No, you don't need to use NetBackup or TSM to use Avamar. Avamar is a separate stand-alone solution. That said, many Avamar shops are running both Avamar and another more traditional data protection solution and not converting everything to Avamar (some things like remote office backups or VM's have some great benefits when using Avamar, others like huge Oracle data warehouses maybe not so much). I believe EMC is working on integrating Avamar into Networker more closely just as Symantec is with PureDisk. Not sure how far along that is with EMC/Avamar. Avamar 5.0 just came out and still appears to be a standalone solution. See here for a post on the new features/functionality:

http://thebackupblog.typepad.com/thebackupblog/2009/11/avamar-v50.html

Avamar as of now is purely desgined for Desktop and laptop backups. its a standalone solution de-dupe ratio is very good in EMC-Avamar

This is a Symantec forum, so I think it is in poor taste for me (EMC employee) to advertise it here. But it is absolutely NOT just for desktop and laptop; you should consider Avamar for VMware backup, remote office backups, and NAS backup as well as desktop laptop. For more information you could follow the link above to my blog.

Scott

Great, I'm learning Avamar now, do you have any suggestion for me ? , my boss said they'll implement new backup (avamar) system, I don't know if they'll keep NBU or not :(

that used and sold Avamar as an enterprise backup solution.  It works, although it takes a lot of work on the back end to keep everything in order.  Unless you're going for cost, I would keep NBU as a backup of your backup.

Its not as mature as NetBackup, and their support can be touch and go.

Are you going to be utilizing replication with Avamar?  Make sure you have a big enough pipe, or you'll spend all your time trying to get replications caught up.

My advice would be to make sure your garbage collections run no matter what.

I've been deeply involved with Avamar for many years.  There are some integrations you can do with it if you want to.  Avamar is for all intents and purposes a disk only solution. One thing you can to extend that is in the Avamar manual, and basically involves using an intermidiary server to hand data off to NBU (or whatever you want to use).  The outline is in one of the manuals.  It works, but is a highly manual process and will give you a migraine if you have to restore from it.

Every product I've used has its good and bad, so you have to see what works for you and what you can live with in terms of bad I guess.  I could go on for pages about the few good features and the many, many bad features of this product. If I were a decision making executive, my shop would not have Avamar, because to me, the negatives far outweigh any postitive price or performance benefit.  My co-workers and I hypothesis that the product was some college computer science major's senior projec that got picked up and turned into a product. 

Unix agents work sometimes, but you can't rely on it, open file management is really buggy, so if you have any issues with any backups at any time, disable open file management first and see what happens. All system requirements, especially having to do with disk speed, memory, and networking, double them, at a minimum.

This may sound harsher than it really is meant to be, you will lose data, its not a matter of if, its a matter of when, so be prepared for that, using something like the intermediary tape backup to cover yourself.  Hiccups in the system, fluctuations in the LAN, anything that interupts the normal conversation between the internal parts of the system results in the central database basically shutting down, and requiring what they call a "rollback" which wipes your Avamar system back to the last checkpoint.  Be careful how your word your SLA's and SLO's to cover this, because you will have one.

We can have a discussion of the pros and cons of Avamar, but we'll leave that for another, very, very long thread:)

Thanks alots for your informations :), my company uses VMwares that why they want to use Avarmar because EMC guy said Avarmar is better than NBU to back up VMware. Do you what website forum to discuss Avarmar product :)

sahilav

EMC does it have Avarmar certificate ? I don't know, I took a EMC backup recovery specialist in last 2006

HI Sahil,

Could I have your email, we can exchange knowlegde :)

Sahil,

You're right, EMC releases new exam for Avamar (E22-280), I'm preparing on it. Are you ready to take that exam ?

I passed EMC Avamar exam yesterday, now I have certificate on it :)