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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

robnicholson
Level 6

I've had a love/hate relationship with BE for the past 14+ years anyway.

Ditto. No other product over the last 12 months has caused me so much worry and grief. IRIS Exchequer comes close though.

Rob.

hazmat09
Level 4

UPDATE:

Day 4 and still a myriad of problems. I have wasted FAR too much time on this. Should have tested an upgrade!...note to self.

  • TL2000 tape library randomly states missing tape devices. I fixed it by removing the tape drivers and reinstalling them. But then it returns! - TL2000 (Missing Media)
  • Jobs are showing status Backup Status "Scan, Queued" then don't do nothing. I then go into Storage and it shows an alert on the toolbar "Backup Exec Services Need To Be Restarted"....I would have never seen that message had I not "Drilled" down
  • My Servers Job in 2010R3 had about 20 servers in it. That converted to 20 different jobs in the upgrade. I decided, to group the servers in five's and back them up simutaneusly over the period of an evening 7pm,8pm,9pm etc...
  • I used to have policies that would be Server1 backup-Full-Duplicate to tape. Now this new version allows you to stage which is fine, but what is confusing is this. Staged Server job, Server1, Full,Diff, Duplicate. The duplicate immediately gives you a menu of FULL/DIFF, but you can only select one for that Full/Diff job??? Shouldn't it be just backup immmediately when task completes! Otherwise I left thinking my differential duplicate job is going to reference the FULL backup if I'm only allowed to select one option.
  • If you're going to stage jobs and tie everything together....make it logical
  • I can deal with the changes as much as I don't like them, but for the love of god, at least make the thing functional!!

NWRFCUNetAdmin
Level 2

OK, I can get past the new interface.  How am I supposed to test my backups against my tape capacity now that they're per-server and not aggregated?  It was a simple thing to run a test job before - now the jobs run in sequence and they will all "see" that they have enough space to run since nothing is actually using up the empty tape.  Not so when the jobs actually run and the tape gets used by each job.  My jobs are failing due to lack of tape space and I can't get an overview of data usage to tune it.  So I suppose I have to write down and calculate by hand the amount of data?  How do I account for what gets compressed and what doesn't?  I have 6 servers - what if I had 30?

I'm a one-man shop.  Backing up with BE was a minimal and reliable part of my duties.  I haven't been able to take a successful backup of my data since upgrading to 2012.  I've used BE for 12 years and it's always been intuitive and easy to use.  I don't see how moving to a server-centric model supports any logic for job management.  It's like a SIEM showing you all of the raw logs instead of aggregating them and giving you a top-down view.

Maybe it's a ploy to get you to move to Netbackup or another product of theirs if you have more than X number of servers.

Unfortunately I just renewed my support - seeing if there's the possibility of getting a refund.  There are plenty of other solutions in the space.  I need something simple that just works.

RIP Backup Exec.

trock-1967
Not applicable

I'm a one man show.  I have 10 servers, 24 sites and 150 employees to support.  I don't have time ... well, we'll just leave it at that.

It's really not often that I will take the time to submit a post pertaining to how much a new product version SUCKS.  But BUE 2012 is the most ridiculous version "upgrade" I've ever seen.  Like many on this thread, I've been using BUE for a very long time; probably 12 years now. Improvements were gradually made on it but never to the point that they went literally backward in use-ability.

I can get used to the new interface and I can even get over having to make so many more clicks to accomplish the same end goal. What I cannot overcome, get used to or forgive Symantec for is changing 2012 to "server centric" instead of job centric.  Why in the hell would I want to backup each individual server on it's own backup tape instead of ALL of my servers, ALL in one job, ALL backing up onto one tape???  What clown decided that would be a good idea?  Why would I want to be literally living at work in order to change out tapes throughout the night so I can can get one good backup? 

Why would you put in the ability to create a "Server Group", add servers to it, select items to be backed up from each server and then NOT have the ability to treat that group as ONE BACKUP JOB?!

Thanks, Symantec. I will be downgrading back to 2010r3 and NEVER upgrading again until you pull your heads out of your backsides. Fool me once.

teQHarbor
Level 2

I've been trying to stick with it and make it work. I really have. But every time I try to do something that was terribly easy in BE 2010, I find that it's either far more difficult or downright impossible in BE 2012. I'm talking basic things here. Simple jobs that back up five servers to disk and then duplicate to a cartridge, which worked fine in BE 2010, are a nightmare to manage in BE 2012. I'm still fine-tuning issues on an install I've had for weeks. I'm now convinced that it's just never going to work.

This isn't Backup Exec. It's some new, poorly-thought-out pre-1.0 product that has stupidly been released with a venerable and once-prestigious name.

I'm telling every single one of my clients to let their BE licenses expire. I'll find them something better. At this point that bar is pretty low. I already had to do the same thing when Symantec bloated up their corporate antivirus product, so none of them run that anymore. On the plus side, that experience led me to much better and more affordable products, so I'm betting the same will happen here. (Hey, competitors: Now is a good time to offer competitive upgrades from BE 2012 to your product. You'll make a killing.)

Jimmy_Mac
Level 3

Fortunately for Symantec, I only have a dozen or so but honestly. I cannot in good consciense permit my clients to make such a disasterous choice as to upgrade to BE 2012.

Whichever business side director made the choice to have the developers come up with this tool failed miserably at properly testing the product prior to release.

