Backup Exec - affordable and useful for any amount of data
December 05, 2017
Backup Exec - affordable and useful for any amount of data
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Overall Satisfaction with Symantec Backup Exec
I support numerous clients that have Backup Exec and have used every version of the software since 2009. It is a great product that is flexible and reliable. It can backup to most types of media, including external hard drives, tape drives, and network shares. It also supports many operating systems and database systems.
- Design jobs with unique schedules and times, with exceptions to avoid or run one-time jobs.
- Backup any type of database across Windows servers, including granular restoration of mailboxes or SQL databases.
- Customized retention of data to keep backup jobs depending on age or automatic overwrite of older data.
- Overwrite and retention does not always work as efficiently as it should, leading to manual deletion of older jobs on the media.
- Occasional glitches with backups to external disks, needing to recreate device folders and redirect jobs.
- Licensing is based on server and database count, no total data. If you have numerous servers and SQL databases and Exchange databases, you will have to buy licenses for each individual machine and instance of database.
- Great cost effective tool to utilize with external media. It provides backups for a low cost and does the job well.
- This product is great as long as the administrator(s) are willing to do the manual effort of rotating media for offsite backups.
- Restoration of data and servers has almost always gone to plan which is to be expected of an industry leading software.
Symantec and Acronis are well matched, but Symantec is more flexible in designing jobs. Acronis creates images that are mountable whereas Symantec creates backup files that can be restored quickly and easily. Barracuda and Datto are "total data storage" backup options and include all necessary software to backup any server, but lots of data will require an expensive appliance. Symantec will backup any amount of data as long as your licensing for the agents and databases is accurate.