Today I Cried

17 July 2006

Yosemite Backup Standard versus Symantec Backup Exec

I'm considering Yosemite Backup Standard (site) as the backup solution for one reason: ever since Symantec took over Veritas the support for Backup Exec has been atrocious. I'd rather shoot myself than use Symantec's tech support. I can't believe we're supposed to pay maintenance to be placed on hold for an hour or spend days chatting online to solve a problem. If possible, I want to move away from this frustration.

We already have various flavors of Backup Exec but some of it is not licensed, and we need a couple of add-ons, so a purchase is necessary. Backup Exec seems to be the ubiquitous solution for non-profits probably because the base program is dirt cheap on TechSoup (site) and most consultants are very familiar with it. In our case, with the need for a few client licenses, an Exchange agent, and possibly an open file agent, Yosemite comes out a tiny bit cheaper with its non-profit and competitive upgrade pricing (contact them!). I'm not really looking to save money here, I just want the best backup program and decent support.

The trial version of Yosemite looks nice and works very easily but seems limited. The sales rep stated it actually can do more so I will have to reinstall it on a test server. So far a restore went smoothly. Also, Yosemite created an ISO and backed up to a CD with minimal effort. While I don't think those latter options would be used regularly, it's nice to see that kind of flexibility. I'm not sure Backup Exec can do the same.

Anyone out there have experience with Yosemite? What are your thoughts?

2 Comments:

  • I feel your pain. I am using 9x on a novell/windows/linux mix and am having problems with throughput across the network. Tried everything tech support has suggested, no help. They (symantec) actually suggested I move the media server to a windows base instead of novell. I downloaded the 60 day trial and while it seemed to work well locally on the windows box, I have had nothing but problems with the remote agent on a novell box. Unable to push the agent, remote agent wont load, Once loaded the media server could not find it, unable to get decent throughput (109MB/min locally, 4 (yes FOUR)MB/min on remote agent, remote agent at 100% utilization during backup blah blah blah. Been going back and forth with online support for days, only to fix one problem and introduce 4 more.

    And they want me to pay $500 for the media server and $170 for each remote agent? Not at this time thank you very much.

    We to are going to look at Yosemite. Hope it works.

    By Anonymous, at 04 August, 2006 15:11  

  • bleh @ yosemite... its too damn slow compated to backup exec... symantec shaves around 3 hours off our backup

    By Anonymous, at 29 November, 2006 11:26  

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