 

Keith_W__Hare
Level 4

I think today's Dilbert was inspired by Backup Exec 2012.

http://www.dilbert.com/strips/comic/2012-05-07

 

 

James_Avery
Level 4

It's now printed out and stuck to my door frame.

 

ZacTech
Level 4

After spending a ridiculous amount of time reconfiguruing every backup we are dropping this software.   There are too many random issues, including the engine crashing about once a week, and an unneccessary complication of simple tasks for this to be an enterprise product.  Backup Exec 2012 should be a mature and excellent software package right now, but its more like a beta test for a startup company. 

Kingston
Level 4

I havent noticed a single positive post in favour of BE2012 in this thread. I realise that forums are usually biased towards people complaining, but there are always at least a few that will relay positive experiences .. but they don't seem to exist with BE2012. I think Symantec have epically stuffed this release up.

 

Keith_W__Hare
Level 4

The Backup Exec 2012 design goals had a critical missing piece. Someone bought into the concept that users are doing backups to disk rather than to tape. Because of this, they ripped out capabilities that are critical to anyone who is backing up to tape.

I suppose it is possible that there are some benefits to the "server-centric" meadow dressing, but I haven't seen them yet.

The decision to remove a basic capability that is critical to some percentage of the Backup Exec market boggles my mind. It suggests that either the design team doesn't understand how Backup Exec is being used, or they are too arrogant to care.

Keith

robnicholson
Level 6

The Backup Exec 2012 design goals had a critical missing piece. Someone bought into the concept that users are doing backups to disk rather than to tape. Because of this, they ripped out capabilities that are critical to anyone who is backing up to tape.

I do have a certain amount of sympathy with this aim as backup to disk is most likely where the future lies. The requirements of many businesses these days is "business continuity" and tape does not fair well in that scenario. Throw in the obvious benefits of deduplication and tape doesn't really stand a chance.

We still do monthly backups to tape for archive purposes but to be honest, it's a lot of money for something where we've only been asked twice to restore something from years ago. Our Quantum SuperLoader 3A reached the end of it's 3-year warranty and we've decided not to bother renewing it. If it breaks, we'll buy a standalone LTO drive for the little tape work we do.

Look at something like Unitrends and you'll see a huge emphasis on backup-to-disk.

That said, I don't think it's quite there yet in terms of removing tape functionality from BE.

Rob.

 

 

Kingston
Level 4

You make good points Rob, but I get the feeling that many people stick with BE because of tape support. There are many times I've looked into other backup software and then realised that it didn't support tape .. so I disregarded that product (even though the product was otherwise superior to BE!). There seem to be a lot more products that don't support tape than there are that do support tape, so to me in that sense BE had a competitive advantage.

robnicholson
Level 6

There seem to be a lot more products that don't support tape than there are that do support tape, so to me in that sense BE had a competitive advantage.

Yes, you would have thought that especially as they do have a lot of experience in tape.

I sometimes ponder upon what I would do software wise if somebody gave me big stash of cash. One of the choices is "Write a backup package that just works reliably, is fast and is cheap" ;) But even I'd ignore tape. Not because it's not a valid backup medium but just because the amount of effort in supporting tape compared to disk makes it not very attractive. Linked in with the pure cost of buying multiple tape systems for the test phase - or working with many 3rd parties. Also, as a developer, I'm not sure I'd have the patience to sit there testing tape compared to high speed disk ;)

But I run the risk of pushing this thread off track in terms of a "tape versus disk" thread which is a different discussion.

Cheers, Rob.

PS. The other software produce is accounting systems...

GunSHEEP
Not applicable

I'm going to skip complaining about the 'server centric' problems, clickfest UI, tape library exercising, and scheduling since it's been done to death already. I'm going to complain about some 'minor' issues which should have never made it into production software.

First, one of my D2D drives has 243GB free of 1E+03 GB. Yes, thats really what it said 1E+03 GB. Scientific notation for the win.

The second was my attempt to add byte count and average job speed columns to the display. Yeah, I could add those columns and move them to the location I wanted but as soon as I saved they displayed in a random location. After several attempts I manage to 'random' them to the right locations.

Third. It's slow. Really slow. On a 6 core server...99% idle...and I have to look at a spinning "I'm thinking" graphic going between screens.

Well, we won't be renewing next year. I've rolled back the install to 2010R3 and that where it will stay until we find another provider.

Ken_Putnam
Level 6

Guess you missed the second half of Craig's post

it really is a totally new product with the interface changes, and the way it works.

 

Ken_Putnam
Level 6

Rob,

For me (at least) the old console layout was quite logial and intuitive.  That's one of the reasons I chose it

You want to talk non-intuitive, take a look at the CA backup products!!!!

 

CraigV
Moderator
Moderator
Partner    VIP    Accredited

...CA's support is also quite bad!

Tech_No
Level 3

Previously, I was able to select files and folders from the multiple servers at once and run to restore them.  But on BE2012 you can only seleted ONE server at a time!  So if you have 10 different files/folder on 10 diferent location/servers then you have restore it one by one.  Oh dear!!! what a cockup!!!  Do you even employ people with some basic technical knowledge?  I don't have anything nice to say about BE2012, it's a disaster.  Wake upppp and do something about it.

BankingIT
Not applicable

I could go on some long speel about everything I dislike about 2012 but instead I'll sum it up.

I hate this product and when the time comes I can no longer use 2010 I'm going to find another product.

 

On second thoughts I will go on a speel. A small one.

The interface is worse than a Myspace page cobbled together by an overcaffeinated 12 year old.