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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

JuergenB
Moderator
Moderator
   VIP   

So i had created groups and created new jobs for the grouped servers.

But don´t try to edit a single server of this group, your group will fail and it will result in complete empty jobs and crashes.

there will be hotfix in the future, but right now it crashed my installation.

Better eval in an virtual machine.

Josefino
Level 2

It's a complete nightmare at my company. I spent weekends and nights trying to make it all working again and i'm still unable to have all my backup working.

The 2012 version seems to be a product management product and not a backup administrator product.

It's seems everyone is trying to make it's product simple like an iphone and everyone is failling.

Instead of focusing on what i really need:

  • Support for Oracle 11 R2 on Linux
  • Span backup jobs accros multiple disks

All i have is a barbie like software that it has so many bugs that hurts my eyes. You can't even order the Backup sets window by date.. or anything. I keep pressing the live update button waiting for this nightmare to end with some kind of update.

My backup needs in terms of space have doubled due to the server centric stupid idea. I will not buy more storage space... if that was Symantec idea.

I will wait 2 more weeks until the end of the month and if nothing changes wi will downgrade and start evaluating other software.

CraigV
Moderator
Moderator
Partner    VIP    Accredited

...just a quick question to the complainants: Did ANY of you check out the application in a lab to see what sort of changes it would make? It's 1 of the major reasons I have yet to upgrade my 30 backup servers as it means a major overhaul of the whole structure and process around it...

Josefino
Level 2

I always upgrade safelly from BE8 to 2010 R3 with no issue and all working smooth.

Symantec support said that support for Oracle 11R2 on Linux was bound to be launched on 2012 and i was eager to upgrade.

I read the there were changes and i read them but it never crossed my mind that this would be so much different. How can you try to reinvent the wheel on the same product... why?

Yes i should have ran everything on a Lab, i know this. But i always trusted Symantec to serve me with good software. NOT BE2012!!!

CraigV
Moderator
Moderator
Partner    VIP    Accredited

Dude...if you ran it in a lab you'd be aware of the changes...

If due diligence is done, there should be proper preparation and planning around it, and once in play, no complaints about what it looks like or does.

I admit it is a massive change; both in direction, the way it works, and looks, but it's like checking a car out on Youtube without seeing how it drives, and then going out to buy it...you're going to be disappointed when you realise it's not what you thought it was due to a lack of research.

 

Josefino
Level 2

You can safelly buy a car that the trunk won't be underneath the car, the drivers seat won't be in the trunk and the gears aren't on a stick near the the back seat.

CraigV
Moderator
Moderator
Partner    VIP    Accredited

...it's an analogy...and that's why you investigate things properly. wink

Look, I am playing devil's advocate here. I took part in the Usability Study last year, and that put a halt of BE 2012 being rolled out. It will be done this year, once a better understanding of the impact it will have is gained.

scottt709
Level 3

You are right I should have done labs on this software and received a huge wake up call after upgrading. I have been using Symantec since version 9. I have kept up a subscription each year. While I don't adopt the software upgrades as soon as they are made available things were running smooth and I had sometime. I watched all the promotional videos with the two gentleman one being the development manager assuring over and over again no features were removed from the software and that all the enhancements would be well received. Then lulled into a sense of trust by Symantec's previous upgrades I said why not. Then wow I realized I had installed a totally different product that I have to relearn right from scratch. I have to come up with work around after work around. Strange history logs. Strange media set layouts. Totally useless exclude date "feature". Due diligence is correct. Before upgrading check all other vendors as this is not even close to our previous version. I am sure this is what Symantec had in mind when releasing this software.

Tech_No
Level 3

Rather than acknowledging the fact that this has really put off most of the backup administrators, you’re trying to patronise by giving ‘car’ example?
A car is a car, is should go forward and backward not the sideways and fall off the cliff!

Jimmy_Mac
Level 3

Analogies aside.

The issue is quite clear. Whether your business has the resources available to lab test every 'upgrade' or not, the new BE product lacks a vital neccessity. The ability to backup multiple servers in one job to one tape.

Sure, there is a document on how to do this via scripting but if that's the only method, what is the financial incentive to upgrade? I just can't qualify it. The IT overhead needed to manage what should be as easy as simple granular selections via GUI, has become a nightmare. Especially for us smaller businesses who tepend on RELIABLE automation. Since 2012 cannot or will not meet our requirements, we have no other choice but to downgrade to v2010 and either hope that Symantec wakes up and fixes this or spend what little R&D time we have on testing competitive products for the future replacement of BackupExec.

 

CraigV
Moderator
Moderator
Partner    VIP    Accredited

*sigh*...again, you're missing the point. Due dilligence is due dilligence. I am not defending Symantec at all. Like I said, I haven't rolled out BE 2012 in my environment (and believe me I am getting some push from management to do this!) simply because of the changes.

If no research was done, where does the blame lie? That's all. I was playing devil's advocate in this scenario.

BE 2012 has made MASSIVE changes (maybe Symantec didn't communicate these clearly enough from the start, who knows)...this should be the red flag to investigate properly.

However, I've said before elsewhere, if a change was to be made, now would be the time to do so. It could simply be a strategic push to direct the market into a new direction, and differentiate their product. Whether or not other vendors follow suit is another story.

James_Avery
Level 4

As one poster mentioned, I've been using BE since Veritas, and have happily buzzed along in familiar territory for years.

As for BE2012, its interface has all the charm of, oh, I don't know, a broken elbow. It's as though Symantec hired all the new, young, enthusiastic, recent graduates from a computer graphics design school, lumped them together in a big room, and told them to, "come up with something new and exciting," without actually including the terms "useable," "informative," "clear," "concise," etc.

I have entirely enough to do during my week's work without having to climb a nonsensical learning curve for a product that I've used for years, which the designers thereof have decided to "improve."

Truthfully, it seems that they're trying to impress the head-shed, and not the guys and gals that are actually in the pits working.

I'll continue to muddle through this, but I'm not remotely pleased at having to do so.

Ken_Putnam
Level 6

Nailed it in one!

Wish I could give you more than one thumbs up, James

 

Ugh
Not applicable

Why wouldn't you at least put in the OPTION of having a job-centric view.  I've used this product for the last seven years and finally found my way around it.  There is certain key information that we need to be able to quickly see.  This UI does not allow us to see that.  For example, we were just running our first job under 2012 and we needed to insert a tape, but it wasn't obvious to me that we needed to insert a tape.  I had to go hunting around the UI to find that we needed to insert a tape!!!

 

For the love of all that's holy, PLEASE put in the option of being able to see a "jobs view" like all the previous versions were based on.  You can still have all this other stuff, but just add a "jobs view".  I want to see what all my non-hold jobs are and when they are going to run and what the current status is w/o having to drill down into each server on which these jobs are running.

 

If I'm going to have to learn a different UI, why don't I just learn a different backup program?  One of the impediments to switching backup solutions is that you don't want to have to go through the pain of learning a new interface and finding where everything is again.  You've removed that impediment with 2012.

Hue_Vang
Level 2

Wow i just created more work for myself, 2012 is less intuitive - have to relearn to think pretty buttons.

Whats the best way to rollback to 2010 ? and whats the best alternative backup product ?

James_Avery
Level 4

Not to blow my own horn - ok, maybe a little bit. Because of issues that I had had before, I took a full bare-metal backup and a master backup of my BE server before "upgrading" to 2012. I used a Unitrends DPU for this process so that I wouldn't have to rely on BE for the restore in case things went sideways.

I use Unitrends for, among other things, my Backup Exec servers, because if I have to recover from a catastrophic failure of one of them, it's a simple recovery and I don't have to recreate all the backup jobs from scratch. I had to do that once, and it wasn't a lot of fun.

I'm going to muddle along for a week or so with this interesting new version of a reliable old product and see how much "new" I can tolerate. If it becomes too much of a PITA, then I will restore my by then a couple of weeks old 2010 installation, and chalk it up to "experience."

Jim

"Oh, no! Not another learning experience!"

Ken_Putnam
Level 6

You can verify that the last BEDB.BAK file from before the migration is available outside the \Data directory  (Restore from tape/disk if necessary)

You should also have a copy of the \Catalogs directory from just before the migration

 

So

 

Uninstall 2012

Boot the media server

Install 2010

shut down BackupExec and copy the saved \Catalogs folder to the new catalogs folder

Restart BackupExec

Run BEUtil and select "Recover Configuration from a file" and point it to the saved BAK file

 

You should now be back to just before the upgrade

You also should now  be able to restore all the log files from just before the migration if necessary

 

 

StrongmanTech
Level 3
Partner Accredited

What was Symantec thinking? Whomever provided their input during Beta did not run this in the real world.

So, instead of having 3 jobs run, I now have 36 to seperately manage. The grouping of servers prior to creating new jobs really doesn't help much, as you cannot fine-tune the selection lists until you back out and edit each job separately!

Job history is a nightmare!

And, you cannot exclude specific dates on individual jobs! Either all jobs run, or they do not. So, if you run like I do, a Friday weekly job, a job for end of month, and a final job for end of year, on that last friday, you have 3 jobs wanting to kick off at the same time, per server!

If I mis-configured something, please tell me, otherwise, BE 2012 gets no "Best Product of the Year" votes from me.

For all the new features it has, they are over-shadowed with all the bad features.

Greg_McD
Level 2

You are right. We should have tested it in a lab. Shame on us for trusting symatec. We should have known that eventually they would ruin Backup Exec just like they did Symantec AV. So now, since you and Symantec seem to think this version is what we need, you can keep it. There are other products out there. Symantec lost a significant portion of the Anti-Virus market when they created SEP. I guess they want to do the same with Backup Exec. 

Greg_McD
Level 2

...get rid of simple task like running backup sequentially to tape.  So my 3.8 TB of data which usually went on 6 tapes is now on 13. Why, because BE2012, for some unknown reason cannot simply backup server 1 to tape, then when it moves to server 2 check to see if the tape still has room on it to APPEND the data, soforth and so on. .. no, it moves on to a new tape, why I don't know. However, in the middle of all of this servers 4-7 do backup to the same tapes, but then the remaining server find tapes all on their own again.

Well maybe if I back them up to disk first and have it DUPLICATE it to tape.. nope. Still get some crazy random number of tapes that add up to darn near twice the amount of data BE2012 is configurated to back up.

2 weeks ago, I just would create 2 jobs to take care of this.  One to back it up to disk, then another to duplicate it to tape. Done! Yay! Not now... now I have to break down that job into 238221232.2 jobs, because backup execs says it will be easier to see what backed up and failed.  Not thinking about the 3234231321.4 job we now have to manage.