Product compariso. Netbackup/Backup Exec/System Recovery

[bernardocasalvi]

Can someone shed a little light on the following.

Nowadays I’m trying to compare three different independent products provided by Symantec company (NetBackup, Backup Exec, System Recovery), and willing to know major differences among them.

I’m particularly interested in system with centralized administration available via GUI. This means I want to perform backup, restore, p2v conversion and all this kind of stuff trough management console GUI. System also has to support both physical and virtual environment.

Based on what I’d found in the internet, I created a table about GUI functionality of this product:  

GUI functionality	Backup Exec	Net Backup	System Recovery
Backup	+	+	+
Restore	+	+	+
P2V Conversion	+	+	+
Backup-to-Virtual Conversion	+	+	+
Server migration	-	-	-
Schedule options	+	+	+
Physical machine support	+	+	+
Virtual machine support	+	+	+
Single/Group actions	+	+	+
Support of standalone VM/Physical machine	+	+	+
Visual representation of performing tasks	+	+	+
Powering on/off functionality	-	-	-

So, I’d appreciate deeply if someone adds something to it or comments it.

Backup Exec and System Recovery seem to have more or less similar GUI, where you can simply add  standalone server/group of servers and later perform necessary actions, like backup, restore and so on.

Nevertheless, the situation with NetBackup is slightly different, since, as far as I know, it’s policy based solution, thus, it’s not like you right-clicking on the server and choosing needed actions. In order to meet your requirements you should create policy first and only then will you be able to meet your expectations. Or am I completely wrong in my assumption?

Additionally, I have hard time finding any good video describing step-by-step process of performing tasks in any of the aforesaid products. So, if anyone has a link to something like educational videos, don’t hesitate to share it with me.

Thanks in advance.

Best regards, Bernardo Casalvieri.

[CraigV · Accepted solution]

Hi Bernado,

From my side on the Backup Exec forums:

BE is a small, medium to enterprise (very low enterprise!) backup solution. Centralised management is done by licensing the Enterprise Server Option, making use of CASO (Centralised Administration Server Option) which is BE with a license to unlock this management. Works well, and I have used it in the past.

BE 2012 moved away from being resource-centric and allowing you to group servers together in 1 job and become server-centric...each server has its own job, and policies have been done away with.

Check the links below for more information on BE:

https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/backup-and-recovery/videos (filter for BE)

https://symbeta.symantec.com/callout/?callid=52801D5ABA034CC18A15C8E8E5CB2F99

https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/forums/backup-exec-2012-where-find-manuals-videos-and-trainings

Thanks!

[Dyneshia]

Netbackup is an enterprise level backup and restore solution.  It is not uncommon for a company to be using Netbackup to backup terabytes worth of data.  Backup exec only supports Windows and NBU supports windows and unix.

Please see :

http://www.symantec.com/backup-software

Netbackup backup and recovery solution that is optimized for virtually any workload, whether physical, virtual, arrays, or big data, and delivers truly flexible target storage options, whether tape, 3rd party disk, appliances, including the NetBackup Deduplication Appliances and Integrated Backup Appliances, or cloud.

http://eval.symantec.com/mktginfo/enterprise/fact_sheets/b-netbackup_7-5_comparison_matrix_OV_21219494.en-us.pdf

Here is a good forum : https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/forums/feature-comparison-backup-exec-2010-and-netbackup-7

As far as System Recovery, I know you can run it with Netbackup, however you will not be able to take advantage of live update.