Wow, that's quite a sad tale. You have my condolences.
I've had very little experience on Netbackup, but it's periodically
brought up in meetings. The claim of some folks is that on functions where
the TSM server software is weak (i.e. long restore times on filesystems that
are very large with a large number of files [1 million+]), Netback could do
it faster and better.
Recently one of our foreign offices set up a small Netbackup
environment. I'll be interested in seeing how it scales for them.
Thanks for the insight,
Ben
-----Original Message-----
From: Seay, Paul [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Monday, January 21, 2002 12:28 AM
To:
Subject: Re: VM TSM migration options: Veritas vs Netbackup
There has been a lot of recent discussion on the list about the subject area
of Veritas on Intel versus TSM. The comments here are for everyone, not the
author of the question, nothing is personally meant by any comments here.
Bottomline, NetBackup doesn't scale at all. We are ripping it out of the
Windows environment right now. We worked for 18 months with Veritas
Engineering to try to fix the product. They simply gave up. The word
"compete" should not even be put in the same sentence when speaking of
Netbackup vs TSM on Intel. If you have less than 20 clients to backup and
none with over 50GB of data, Netbackup will be OK. That is if you never
need to create duplicate offsite copies or need a deleted file policy.
Duplication on Windows is an impossibility in the Netbackup world unless you
buy 4 times the hardware you have in comparison to TSM and a 24 to 72 hour
window to create those duplicates. Deleted file policy, Netbackup, asks
what is a policy? No such animal, so you get stuck when you do not catch
that a file has been deleted before your tapes expire in Netbackup. The key
word here is tape expiration, not backup object expiration. NetBackup has
no such thing as storage management. I refer to it as NetBackup,
GrossNoRestore. In other words, NetBackup backs up some of your stuff, but
you will never be able to restore it all.
Yeah, UNIX is next. After the debacles of implementing 3.4 of Netbackup,
Veritas really dug the grave deep. Oh, I forgot to mention that our Windows
Netbackup 3.4 migration lead to a down (backups lost) situation for weeks
and we ended up figuring out what the problems were.
Because we lost half the performance from 3.2 to 3.4 on Windows, we were
faced with needing to change. More or better hardware would not fix the
problem, hell, we are using ESS disk and Magstar FC tape with high-end
servers. Before the migration we were getting 4.5MB/sec and up to 10 in
certain situations. Veritas could not figure out how we were getting these
levels of performance. They could not reproduce them with our own server
and identical hardware in their labs. Simply, Netbackup cannot scale in the
Windows environment.
I consider myself an expert on Netbackup and a knowledgeable person on TSM.
I believed the Netbackup hype, thought the product was the best because it
had the features that I thought were needed. When actually, implementing
you find out the features differences with TSM are gimmicks to get you to
buy and really never scale making them unusable. These gimmicks cause you
to overlook the real issue of being able to restore your business, which
implies having control and the ability to direct what is backed up.
Netbackup's GUI is impressive, it is the registry hackers dream. Wait till
all the timeout crap hits the fan and you start tweaking registry entries,
creating undocumented touch files and finding out there is poor to
non-existent Windows support at Veritas for Netbackup when you have a
critical problems. When you are paying 23% maintenance from a large account
you would think that having half a dozen critical down situation open calls
would get someone from Development engaged to work with your account. We
finally surmised these people did not exist anymore.
Yes, TSM has its quirks and customers have lost data over the years, but
probably mostly of their own doing and not really learning the TSM product.
After 911, everyone should be taking backup and recovery at a different
seriousness. If not, you are in the wrong business. That means if you are
not an expert in the backup product you are using and doing regular disaster
recovery tests, then shame on you, get to be an expert. If you are not
capable, choose a vendor that has support, Tivoli is one of them. The shame
if it is we automatically set the support expectation bar 2 notches higher
when it is an IBM company, but we will pay more to a fly-by-night
organization and make excuses for them when they do not answer the phone.
This all said make your NetBackup/TSM decision on facts, not likes or
dislikes. Your business depends on you getting this right and ultimately
your job and reputation.
Consider one final note. Your understanding of TSM is an irreplaceable
asset. You could spend 50K training people alone on Netbackup and still not
be able to support the product. The cost of TSM is much less than Netbackup
in the long term. See if you can work a deal with IBM to convert your
drives to FC or SCSI for a nominal fee. The "staying with TSM" carrot may
be all that is needed to push the button hard enough to get someone's
attention. ESCON is relatively slow compared to SCSI and fibre channel.
FICON is a different story. If you have MVS, that is ultimately the
cheapest answer to your problem.
-----Original Message-----
From: Zlatko Krastev/ACIT [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Monday, January 21, 2002 1:45 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: migration options
Isn't TSM v4.2 for OS/390 an option for you. It could leverage your current
ESCON 3590 inverstments with the new functionality.
If you are one of the shops which prefer one-time charge for mainframes,
are Linux-oriented and avoid MVS, then in my personal opinion you nearly
hit the main reason not to have recent TSM version on VM.
Looking for larger DLT library is not an option only for Veritas. TSM on
AIX will be more than happy to serve you with larger library. And if you
need to have new one instead of expanding existing library I would
recommend you to investigate LTO as well.
Veritas on Intel cannot compete with TSM on AIX with right arguments. So
prepare for the battle and enjoy the victory.
Zlatko Krastev
IT Consultant
cc52 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> on 07.01.2002 23:26:34
Please respond to "ADSM: Dist Stor Manager" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
cc:
Subject: migration options
We are trying to determine what our options are in moving
forward from tsm 3.x to 4.x. We have split our load across
a TSM AIX 3.7 system and a TSM VM 3.1. We also have Veritas
running for an NT Exchange Server.
Our Intel folks have been trying to get us to move in the Veritas
direction, however that tape system is quite limited (Small
DLT library). The AIX and VM are sharing a 3494/3590-E1A library
with around 200-300 tapes in it.
Our main problem is that we have invested heavily in ESCON connections
to the 3494 lib but TSM VM seems to have been deadended for some time.
What have other VM TSM users moved to? Again with our hardware
the OS/390 TSM seems to be the only other possibility, unless
Tivoli comes out with a LINUX/390 Server. The VM version has
been so trouble free and so easy to manage its really hard to
understand Tivoli's determination to eliminate the platform.
Ron Greve
SDSU Computing Services
