Arctera Backup Exec is a backup and disaster recovery solution. It works in virtual, physical, and multi-cloud environments and integrates with several third-party software releases and applications.
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Dell Avamar
Score 5.5 out of 10
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Dell Avamar is a hardware and software data backup and deduplication product. It provides protection and recovery through a complete software and hardware solution when paired with Dell Data Domain for virtual environments, remote offices, enterprise apps, NAS servers, and desktops/laptops.
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Pricing
Arctera Backup Exec
Dell Avamar
Editions & Modules
Veritas Backup Exec
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Pricing Offerings
Arctera Backup Exec
Dell Avamar
Free Trial
Yes
No
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
Optional
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Community Pulse
Arctera Backup Exec
Dell Avamar
Considered Both Products
Arctera Backup Exec
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Chose Arctera Backup Exec
Backup Exec was the cheapest out of all the other options we were looking at.
EMC Avamar offers backup and recovery for desktops and laptops, allowing users to extend the power of Avamar "deduplication" backup software with the aim of eliminating the risk of data loss. Backup processes are performed automatically and in the background to ensure …
Each one of these products did one thing well. Avamar was able to backup all of the different OS types and different types of data. Also, the reliability and support of Avamar are so much better.
Originally, we evaluated CommVault with Avamar and due to some differences at the time we decided to go with Avamar. Some of those reasons against CommVault no longer exist, but we have been satisfied with Avamar. Other more current products have been reviewed such as Rubrik …
Avamar was selected for me to use by our corporate office. The user interface of Backup Exec was easier to use, but as far as reliability, Avamar was much better. I always had failures with Backup Exec backups and restores. That is one thing I never had to worry about with …
We were considering going with the newer version of the tape backup method we have been using for years. However tapes deteriorate and off site storage adds up. Backups are slow, recovery from incremental backups is slow and unreliable.
I started with Avamar as a tape backup replacement. I had drives at each location and a tape robot at the central data center. Moving to disk backup with no tape switch out was incredible. With tech today, almost all backup is disk backup. Avamar's quality hardware and …
Backup Exec works well generally in most environments or situations. The licensing can potentially be a nightmare, but manageable if you have a decent reseller. Backing up and restoring from physical tapes which is not all that common is not as reliable as when backing up and restoring from datastores that reside on hard drives or digital media. It does a good job with large or small backup jobs. Backing up and managing SQL backups requires additional licenses and be a bit clunky. If you are very careful (which you should be anyway) and document as you build these backups you will get better at managing them. Regarding a virtual environment, I have limited experience in that arena, but have done it. Backup Exec can backup VMware environments, but honestly we moved to Unitrends to backup our VM's and are much happier with the backup process. However, restoring a VM in Unitrends can be tedious compared to Backup Exec.
This software is well suited for companies that want to be very in control of their backups but need a simple tool. It could be convenient for them to just buy their own node, locate it in a different location, and set up the jobs for their machines to backup to the cloud with the specific plugins. However, it would not be convenient for companies looking to have a tool that needs to be secure and compliant, and that need to have different other options for business continuity.
Manage agent based backups - It is easy to schedule and monitor backups. Verifying backups is done for all jobs. Backup performance is excellent.
Provide a wide ranging contingent of backup options - Despite providing a dizzying array of backup options, it is easy to schedule individual or recurring jobs.
Integrates well with our Active Directory - Restoring even individual Active Directory objects is possible.
Avamar performs data deduplication on the remote host. This greatly reduces the amount of traffic that each backup requires. This even applies to the virtual environment through change block tracking. Backup times are reduced from hours to minutes.
The management interface makes it easy to configure and maintain data retention periods. Many times certain data must be kept for an extended period of time. There is a specific menu for managing retention periods.
The system is able to recover itself from a hard failure with virtually no loss of backups. There is a checkpoint taken each day that provides a recovery point in the event of a catastrophic failure. Since this is a node based system, the loss of more than one node could require a recovery be performed.
While another grid must be purchased, the replication utility allows all backups to be replicated to another grid at a remote location. This ensures the resilience of the backups in the event there is the loss of the primary data center.
Also works on HCI devices performing image-level backups as in our primary data center environment
There is also now an All-in-One appliance for smaller locations
Could provide better license management from an inventory perspective. How many licenses do I have?.. etc.
When Backup Exec backs up itself it should not select iSCSI backup targets by default. The result is recursive data backup ending in the loss of storage capacity.
The client interface has constant JAVA issues and can be slow and chunky. We have often had issues with current versions of JAVA breaking it so it will not even run.
The backup clients are split out for function. Although this makes them light, it also makes it cumbersome to upgrade clients. The naming scheme can also be confusing for the clients.
This software is a mess in my brutally honest opinion. I've spent more time babysitting this software while backing up 20 servers than I did with Veeam backing up 600+. I've had multiple jobs run fine for weeks at a time that just randomly fail out of the blue for seemingly no reason whatsoever. There's no intuitive way to chain jobs, so automation becomes somewhat more problematic if certain jobs depend on other jobs. The forever incremental feature feels tacked on since the merge operation merges all your incremental jobs into the most recent backup and doesn't have the option set a limit on how long to keep your point in time restores.
I have been using the product for over five years. This has performed so well that with the current system reaching its End-of-Life with EMC next year, I have proposed replacing it with the latest version of the product. Now that it integrates with Data Domain, the cost has been greatly reduced. Instead of the need to purchase many nodes, one Data Domain can replace them creating a significant cost savings.
It can do a lot of things on paper and sounds terrific, but in practice it doesn't do any of them well. It can easily be sold to non-technical minds and C-levels, but of all the backup solutions I've used in the last 15 years of my career, Backup Exec is easily the least fault tolerant. Unless this software is a sunk cost and you're on a shoestring budget, I recommend almost anything else. Jobs fail often with obscure error codes and the KB articles in the Veritas support portal are a mess. Within 30 days of a fresh deployment I've logged more tickets with their support than I did in 3 years with Veeam.
The system overall is easy to monitor and see your backup/restore status. The user interface could use updating as it relies on Java and any updates to Java cause the interface to stop working need to be reinstalled
In the few instances of having to contact support, our overall outcome was always good. They would have received a better score if the wait time was less, but I attribute this to the timing of support calls - it was during the previous owner's time. We have not had to open a support ticket since Veritas Backup Exec took the product back over.
Support is very convincing, always eager to solve issues from the root rather than workaround, don't hesitate to take webex, describe the issues to the core and recommend configuration to avoid further issues. We can ask few questions other than the main issue. They don't hesitate to answer.
If your company is looking at changing solutions or currently does not have any, Veritas Backup Exec is the way to go. Do yourself a favor and try the 60 day trial, you won't be disappointed! Very simple to use and has a great GUI, much better than what the competition has to offer.
Avamar has simplied the back up approach in their VE edition and is much easier to use than Data Protector. Backing up multiple VMs takes minutes instead of hours now. Creating policies, retentions, and schedules, is vastly improved and much easier.
Backups by their very nature are difficult to quantify when it comes to ROI. Any monies spent should be seen more as insurance . If you never have to claim on it then that is the best outcome. Backup Exec gives you comfort that you can meet any downtime recovery targets set by your business and this is how to benchmark your solution.
Conduct regular DR tests and your this will be your ROI.
