Well I have been working an issue with their support for 2 weeks now and it seems there is a bug in 5.9 that casues backed up data to get lost when you migrate to 6.1. Their answer is "opps sorry, we had a bug and your backup data is loast, nothing we can do!". Typical Commvault crap. Their software is buggy and quirky and their support is weak. These guys should not be playing in the Enterprise space.
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Galaxy Losses data... 2
- Thread starter kluken
- Start date
justanotherhack
Technical User
What are the details of your data loss? Was it specific to an agent? Or was an entire policy lost?
I haven't upgraded yet - but if my environmnent is like yours it sounds like I won't - I spoke with support and was told that "CommVault recommends upgrading..." - of course.
I haven't upgraded yet - but if my environmnent is like yours it sounds like I won't - I spoke with support and was told that "CommVault recommends upgrading..." - of course.
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- Thread starter
- #3
Evidently if you run 5.9 and don't apply certain patches then upgrade to 6.1 you loose some index data thus when you try to restore it does not have any reference that the data was ever backed up nor what tapes it was on. If you don't have ER data from the that restore time or a report that shows which tapes backed up whcih data then you are screwed. You may be able to manually browse tapes using their tape explorer, but you better know what data is on which tapes! This is not the first time we have seen this from them, we lost SQL data before becasue they pruned failed jobs so they never got reported. This is probably going to be the last straw and will force us to look at NetBackup.
Did you change your ER retention? I believe it is set to infinite by default. Can you not simply recover from that ER and perform your restore?
Any details of this dataloss would be helpful.
Reality is all software is suspect to bugs therefore you should always make sure you are running the latest version.
Netbackup/ArcServe/Legato/CommVault are all the same just do a search on google with "(Vendor Name) lost my data" and you will find
Any details of this dataloss would be helpful.
Reality is all software is suspect to bugs therefore you should always make sure you are running the latest version.
Netbackup/ArcServe/Legato/CommVault are all the same just do a search on google with "(Vendor Name) lost my data" and you will find
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- #5
Thats what Commvault wants to do, the problme is the Commserve and Media Agent are smae system and to restore Commserve you need to remove everything else! Sure the data is on the tape still, but the program lost its brains, this is a habit with them. Their QA sucks, 6.1 came ou tin Decmeber 2005, SP1 in March 2006 and sp2 late June 2006 and that is when it is finally usable, over 6 months of pain and bugs and it turns out that the latest 5.9 was buggy as well.
Just one point for this though guys....almost all vendors play the same way with new releases.
I remember installing Netbackup 4.5 (into a large telco)when they were making a big deal about the calendar scheduling...surprise, surprise the calendar scheduling didn't even work properly.
So far I've helped quite a few clients upgrade to Galaxy 6.1 (from 5.0 and 5.9) and so far only really experienced one major problem (regarding SQL + licenses)that was solved straight away with a patch that was available on maintenance advantage.
At least CV wait until SP1 is released before making it public.
I remember installing Netbackup 4.5 (into a large telco)when they were making a big deal about the calendar scheduling...surprise, surprise the calendar scheduling didn't even work properly.
So far I've helped quite a few clients upgrade to Galaxy 6.1 (from 5.0 and 5.9) and so far only really experienced one major problem (regarding SQL + licenses)that was solved straight away with a patch that was available on maintenance advantage.
At least CV wait until SP1 is released before making it public.
justanotherhack
Technical User
BkpAdmin has a good point - all of the vendors do play the same games - and no SW is perfect - bugs happen - I think we've all come to terms with that.
I don't think its fair to put CommVault up against Netbackup though. Think about it - Netbackup has been around for longer and is much well funded (especially now) then CV. Based on the install base alone I would say that you finding a bad post from google about netbackup is completely irrevelant. Check out the monster.com numbers for whats important (total hits by keyword):
CV = 65
Veritas
backupexec = 56
netbackup = 475
Legato networker = 76
Yosemite backup = 1
arcserve = 71
Netbackup kills every other product with 475! Lets get real here. If you walked into two identical environments, setup CV in one, and netbackup in the other - aside from environmental problems - I'd put my $ with netbackup to perform faster with fewer bugs then CV.
On top of that - have you compared the available documentation? Compare the KB from veritas - then look at cv's. Get the point?
I'm a fan of CV - but they still have a ways to go before they can run with the big boys.
I don't think its fair to put CommVault up against Netbackup though. Think about it - Netbackup has been around for longer and is much well funded (especially now) then CV. Based on the install base alone I would say that you finding a bad post from google about netbackup is completely irrevelant. Check out the monster.com numbers for whats important (total hits by keyword):
CV = 65
Veritas
backupexec = 56
netbackup = 475
Legato networker = 76
Yosemite backup = 1
arcserve = 71
Netbackup kills every other product with 475! Lets get real here. If you walked into two identical environments, setup CV in one, and netbackup in the other - aside from environmental problems - I'd put my $ with netbackup to perform faster with fewer bugs then CV.
On top of that - have you compared the available documentation? Compare the KB from veritas - then look at cv's. Get the point?
