Beckup Exec 2012 functionality nerf!

[BEI]

Disillusioned customer!

Hi Symantec,

I have been a keen user of VERITAS software for over 12 years, I can appreciate the difficulties and challenges that are presented to you with a constant demand for backup software that is easy to use, and it’s intuitive and innovative.

I must say that at first I did not like the new interface but it has grown on me since, however, I have seem to encounter some difficulties as some of the important features that I have grown to accustomed over the years are now missing.

• Job monitor is gone – I would presume here that this is the biggest complaint on the forums as this was a one click, one view to what’s happening with all the jobs.
• One pass duplication is gone!!  In my case how do I copy my tapes, how do I move the tapes to a larger media I.e., LTO2/LTO3/LTO4 to LTO5 and beyond. How do I reduce  the amount of tapes I have in one single job (so to speak)
• Quick view of what’s on the tapes in a dropdown tree structure like it was before 2012. Now when I go to restore and want to have quick look I get 10’s of thousands of lines that I have to scroll down trough. (People don’t always remember the name of the file they want to restore and where it was located, that’s where the visual queue become so important (The tree structure that every user and admin is familiar with)

Since I have upgraded to Backup exec 2012 it seems like I have perhaps have made a wrong decision as it feels more like downgrade, I have never had to click so many time in my career. Some of your reasoning and explanations for such reminds me of privatised public transport in Australia Victoria, where they told everyone that going from a 3Hr ticket to 2Hr ticket for more money is better for you and it’s more convenient.

To be honest, I only care about the functionality not the way it looks; perhaps in the future you could devote your time, money and talent for such purpose.

On the side note, who do I send my bills for RSI treatment at Symantec:)

Disillusioned

[Alvaro_Monje]

Helo BEI,

Thank you for your post. We really appreciate your constructive comments ans we are taking care of them in order to improve as much as possible the user experience of our customers.

We have done a huge change in Backup Exec philosophy and, although the majority of the feedback is amazingly positive, we are collecting all the suggestions and claims in order to satisfy you, our customer.

Please don't hesitate in posting all of your suggestions because they are read and taking into account.

Best regards,

[Steve_Broomell]

If I understand your second bullet correctly, you want to be able to make a copy of your tape after the initial backup.  You can still do this by going to the Backup and Restore tab, double-clicking the server that contains the backup, select "Backup sets" on the left part of the screen and then expand the tree down to the past the drive and date/time and righ-click the backup and select "Duplicate".

[BEI]

Hi,

Thank you all for you replies. I'm glad that this is being followed up. I appreciate Steve's guidance and it's good to know how to create the backup sets.

I might not have indicated clearly in my rant that I would like to know how to copy tape to tape or to tape to T2D. My apologies!

I was after the option that allows me to duplicate EXISTING backup set where the source will be the tape that I want to copy and the destination the tape/disk that I want to copy it on too. This feature was present in the previous version, however, it seems that it has been removed.

This handy feature gave me the option to consolidate all of my 250 odd tapes, to perhaps 50 tapes.

I appreciate your feedback, and thank you for listening.