Licensing

It's been a while since the last post. I've put in at least 8 hours dealing with problems and snafu's in the last two weeks. That's not counting the routine things one expects with a backup solution, such as rotating tapes and the like.

The past week's ordeal has largely involved Symantec's Licensing. It seems that no one had followed through on why our SAN/NDMP license had expired a few months back and so it expired again.

Symantec seems to be proud of their Licensing Portal, to me it's just another layer of dirt.
To explain more let's look at what they provide. One of our licenses reads as:
VRTS NETBACKUP ENTERPRISE CLIENT 6.5 WIN TIER 2 STD LIC ACAD BAND S
I can make out VRTS = Veritas (legacy name for the product)
WIN=Windows, TIER 2 is probably our support level, STD LIC = Standard License and ACAD means it's an Academic license.
"BAND S" - who has any idea what that means?!

Other license terms such as XPLAT just beg for a Symantec Licensing Lexicon or something. It's no wonder that they actually have videos online to train people how their licensing works!!!! Who has time to learn their assinine procurement methods when you're dealing with all the other flaws in the software?

But all of the above doesn't really mean anything, NOTHING AT ALL, when your "feature" isn't working. All the lists they provide do not go to that level of detail. The great Symantec Licensing Portal gives ways to search by Customer Number, Serial Number, Agreement Number, on and on but there's no way to search by feature. What good is this? It's like covering the big hole in the wall with a pretty picture.