We've been running BE for some time and we're currently using 11D. I
*seems* to have become less and less reliable, and full of lots of
features that either we don't use, or don't work.

Is Arcserve any better? I'm looking for real-world experiences here.

We have a mainly Windows environment- Win2k, Win2k3, Exchnage 2K/2k3,
sql server and oracle are our main things. We have a dedicated win2k3
server and a HP MSL6060 library- direct attached by scsi, and a 5TB SATA
array direct attached too. BE's backup to disk seems particularly woeful
about managing it's disk space properly- the backup to disk folders fill
up, and then it all grinds to a halt.

With older versions of BE, things worked quite well *most* of the time.

Does anyone elses experience follow this?

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

We switched from Arcserve to BE 8.6 a few years ago because Arcserve
was pants. It crashed a lot and we hardly ever got good backups.

To start with BE was a world better but over the years it has become
more and more unreliable. We've had to upgrade due to getting newer
and bigger tape drives.

We've been wondering whether Arcserve has improved and are considering
trialling it again but I don't hold out any hope that it has improved.
We've also started looking into alternatives to both.

The Brave Sir Robin.


On Tue, 10 Jul 2007 13:51:45 +0100, Chris Bartram
<news@delete-me.piglet-net.net> wrote:

>We've been running BE for some time and we're currently using 11D. I
>*seems* to have become less and less reliable, and full of lots of
>features that either we don't use, or don't work.
>
>Is Arcserve any better? I'm looking for real-world experiences here.
>
>We have a mainly Windows environment- Win2k, Win2k3, Exchnage 2K/2k3,
>sql server and oracle are our main things. We have a dedicated win2k3
>server and a HP MSL6060 library- direct attached by scsi, and a 5TB SATA
>array direct attached too. BE's backup to disk seems particularly woeful
>about managing it's disk space properly- the backup to disk folders fill
>up, and then it all grinds to a halt.
>
>With older versions of BE, things worked quite well *most* of the time.
>
>Does anyone elses experience follow this?

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

We have Backup Exec and Arcserve forums at Backup Central.  Maybe you could 
post your question there?

Backup Exec:
http://www.backupcentral.com/phpBB2/viewforum.php?f=8

ARCServe:
http://www.backupcentral.com/phpBB2/viewforum.php?f=7

They're new forums, but both of them appear to have a small contingent of pe
ople monitoring them, either via the forum interface (above), or via the mai
ling list that each forum is connected to.  (All forum messages are sent to 
an opt-in mailing list, and
all messages sent to the mailing list are sent to the forum.)

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[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

The Brave Sir Robin wrote:
> We switched from Arcserve to BE 8.6 a few years ago because Arcserve
> was pants. It crashed a lot and we hardly ever got good backups.
>
> To start with BE was a world better but over the years it has become
> more and more unreliable. We've had to upgrade due to getting newer
> and bigger tape drives.
>
> We've been wondering whether Arcserve has improved and are considering
> trialling it again but I don't hold out any hope that it has improved.
> We've also started looking into alternatives to both.
>
> The Brave Sir Robin.
Interesting.

Any suggestions of an alternative at all? After a great amount of
twiddling and messing BE is now better than it was for us, but my
opinion is that it shouldn't be this hard.

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

The Brave Sir Robin wrote:

>
> To start with BE was a world better but over the years it has become
> more and more unreliable.

That does mirror my experience. I first got involved with BE at
v8.[something], worked a lot on 9, and in my current role we've gone
through 8.6, 9, 10, and 11d.

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]