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Impressions of BackupExec 2012

Bulbous
Level 5
Partner

Is it just me, or does anyone else absolutely HATE the redesign of Backup Exec? I have worked with BE since version 8, and I have become acutely familiar with the menus, where everything is, and how it works.

This redesign of the UI reminds me of the differences between Microsoft Office 2003 and Office 2007, only much worse. Menus are now hidden behind other menus, and everything has a completely counter-intuitive feel.

At first, I thought that the feeling would pass as I grew more familiar with the product, but in fact my dislike has grown as I have found more issues.

Does anyone else feel the same way?

417 REPLIES 417

Christopher_Jol
Level 4

To be honest, I too have the same feelings.  I have been using BE since it was owned by Veritas and having spent the past week inside this program getting it running.  It really feels like I am clicking more times than I have ever clicked in my life.  The transition from 2010 R3 to 2012 has been nothing short of nightmarish.

Alv__Inf__Servi
Not applicable

Absolutely more clicking than before as everything about a particular object is "conveniently" inside of it in a folder tree configuration.  Changing some views to List instead of Tree can help a little bit, but not totally eliminate the issue.

I can see getting used to the change, but not loving it.

teiva-boy
Level 6

Backup products are designed by developers with little input from real-world users :*-(

 

 

iammejutty
Level 3

Current 2010 environment is backing up about 100 servers compressed down into about 12 jobs a day.  I can't do that with 2012's server centric view.  Spun up a vm to test it out I have since deleted it. I can't see how in it's current form it can be anywhere as easy to manage all my backups as it is now in 2010.  I want some of the new features but until I can as easily manage all my servers like being able to bundle them up into single jobs through a GUI and not rely on CLI (don't see how that is a solution considering how easy it is to re-order servers in a job through the gui now or add a new server to an existing multiserver job), I will be staying put.

Have been using Backupexec for I don't know how long just checked I still have a version 9 install in production at a remote site.  Can't understand why such a drastic change in the way the product now handles backups.  If you didn't have to many servers to backup I can see it not being too bad but the more you are trying to backup the worse it looks.

Guten
Level 2

Yippiee!!  it looks...... really nice but you can´t use it :o

Guten
Level 2

Glad to see some one else here hate this new look!!!

The new BE 2012 totally destroyed my jobs and now i have been working 4 days to get everything back to normal but no luck installing BE 2010 again, now i have to clean the registry and see if it works.

Advice to others who is thinking of an update to BE2012, DON´T do it!

Here is one lost customer!!

DanielBickford
Level 6
Employee Certified

We did talk to hundreds of customers in the process of building BE 2012 and did everything we could to incorporate all the feedback.  We knew there would be some folks who would miss the old way, but we hope in time those folks will see the streamlined nature of the new product, especially as we continue to nurture it and learn from your continued feedback.

So, I hope I can help all of you with one thing you may have missed about the new UI:

Server grouping (allows you to modify many jobs at once): http://www.symantec.com/docs/HOWTO74389   

The feedback I have heard says this is one overlooked feature that really seems to make a big difference in how you use BE 2012 in a more complex environment.

Check out this blog to get a better feel of the how and why of the BE 2012 UI: https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/blogs/new-backup-exec-2012-user-experience

Finally, I have heard manu users report they have a much better understanding of how things work after watching a few videos about BE 2012: http://www.backupexec.com/videos

So, while sometimes it may not seem like we listen, I can tell you it is my job to listen to ALL the BE customers and we do our best to make the right decisions.  When we don't, we do our best to make it right.

Thanks for the feedback, it's exciting to see the passion around BE!

Keep the feedback coming!

Steve_Kratz
Level 4
Partner

I feel the same... One deployment has 5 servers, all VM. Backups are a nice, clean 5-job set.

Another customer has 17 servers, all but 5 virtual. Combinations of Exchange, SQL, AD, etc. I have 24 backup jobs to handle the 12 virtual servers (VM Agent for Disaster Recovery, 12 more for daily data backup via the RAWS agent because GRT isn't processing the VMs properly, and then another 5 full/inc jobs for the physical servers.  I used to rely on email logs to get all of the info I needed, but now I'm going to have to design a report, or log into the servers to see if I have the pretty green "tabs" on the logs.

 

iammejutty
Level 3

I think understand how the server groupings work but it still doesn't help if you have 30 servers in a group and you can set a backup job for them or modify them all at once guess what they all try to start at the same time whats the point of that?? and guess what selection lists allowed me to modify the backups of multiple server all at once as well but only required 1 job and 1 start time to manage. How is it more streamlined when you need to manage 100 servers and now 100 jobs instead of say 10 or 12 jobs??  Server groupings does not mean less jobs it's just a view to show you servers that match a specific criteria and I'm pretty sure you can have servers in multiple groups?? (can't confirm vm deleted).  The menu stuff i'm not concerned about but my backups and backup management is. 

If you had a small environment great if you have a large environment guess what it's not easier and more streamlined.  Like someone else has raised the product is so server centric even when you link jobs using cli script or whatever (insert afterthought) you have to do, it still doesn't count them as a single job as it unloads and reloads the tape head between the servers everytime.  When this product was developed were they doing testing with only 5 servers or something 1 vm 1 exchnage 1 fileserver and 1 sql??

Don't get me wrong some of the new features are great but I can't justify the benafits when the managment overhead would become so great and complicated.

When you guys talked to the 100's of customers did they all say "Please change the way BE works as much as you can because it sux and has sucked for years and doesn't work and we can't use it"??

What was the driving force behind such a monumental change in the way the product does backups.

Massive rant I know but super frustrated at a product that is so engrained and a major part of our disaster recover in our business and has been (we have made massive investments in backup hardware to support what we have with some of these being done in the last few months) for quite some time with us wanting to expand and start doing SSO and Central Admin to find out that in it's current form the product is almost unusable.  Bottom line we cannot replicate our backups as they are as they have been with the BE2010 product.

teiva-boy
Level 6

To address the first point about 100 servers and not 100 jobs, instead of 10-12 jobs...  I will say with the direction of backing up to disk that BackupExec has taken, since it's so terrible with tape.  That this is a good thing.  More concurrent backups can be sent at a time.

I've always advocated more jobs with less servers in it to speed up backups as well as lock down specific GRT or VSS related settings.  

It's a good thing that Symantec went this way with BackupExec.  It makes it ore logical for an advanced shop that had disk in their backup routine.  For folks still on tape, it sucks since there is no multi-plexing available.  

I've got Netbackup environments that do thousands of jobs in a day.  I've also got other competing products that I wrok with from commvault and EMC that do thousands of jobs per day.  And those products have always been better at grouping servers...

The Achilles  heal to Symantec NetBackup and BackupExec is the lack of innovation.  The products have evolved over the years, and features bolted on.  Though not integrated into the product.  Yes NOT integrated.      You can see this as with each version you see new options in the job menu or in the NBU server properties.  That list got really long over the years.  My god, why can't they merge the two products already!

 

 

CraigV
Moderator
Moderator
Partner    VIP    Accredited

...I was part of the usability study that was being done last year, and when the Symantec employee conducting the study with me asked me what my thoughts were, I said that they would have an issue with people who were used to the way that Backu Exec used to work. This would also then be broken into those who didn't have too much of an issue, and those that would take issue with what they were trying to do.

I didn't see many videos doing the rounds, or certainly any mention of what was coming down the line. This would have helped those people who didn't take part in the Beta, didn't research the product when released, and certainly weren't part of the usability study.

However, if Symantec were to make a significant change to the application, BE 2012 would be it.

The big thing here would be to lab the application, because it is such a significant change in the way it works, and the way you need to think differently about it.

It's going to be a case of working through the issues, and getting to grips with the product. I don't see any further significant changes coming down the line (ie. another new GUI), as I'd then say people will jump ship en-masse!

scottt709
Level 3

With all the user input and development time who could have possibly suggested that stopping a backup when it is half completed because it goes past midnight and the next day happens to be a exclude date. I have a backup that takes approx 10 hours that starts at 5:00 pm. As the next day was Easter Friday and no one is in to change the tape I added an exclude date as I did with BE2010. When my Thursday backup hit midnight the backup was stopped and it alerted me to failed status. How could anyone possibly think this was a good idea.

user55
Level 2
Partner

New UI is similar DPM ;(

More jobs for each server is a good feature. You can run pre/post commands for each server if you need that. But usually you have ONE big file server, where is some local disks and mounted big volumes (LUNs) from the storage. And tape backup of these LUNs is a pain.

