Barracuda Backup vs. Veritas Backup Exec

There are few scenarios that it's not well suited for as long as it's either VMware or Agent Based installations. I have not had success with directly backing up a non-Windows file share. I would definitely test the product first if you are not planning to directly backup through an agent.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

• Quickness to deploy. You will not need an expert to get this up and running.
• Extremely intuitive interface: Brand new techs can pick this up without much training.
• Global Accessibility: The cloud interface allows administrators to access their backups from everywhere for quick restores after hours.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• In some of the older version of the software, drilling down to restore a single files was quite the process. It's still a little slow to this day, but improvements have been made.
• It would be nice to have the ability to spin up a virtual machine directly on the backup appliance in the event of a failed server. At current time you need a Hyper-v or VMWare environment to restore a failed machine to.
• Once you put the device in cloud control mode, some of your options are limited when you log directly into the local appliance. I personally would like to see all the options remain the same so I can administer the device the same remotely and I would sitting in front of it.

Incentivized

• 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.
• I'm struggling to come up with another con.

Incentivized

Love the units

Incentivized

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.

The front-end webpages are basic without to much clutter which makes finding what you are trying to do fairly easy.

Incentivized

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 weekly error on save needs a manual reload from me. The SDR can't restore the virtual machine of hyperV during a test.

Incentivized

No problem for this point it is in the average.

Incentivized

They are always quick to get you routed to a tech support person and always get follow up after contacting them. Last experience was amazing, she adjusted my boxes and they perform even better. I cannot say enough about the support. We had some trouble with one of the windows servers leaving the volume shadow copy out there and would fail. They worked with us to adjust and get working. After that it has been months since I have had to do anything with the server to keep the backups running.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

Work on a backup agent for Mac OS X or any Apple OS.

Incentivized

It was pretty straightforward.

I'm much happier with how Barracuda lays out their console and user interface. Acronis is a great product and you do get what you expect. But to have a the learning curve personally cut by at least 50% is a great thing to have when it comes to training new members to the IT team and getting them up to speed of our procedures.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

We only use it on the on-premise version on a single site.

Incentivized

• We've had a couple situations where we've had to pull data back down from the BBS cloud and while it can take a while sometimes, we haven't had an issue where we haven't been able to restore something that we needed. Overall it has been very reliable.
• We've had to implement two other backup systems in addition to Barracuda Backup and dedicate our BBSs to just mission-critical data because we're size-locked in our appliances. Upgrading to larger models is not financially viable at the moment and we can't expand their internal storage or point them to an iSCSI share or likewise. We brought in other systems to handle non-critical and virtual data because of those storage limitations.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized