Hi Jaime,
I don’t want say what you should pick. Each environment is different and the administrator does the right research to find something suitable for his/her environment. That statement "Why pay for a point product when his customer already has the license to use advanced NetBackup features for VMware?", wasn’t directed to questioning your decision. It was a statement for David’s customer as he/she has invested in NetBackup enterprise client.
I disclosed that I work for Symantec in accordance with social media policy for its employees when we participate in discussions like this. The comments are entirely my own.
As an active VMware user and VCP, I shall share some of my responses to your points. Please don’t treat these the wrong way, I am sharing my thoughts and I am not ‘perfect’. I understand that each person has his/her own reasons to make a choice for his organization during the purchase cycle.
- Veeam has a method to test to see if the OS boots after backup (surebackup)
[Rasheed] DCIG had explained the reason behind it: http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/new-data-center/veeams-surebackup-feature-may-do-nothing-more-than-forever-fix-its-own-backup-software-37644
- has the Lab thing,so you can use a backup file to launch the VM in a virtual lab (good for testing)
[Rasheed] Yes, I agree with you on the idea.
- it can boot from the backup file directly - to get a machine up and runnig quickly, then copy it over to production storage later
[Rasheed] This one does not impress me much. It sounds great right of the bat. This is good if your backup storage is fast and if it acceptable to run the production machine from underpowered storage. Many of the dedupe storage vendors had recommended against running the VM from their storage or provided tweaks to make such a thing to work. HP did tests with Veeam using HP StoreOnce target deduplication appliance and have published a white paper on this, please see this whitepaper in Business Week: http://whitepapers.businessweek.com/detail/RES/1312227098_500.html . See the section on Performance Considerations.
- you dont have to pay any extra for deduplication and the large machine to process it.
[Rasheed] I am afraid you are mistaken on this one. The technology used there is a combination of block tracking and compression that works only within a backup job. Why do you think Veeam recommends using devices like Exagrid and Data Domain for backup storage?
- Veeam+ Standard Netbackup is cheaper if you have more than 4-5 TB to backup (consider licence downgrade??)
- What if the business you work for adds another server and you have to backup another TB? -this adds thousands of dollars to your netbackup bill each year.
[Rasheed] NetBackup provides both traditional and capacity based licensing. With any product you either have to pay for per seat or for capacity. I am not sure if I understand your question here. Isn’t it normal for a vendor to charge for additional servers (if using per-seat model) or capacity (if using the capacity model)?
Once again, let me conclude this by stating that the comments here are my own and I don’t get specific incentives to participate in this thread. I am a VCP who is passionate about virtualization technologies. Please do not treat my comments here as those of my employer!
Warm regards,
Rasheed
The usual disclaimer: I work for SYMC. Comments are my own.