Hi Guys,
Your KB articles are getting more and more out of control and need to have some work done on them, desperately, to improve things. Here is a case in point:
KB Article: How to troubleshoot Backup Exec Deduplication Storage Folder
Location: https://www.veritas.com/support/en_US/article.100038756.html
Issue: (and this is the problem across a significant number of your KB documents): The way in which your articles identify the products the article refer to is woefully inadequate. In this example this is what you say: "Product(s): Backup Exec, Appliances".
The article then goes on to state "Note: Backup Exec version 2014, 15, 16 utilize PostgreSQL as the backend database in deduplication storage folder. Backup Exec 20 does not use PostgreSQL, so some commands that are suited for Backup Exec version 2014, 15, 16 may not apply to Backup Exec version 20 deduplication storage."
Now, this is really not much help to people who are troubleshooting their deduplication store. How are we supposed to know which commands are or aren't "suited" to the multiple versions you have given. I know, for a fact that post 2012 and pre v20, some fairly big changes were made to the deduplication subsystem and then with v20 probably some of the biggest changes you have ever made (in fact arguably the biggest changes Veritas, specifically, have ever made to the product, since the spin-off from Symantec) were made to the deduplication systems. However, you are inadequately updating your KB articles to cater for these changes. This article has been changed very little since, pre 2012 versions and you have simply inserted the lines of vague exemptions, as identified above, rather than properly seperating out this article to cover the three most recent major evolutionary changes of the dedupliaction subsystem. We are talking about changes made over the last 10 years, so we're not talking about an awful lot of work for you guys to get this right.
Generally, your KB articles should clearly indentify the specific product major versions the article is relevant to, in tabular format, somewhere standard, in the document. Normally the top for other vendors whose documentation is on top of this kind of thing.
Not managing this better exposes your customers to unnecessary risk. If someone who is not particularly familiar with the deduplicaion subsystem reads this current article, how are they to know whether the commands they are using are "suited" to the version they are using or not?
Regards,
David