I'm a fan of CV - but they still have a ways to go before they can run with the big boys.
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- #8
bk66md,
I agree. Commvaults strength was they came out and focused ona strong GUI, extensive reporting, easy to use and strong MS support. but that was a few years now, they need to focus on making the product more stable and QA!! They release so many patche sit is not funny. 6.1 shipped in December 2005, 6.1 SP1 in March 2006 yet SQL agents barely worked until close to SP2 in June! For a data protection business we had to fight with them that FAILED JOBS shoudl not be pruned thus not showing on reports. We have to fight with them that each of their agents behaves differently and should be desigend around some basic common characteristics. in 5.9 if AD failed due to index or bad password it would show fialed and stay failed, yet SQL would clear the job attempt and prune the failure out so reports woudl nto show the failure. We lost a week of data due to this. CV is the nimble speed boat where Veritas is the big tanker, Vertitas takes longer to support thinsg and its architecture is based on ancient underpinnings, but it is fast and stable. CV is nimble supporting various things as soon as they come out, adding features and such, but at the expense that they are not debugged, and also we find CV to be 25%+ slower than Backup Exec!
I agree. Commvaults strength was they came out and focused ona strong GUI, extensive reporting, easy to use and strong MS support. but that was a few years now, they need to focus on making the product more stable and QA!! They release so many patche sit is not funny. 6.1 shipped in December 2005, 6.1 SP1 in March 2006 yet SQL agents barely worked until close to SP2 in June! For a data protection business we had to fight with them that FAILED JOBS shoudl not be pruned thus not showing on reports. We have to fight with them that each of their agents behaves differently and should be desigend around some basic common characteristics. in 5.9 if AD failed due to index or bad password it would show fialed and stay failed, yet SQL would clear the job attempt and prune the failure out so reports woudl nto show the failure. We lost a week of data due to this. CV is the nimble speed boat where Veritas is the big tanker, Vertitas takes longer to support thinsg and its architecture is based on ancient underpinnings, but it is fast and stable. CV is nimble supporting various things as soon as they come out, adding features and such, but at the expense that they are not debugged, and also we find CV to be 25%+ slower than Backup Exec!
justanotherhack
Technical User
kluken - that is hilarious that you made the boat reference!
At one point I interviewed with Veritas and one of their engineers said the same thing. CV is small and they have the ability to move and change direction on a dime - right now. The same change takes much longer for Veritas.
Look at netbackup, it wasn't until recently that they moved the tape metadata from the media servers to the master server - this is something that CV was doing for years.
All in all - eventually, the CV products seem to pan out and hopefully work as expected/sold. The frustration in the middle can sometimes take years off your life.
I haven't actually done head2head tests between CV and veritas - is it REALLY 25%+ faster? That seems slightly excessive....?
At one point I interviewed with Veritas and one of their engineers said the same thing. CV is small and they have the ability to move and change direction on a dime - right now. The same change takes much longer for Veritas.
Look at netbackup, it wasn't until recently that they moved the tape metadata from the media servers to the master server - this is something that CV was doing for years.
All in all - eventually, the CV products seem to pan out and hopefully work as expected/sold. The frustration in the middle can sometimes take years off your life.
I haven't actually done head2head tests between CV and veritas - is it REALLY 25%+ faster? That seems slightly excessive....?
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- #10
In many cases it may be more than 25%. We used to back up I belevie it was 700GB in about 15 hours with BE. With CV it was 22-23 hours. CV does nto like many small files, their agent is very inefficient. We also found that System State backups were considerably longer with CV vs. BE. We never used NetBAckup so I'm not sure how that woudl compare, but I woudl assume by now Veritas shared architecture betwen the BE and NB teams.
Different environments....different problems.
I don't personaly think that it's that Veritas are doing more QA on new products (I know plenty who would agree they don't)..it's more that 6.1 had a complete overhaul of the SQL db to support 2005 and also to support new future products (such as CDR).
Veritas take longer to support things because the NBU code is old and is built around so many add ons from them buying up other companies
Also NBU + Legato is built around Unix whereas CV is built around Windows so some iDAs work better...CV SharePoint functionality is a good example of this.
Best thing to do is never be in a rush to upgrade until a product is stable (goes for them all) ;-)
Like I say, I've upgraded a few environments to 6.1 from 5.0 and 5.9 and haven't experienced any major problems yet.
I don't personaly think that it's that Veritas are doing more QA on new products (I know plenty who would agree they don't)..it's more that 6.1 had a complete overhaul of the SQL db to support 2005 and also to support new future products (such as CDR).
Veritas take longer to support things because the NBU code is old and is built around so many add ons from them buying up other companies
Also NBU + Legato is built around Unix whereas CV is built around Windows so some iDAs work better...CV SharePoint functionality is a good example of this.
Best thing to do is never be in a rush to upgrade until a product is stable (goes for them all) ;-)
Like I say, I've upgraded a few environments to 6.1 from 5.0 and 5.9 and haven't experienced any major problems yet.
justanotherhack
Technical User
yeah - so we've moved off topic - but we are probably the only ones reading at this point - so i guess i'll continue on.....
