NetBackup for VMware's Two-For-One Deal

I was shopping at a shoe store recently for a new pair of dress shoes, and finally found what I was looking for and brought my purchase to a counter. "Don't you know about our 2-for-1 deal?" the woman at the counter asked me. "With this purchase, you could buy a second pair of shoes for only $5 more."

I mulled it over and realized that I really had no need for a second pair of shoes. The temptation was there, for sure - what a deal! But I've been actively trying to reduce the clutter in my home, and I really needed only a replacement pair of shoes - not to augment my otherwise-sufficient collection.

Many two-for-1 deals get you an extra set of something that you don't really need. But I've been surprised to discover recently that, despite a great deal of effort to describe our product (bolstered by Symantec's powerful marketing machine), many of our customers don't realize that NetBackup for VMware even has a 2-for-1 deal going.

This is a deal at a technology level, not at a pricing level. The deal is that with one single pass using VCB, NetBackup can (using its patent-pending "special sauce") perform two types of restores, one at the VMDK level and one at the single-file level. No other vendor can do this. Sure, many other vendors use VCB, and some can restore individual files by mounting the VMDK file. But mounting the VMDK file is a very time-consuming process - it can take over an hour just to mount a 50 GB file, and then you still have to hunt around inside the VMDK in order to find the file you're actually trying to restore. Not the case with NetBackup - with NetBackup, you can restore individual files just by doing a search of the catalog and clicking "restore" - much faster and more user-friendly than mounting a VMDK file.

With other products, in order to be able to restore both individual files as well as the entire VM, you need to perform two backup passes (one at the individual file level and one at the VM level). Why pay full price twice? The NetBackup two-for-one deal gives you two great options for the price of one - the extra pair doesn't take up any more closet space, and depending on the occasion, you might find it handy to have both available.