I _ALWAYS_ recommend having two products on the table. It's AMAZING what competition does to pricing. (And make sure you get them to compete on maintenance pricing, too. They don't like to, but they can.)
--- W. Curtis Preston Backup Blog @ www.backupcentral.com VP Data Protection, GlassHouse Technologies -----Original Message----- From: ADSM: Dist Stor Manager [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Kelly Lipp Sent: Monday, July 30, 2007 12:55 PM To: ADSM-L@VM.MARIST.EDU Subject: Re: [ADSM-L] TSM vs. Legato Networker Comparison Wow! Dave, thanks! I may use this as a selling tool! Isn't it funny how the pricing varies depending upon the level of competition! Kelly J. Lipp VP Manufacturing & CTO STORServer, Inc. 485-B Elkton Drive Colorado Springs, CO 80907 719-266-8777 [EMAIL PROTECTED] -----Original Message----- From: ADSM: Dist Stor Manager [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Dave Mussulman Sent: Monday, July 30, 2007 1:00 PM To: ADSM-L@VM.MARIST.EDU Subject: Re: [ADSM-L] TSM vs. Legato Networker Comparison Hi John, Here's some perspective from someone who's currently transitioning from Networker to TSM. My first blush is I'm a little surprised EMC came in at such a dramatic discount: Saving umpteen thousands of dollars is the main reason we switched from them to IBM. (Although I think the state IBM contracts give us an advantage.) It's probably important to understand how Networker is licensed. The quote may not map to your environment, and might explain some of the cost. EMC nickel and dimes you to death. You need individual client count licenses for each system. You need a blanket license for each different operating system (Windows, Linux, Solaris, MacOS, etc.) You need the server license. You need a license per jukebox (varying costs depending on size.) You need a license for disk storage (varying costs depending on size.) NDMP? VSS? Clusters? Those are individual licenses too (per system, not blanket for all systems.) Also, investigate their maintenance costs... Ours were on the order of 10x what IBM offered. This list might complain about the idiocay of CPU licensing (which I agree with, especially for a storage-centric product,) but it's night-and-day better than the ala carte menu Networker requires. It also means that when that next new gotta-have-it feature comes out, it too is probably not included in your software maintenance and will need a new license. We'd been using Networker since it was BudTool, but to add the software licensing for the advanced disk objects (B2D) and MacOS support (another thing we were adding,) on top of our yearly support, was enough to justify investigating other products and deciding to purchase TSM. So, if your costs are too good to be true, they might just be. Also, as you surmised, the transition is hard. Getting up to speed on new backup software, learning its quirks, documenting it for administration and user-level docs, different reporting needs, etc.. Dealing with the hardware juggling to support an old production server and a new server that moves from evaluation to semi-production to production is a challenge. I'm a year into it, and I don't foresee shutting down our Networker server in 2007; probably not entirely until next summer. (Of course, this is a problem that throwing money into can solve, but you're in this situation because you wanted to save money, right?) In terms of functionality, both software packages will probably meet your objectives, but introduce unique quirks on how to do them. Networker's advantages are less per-file management, so you can put more clients and more files on a single server. (The relatively low supportable file quantities per server is one of my big hovering concerns with TSM that didn't exist entirely with Networker.) Networker also allows multiplexing sessions to a single tape, so provided your network/disk pipe is big enough, I'd say it's easier to keep the tape drives streaming. The disadvantage to switching to Networker from TSM is that a lot more media management is required. There's no reclaimation, so when it's on a tape, you're locked in and if you want that tape to recycle appropriately, you need to make sure the dependencies on it also cycle appropriately. That can be a pretty manual task, especially as clients go on/off the network. You'll find the staging and cloning tools in Networker require much more work than in TSM (although I understand that's improving, most admins I know control this with their own home-brew scripts, which is questionable when off-site copies are critical to your backups.) Other than that, that software's pretty much the same. It backs up and restores your stuff. It runs on almost anything (client and server.) Both companies have new upgrades that force new graphic admin tools on them their customers don't like. Navigating either product's support tools/websites can be menacing at times. Both have listservs with passionate, sharp, seasoned admins willing to help others. Both are exorbitantly expensive because, well, they can be. I was a little disgusted with EMC when we decided to purchase TSM, for more reasons than I've listed here, so maybe I'm a little biased. (Contact me off-list if you'd like to know more.) I think it's important to toe the waters with backup software and hardware every few years to find out what other products are doing, evaluate your costs against new pricing, etc. but I would caution to really spend some time investigating what the new software will cost you in terms of support, functionality, daily maintenance times, transition times, etc. and decide if those umpteen thousands are worth it. Ask me in a year or two if they did in our environment. ;) Dave On Fri, Jul 27, 2007 at 01:06:10PM -0500, Schneider, John wrote: > Kelly, > Thank you for your post. There is no reason to say we are unhappy > with TSM. Since I inherited this environment about a year ago, due to > lots of hardware and software version upgrades, and help from the > Windows and AIX teams, our daily backup completion status (neither > missed nor failed)has gone from 95% to 99%. That is less than 10 out > of the ~1000 clients daily, which is quite good by industry standards. > No, according to management, cost is the driving factor. The > proposals between IBM and it's closest competitor are, over a total > three year cost, umpteen thousand dollars apart (I won't say the exact > figure). It is enough to make everybody take notice. > Of course, no one has figured in the cost of conversion, both in > software and manpower. That will be huge. Not to mention the huge > distraction and lost opportunity cost and risk of outages that could > result.\ I agree that IBM ought to go back and sharpen their > pencil, and bargain away this threat to their territory. > > Best Regards, > > John D. Schneider > Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]