Netting Out NetBackup Blog

Our passion is protecting your data. Check out news and insights from the Symantec NetBackup team addressing datacenter issues like disaster recovery, deduplication, Windows application protection and continuous data protection.

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  Created: ALJohnson 11 Mar 2013

  Symantec AutoSupport for Backup Appliances is now LIVE

  Have you ever wondered if your appliance issues can be resolved even before they appear at your end? ( i.e a system that proactively monitors your appliances and automates issue resolution.)  Symantec is committed to simplifying and improving support experiences for its customers. Built on the service automation strategy, Symantec AutoSupport framework provides proactive and automated support services to its appliance customers. Starting February 4, Symantec Secure Operations Center ( SOC), an integral part of AutoSupport, began monitoring backup appliances all over the world, processing the alerts received from Symantec NetBackup and Backup Exec appliances, creating support tickets with field services for hardware related issues and Enterprise Support Services for non-hardware related issues. Symantec AutoSupport needs the CallHome functionality be enabled on the backup appliances and a registration of the appliance at the MyAppliance web portal (...
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  Created: Kyle Drake 01 Mar 2013

  Lies, Damned Lies, and Infinite Scalability!!!

  One of the things that weigh on an IT director’s mind is how he/she can keep up with their company’s growth in the data center. These areas include server growth, application growth, bandwidth and network growth, and just as important, data growth.  In addition, how do they keep all that up with limited budget, both from a CapEx and OpEx perspective?  In the real world, the amount of money spent dictates scalability, because as the items I mentioned grow within the data center and beyond, the cost grows at an accelerated rate.  The reason is because every piece of hardware/infrastructure added affects the growth of the network, storage, server capacity, resource utilization, etc.  It’s like the ripple effect of tossing a pebble into a still pond.   This makes real-life scalability follow the red line in the graph below.  What the green line represents is if the cost per added data center piece always stayed the same, and...
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  Created: Alex Sakaguchi 25 Feb 2013

  Global Deduplication Myths

      Don’t customers hate being misled? I know I do.  Sometimes it can be innocent…you know, like maybe the sales person wasn’t as knowledgeable as he/she could’ve been.  Or perhaps they were new.  In any case, it behooves the customer to do some homework to make sure that they are not being misled, innocently or otherwise.   Your homework is done. I came across a situation recently where a customer said that a vendor told them their solution could do global deduplication the same as Symantec, but cheaper.  My first thought was wow that’s a big deal.  As you may know, Symantec deduplication capabilities built into NetBackup and Backup Exec offer customers the flexibility of...
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  Updated: Phil Wandrei 22 Jan 2013

  Media server replacements: penny wise, pound foolish?

  Pushing the Life Expectancy of Media Servers; Saving or Costing you Money?  Are you “penny wise, pound foolish” with your servers? This expression came to mind from a recent IDC report1, Server Refresh Cycles:  The Costs of Extending Life Cycles1. The article stresses that “extending the life of servers too long can lead to an increase in operational expenses that could pay for investments in new technology.” In other words, spend the money to invest in a new server, and it will pay for itself from the increased operational costs that you avoid keeping your current servers up and running.  While the report addresses x86 servers, I thought it was very relevant to backup media servers and Symantec Backup Appliances. It highlights the benefits of the timely refresh of servers and costs of delay. Let’s examine how this applies to backup media servers and how Symantec Backup Appliances can provide additional...
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  Updated: AbdulRasheed 22 Jan 2013

  Taking VMware vSphere Storage APIs for Data Protection to the Limit: Pushing the Backup Performance Envelope

    VMworld 2012 in San Francisco has come and gone. VMworld EMEA in Barcelona is next week. It is a great event for technical audience; filled with numerous educational sessions, the largest solution pavilion and a lot of super awesome parties! VMworld issues call for papers each year. These are opportunities for you to secure a session to show off your innovative, unconventional or best practice methods for integrating VMware technologies. If your paper is approved, you get a speaker pass to the show for free. Remember these are not regular breakout sessions with product pitches you get as part of being a sponsor for the event; you get these because you have something valuable to share with technical savvy audience. George Winter (Staff Technical Product Manger in Symantec, a respected virtualization evangelist), Roger Andersson (Sr. Technical Marketing Director in Cisco, an expert in virtualization hardware) and I brainstormed last spring as to...
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  Updated: AbdulRasheed 22 Jan 2013

  Nuts and Bolts in NetBackup for VMware: Virtual machine snapshots for backing up Business Critical Applications?

