Hotfix Quality Control - Does it exist?

[Derek_Hill]

I realize that hotfixes are supposed to be quick updates for problems that many users are experiencing, however, it also appears that they suffer from a serious lack of QC/QA just like the original 11d code.

I think it would be better to slow down the pushing of hotfixes, and have more time for inhouse testing of the HF's.

Case in point:

HF10, creates a ton of entries for missed jobs, one for every minute, rather than a single entry after the job has been missed (at the close of the backup window)

HF11, does not address the access denied when restoring a message or if it does restore, there is no content in the mail message.

11d needs to be looked at seriously by Symantec Engineering and fixed fundamentally, not just a patch here and a patch there, that just introduce more and more problems. We all paid a lot of money for this software, it is used in an enterprise that relies on reliable and successful backups AND restores, something that is currently not the case.

Every time I talk to an engineer, I feel like a guinea pig, try this, try that and it still doesn't work. I cannot just reboot a system when they want me to, this is a production environment and outages usually have to be after hours or scheduled.

I am frustrated, but we have a lot of money invested in this application and cannot simply jump ship, unless of course Symantec will give us our money back and we buy a competing product.

I am looking for a new corporate AV solution, but right now I am scratching Symantec off my list, maybe it is just the Veritas side of the house that is having problems, but I don't really care or want to find out.

Derek

[Eric_Sabo_2]

Derek,

I heard you. I opened a call on thursday and still haven't heard from support yet. All I did was I upgrade from BE 10 to BE 11 and it broke my configuration. Quality has dropped in this product ever since Symantec took it over.

[Rick_Eveleigh]

We use SAV heavily as well as BEX: the problems with BEX are not replicated in their SAV team. I would say don't scratch SAV from your AV evaluation.

[Dennis_Thornton]

We went with Trend for our corporate AV/AS solution. Symantec was NOT on the list because of the poor support and non existent quality with the BE product. Sorry, but that reflects on the entire company and all their products. BE is an enterprise product and should be held to a higher mark than consumer level software. Why would anyone expect their AV product to have better support than BE?

We're now looking at which backup solution we will move to. After months of continual problems and looking at many more hours of non productive time on support it's clear it is time to pull the plug.

Symantec is persona non grata in this house.

[Derek_Hill]

I hate to be bringing up a dead horse, but I feel this post is still very relevant. Case in point is HF 16, it basically puts us back to pre HF 10 status with missed jobs simply failing even though the backup windows has NOT closed.

HF 10 broke things by creating lots of missed job entries, one for every minute and would quickly fill up the log files.

HF 16 took those away, but jobs are failing again.

I received a call from Dano@Symantec wanting to know about my post to create this thread. I explained to him the frustration we (customers) are having with the sub standard quality control. He assured me this would be addressed, but I guess it was all talk as the same issue exists, a month or so later.

This constant hotfixing does nothing for our productivity and we should be paid as beta testers for Symantec as apparently they are not doing it, guess they outsourced that job to us.

I am frustrated that they can't get the basic functionality right on an ENTERPRISE application. Maybe they should extend "free" support to all users that didn't purchase maintenance on this product and extend support by 6 months on users that did pay for support such as our company, assuming they finally get this lemon turned into lemonade.

Comments are appreciated.

Derek

[Jorgen_Persson]

I feel exactly the same way. Whenever I apply a hot fix something new breaks and I have to spend hours getting it all fixed again, if at all possible. I had 9 successful days of backups before I applied the latest HF and now nothing runs when scheduled anymore. I get missed windows and thousands of errors. I think this is the third time they try to get the scheduling right and Fxxx it up even worse. It is a scheduling come on, if you can't get something as simple as scheduling right I will not trust you to protect my data in the future. I have a hard time believing this but the latest release and following mediocre HF makes it look like BEX have bad coders in combination with no QA. I protect about 30 servers and my contracts expire in July and I will not renew it the way it stands now. I just cannot trust this product anymore. I spend too much time fighting things that should work without fudging around..