back in touch with the support people at Symantec. Largely they seem to do a good job.

That's why NetBackup sucks and it's not "Symantec Sucks".
I've used several Symantec products for years and never found any problem with them. Until NetBackup! I've used at least four major backup products since working with Network/System Administration from 1996 on. Sure some have had quirks, but nothing that lead me to completely loose faith in them.

Last month I sent an email to our Symantec account manager expressing how I can not trust such a problem ridden system if we should have a real need (as in disaster) to restore this group of servers.

Well in that month I heard from one engineer who then went off to training and take some vacation time... after two weeks I'd really gotten NOTHING and was now loosing faith in their management. Another engineer who I'd worked with before got in touch and requested some diagnostic data. I readily supplied him with that, and a week later nothing seems to have come of it.

Well that's all for now, I'll post more as this goes along. If I get any serious down time (unlikely) then I'll docuement the cases and persistent problems that brought all this about.

Have a great day!

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