We mount on backup server recent snapshots of the volumes from storage for tape backup. Batch script mounts storage snapshots as pre-run command. Each volume should be unmounted after tape backup. But you can't mount/unmount volume per resource, only by server. Since volumes is big, tape backup is long. Next storage snapshot will try overwriting mounted snapshot and there will be a busy snapshot.

In BE2010 and BE2012 I can't run batch script for each resource/

Please add this feature: pre/post commands for each resource selection .

 

Another issue in BE2012:

Why I can't see history for ALL jobs in one window ?

Why I can't see ALL running jobs in one window ?

 

You have all windows, just add these features into BE2012.

 

ps. I've worked with BE since BE 6.0. I always loved it. But now it's not good as was...

IT_Chap
Level 3

RE:  Thanks for the feedback, it's exciting to see the passion around BE!

Symantec, you mistake passion for anger.   Why was there not a huge flashing warning at installation to say this is a massive change unlike anything before?

This is such a time waster for me with 40 servers to backup.  The installation created random backup jobs of entire servers, I can't find any way yet to delete them, only put them on start dates 10 years from now :(

Removal of the Job Monitor was the single dumbest thing you did, though no doubt you feel very clever about it.  It was succinct, allowed a single glance view of both running status and history, and now this info is spread all over the place.

I have better things to do than this, and I, like so many others, am looking for alternatives.

john

 

CraigV
Moderator
Moderator
Partner    VIP    Accredited

...visit the Ideas section to add in those ideas...

https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/backup-and-recovery/ideas

 

Tech_No
Level 3

When I first looked the interface, I immediately googled ‘Backup Exec 2012 interface forum’ as I knew that it made lots of people unhappy like me. 


I don’t understand what Symantec is trying to achieve here by letting down all the IT technical guys.  As you may know (or may be not) that WE (who works in the management and support of the IT), don’t really care about any shiny, colourful, embossed interface as long as anything is easy to use and easy to find what we want. 
With this these changes - Symantec is not going to get any good reviews.  Forget about extra features, why is it so important if you can’t even use it properly and takes ages to find? Forget about the videos, people don’t have time there are lot in the plate already to deal with.
Symantec really let us down A BIG TIME!!!

 


Another unhappy technical guy :(

Jimmy_Mac
Level 3

I too have been using Backup Exec since the late 90's and have to say, 2012 is the worst yet.

Sure, some of my opinion is due to the GUI changes but worse, there is no easy intuitive method of backing up more than one server per job even with grouping. The only ligitimate benefit I've seen so far is that it seems a little faster than 12.5.

It is vital that we have all of our servers to one tape, it is critical that certain files and folders are NOT backed up due to the nature of some server based applications. Fortunately I have this installed on a server that I am in the process of decommissioning so I have not pooched this beyond recovery but really?

Has Symantec become the new CA? A place where good software goes to die?

As for requiring the usage of videos is really IMHO, a lapse in good judgement. We (well most of us) have far less time to do everything we need to do and to have this enormous learning curve on our hands for something that should be a simple backup application is really a very poor business decision by the developers.

It will be a far less painful move for us to move to 2010 and hope that either Symantec fixes this dud or find another backup application that will perform to our needs.

 

J..

 

 

 

GhislainL
Not applicable

WOW... BE 2012 should be an improvment of software... and that's not the case. Seriously! either we go back to BE 2010 or we will change for a real solution from another vendor. Even if NETBACKUP is great and will backup LIKE IT'S SUPPOSED TO. What garantees us that the next version of NETBACKUP will not be as bad as BE2012?

We lost flexibility like,1 job multiple servers, being able to specify the backup order, etc. I tought I was doing something wrong, but after looking at other posts, it seems I'm not alone. Going to a Centric solution should not imply loosing functionalities.

Bye bye BE 2012!

 

ZacTech
Level 4

Backup Exec 2012 reminds me of the horrid mess that Acronis puts you through to manage servers.  This server centric approach creates so much extra work.  The job system was the best simply b/c I create of list: server 1's c: drive; server 2s sql, virtserv's 3rd guest....etc.  They ran in the order I need them to and they start as soon as the previous backup finishes. Ok, so the new version has a group feature...job order is random, resource order uncontrollable. I sorta of see where this approach can take us but there needs to be MUCH more control.  I only upgraded to take advantage of the differential in hyper-v backups. Seriously contemplating rolling back.