    Recently, there were discussions in social media and blogs on using hypervisor level snapshots on virtual machines hosting business critical applications like Microsoft Exchange. Some confusion came on account of a statement from Microsoft documented here. The emphasis is mine.  http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa996719.aspx “Some hypervisors include features for taking snapshots of virtual machines. Virtual machine snapshots capture the state of a virtual machine while it’s running. This feature enables you to take multiple snapshots of a virtual machine and then revert the virtual machine to any of the previous states by applying a snapshot to the virtual machine. However, virtual machine snapshots aren’t application aware, and using them can have unintended and unexpected consequences for a server application...
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  Updated: Amit Walia 22 Jan 2013

  World Backup Day: Smarter Backup for IT

  Backing up data can often be added to a long list of things you should do more often or more effectively, but aren’t.  Things like: flossing your teeth, following a household budget, getting more sleep, etc.  Whether you work for a large business challenged by the explosion of data and tighter service level agreements (SLA's), or a smaller to mid-size business, you are likely struggling with backup (as are most consumers).  That’s not surprising considering that today’s backup technology is comprised of a growing collection of point solutions that have added complexity, costs, and headaches for IT pros.    We recently surveyed more than 1,400 IT professionals on their backup practices and ability to recover...
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  Updated: Phil Wandrei 22 Jan 2013

  Symantec Backup Appliances – Integrated and Integrable

  Symantec, the world leader in backup and recovery, provides customers the freedom of choice. With NetBackup and Backup Exec, customers are able to choose the form factor to best meet their needs; a software based solution or a fully integrated appliance. Either choice, the #1 backup solution is delivered in the form factor best suited for the customer’s environment.       An appliance is a fully integrated device; all of the necessary hardware, software, and components are installed and tested in a single platform. Today, appliances are often taken for granted because they are built with industry standard components, and assembled through qualify processes. Consumers expect the appliance to work out-of-the box, and they do.  However, an equally, and sometimes more important consideration is if it is integrable into your existing environment. Does the appliance easily install and interact with your existing infrastructure? Or does it...
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  Updated: SeanRegan 22 Jan 2013

  Survey: Broken Backup Environments Need New Approach

  Backups have become a big and burdensome operation for many backup admins. SLAs are getting tighter while information grows and new platforms like virtualization create higher density environments. With these forces in play the current approach to backup modernization is not effective. Today “backup modernization” is championed by vendors who champion solutions that address one or two aspects of backup – such as deduplication, snapshots, or tools for backing up just VMware and Hyper-V environments.  These are quick fixes, not modern data protection. Throwing more solutions at a problem as a quick fix is the cause of backup complexity and cost. Backup and recovery is a crucial step in protecting an organization’s information and its ability to stay in business if something goes wrong.   A new approach is needed. To determine current trends, Symantec commissioned a global survey of enterprises to get a...
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  Updated: Phil Wandrei 22 Jan 2013

  Deduplication Rates: not the end all.

  In the data protection world, a number we frequently see and hear are deduplication rates. We hear of dedupe rates ranging from 50:1, 20:1, to 10:1. Recently, I heard someone say that 50:1 is 5 times better than 10:1.  Their fuzzy math made me cringe, and I knew it was time to address this.        To clarify deduplication rates, we need to examine: 1) the factors that influence deduplication rates and 2) the math.  Deduplication Factors Deduplication rates are like automobile miles per gallon (mpg):  Your Results Will Vary. The factors that affect deduplication results are: Types of data (unstructured versus structured data)  Change rate of data (what percent of data changes) Frequency and type of backup (how often are you backing up the data? (i.e. daily, weekly, fulls or incremental) Retention (how long are you keeping the dedupe data) ...