You are correct - every environment has its quirks.
The amount of QA that happens with either product I cannot speak of for sure - perhaps V has as many problems maybe even more then CV but because of there larger install base they are found and fixed quicker. None of this waiting for SP2 to get an agent working BS.
The platform that the server side is built on should not matter for agents working "better" or not. Think about it - in order for a sharepoint agent to work it must use the APIs provided by msft to access the sharepoint components - right? Although - as you pointed out CV was/is the first to have such a granular sharepoint doc product - I've used both the 2001 and 2003 versions and it seems that there was really a considerable amount of thought from a dev perspective and most definitely some incredible QA that went into it.
I've been waiting for a window to upgrade in. Although there have been mixed reviews about the process - I think its mostly positive at this point? Possibly wait for sp3? Any ideas on the timeline?
You are correct - every environment has its quirks.
The amount of QA that happens with either product I cannot speak of for sure - perhaps V has as many problems maybe even more then CV but because of there larger install base they are found and fixed quicker. None of this waiting for SP2 to get an agent working BS.
The platform that the server side is built on should not matter for agents working "better" or not. Think about it - in order for a sharepoint agent to work it must use the APIs provided by msft to access the sharepoint components - right? Although - as you pointed out CV was/is the first to have such a granular sharepoint doc product - I've used both the 2001 and 2003 versions and it seems that there was really a considerable amount of thought from a dev perspective and most definitely some incredible QA that went into it.
I've been waiting for a window to upgrade in. Although there have been mixed reviews about the process - I think its mostly positive at this point? Possibly wait for sp3? Any ideas on the timeline?
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mybackupfailed
MIS
Commvault's release philosophy is get a major release out the door every December and worry about bugs later. The customer install base is the real QA testing grounds and they have no problem immediately patching major problems found in the field and spending time with every customer problem to release a patch tailored to their problem. Everyone accepts this type of thing from Microsoft when they patch security fixes every month so why shouldn't CV do the same? Most managers are happy when staff gets a patch within a few days (great support!) for a bug so they have no problem with this and continue to buy CV products. The poor admin who has to run the stuff every day (me included) gets stuck with this scenario. Don't like it? Don't know what to tell you. You don't have to upgrade until they force you and most bugs will be found in a new release within a year.
Can't say whether other backup sw companies work with the same model but but other companies don't throw new features in each release as fast as CV. If you want your new features fast, be ready to find lots of problems and get lots of patches.
Can't say whether other backup sw companies work with the same model but but other companies don't throw new features in each release as fast as CV. If you want your new features fast, be ready to find lots of problems and get lots of patches.
- Thread starter
- #14
Well here is the latest. It has been 6 weeks since we opened this bug with Commvault and they still have not been able to get the data off the tape for us! Their attitude sucks, if this were critical data we would be screwed! honetlsy, their entire attitude sucks, I am shocked they play in the Enterprise space, they operate liek a mom and pop shop and I surely would never recommend them nor pick them for anything else. This is the second time in 18 months we have "lost data" due to their bugs. We were a Veritas shop for 5 years and still are at our remote locations and never lost a single byte of data! If you are thinking about Commvault my advice would be "run away as fast as you can". I would rather run NTBACKUP than Galaxy at this point.
kluken - What is the hold up with retrieving the data? I can't see how this is dragging on. I guess the good news is you might be able to get the lost data restored - how do they plan on doing this?
Please drop a few details as one day I may have to reflect back on your post if I fall into a similiar situation.
Please drop a few details as one day I may have to reflect back on your post if I fall into a similiar situation.
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- #16
They had a bug in 5.9 that acidently pruned data from the job archives, so if there was truncated archive data it woudl delete the good and bad data. Thus the Commserve does not know of the exisitence of chunks of data, thus when you browse to do a restore it never finds the data you want to restore. Thus if it does not know there was ever this data it can't restore it. They can't do an ER restore to that point in time becasue then was 5.9 and I am now 6.1. They are now looking at using a manual tool, the Media Explorer, whihc essentially is a manula process that reads the tape and you select the jobs and data, very tedious and you need to know the exact tapes data is on. Basically they SUCK! They have spent weeks trying to figure out how to get this data off the tape. If you run or are running 5.9 I would browse your critical backup data and make sure you can see it so if you want to restore it you can. We have Veritas coming in later this week to talk about a switch to NetBackup, Commvault is too lax and casual about data lose and the lack of being able to recover data.
mybackupfailed
MIS
The main tactic used here is stall and annoy the customer until they are so sick of dealing with the ticket that they give up. And the longer it goes, the more it becomes your problem to keep nagging them for help.
Good for you for actually taking action and doing something about it.
Good for you for actually taking action and doing something about it.
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- #18
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- #20
Well Commvault just called to say they can not recover the data, it is lost! They lost over 70GB of data from a 500GB backup set and they are not even sure they can recover the remaining data. They also have refused to disclaim the window of vulnerability that this bug existed in 5.9 so that we can assess how much other data is at risk. this is just unbelieveable, they even said using their Media Explorer tool would not help.
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