Veritas NetBackup vs. Arcserve

In an era where data is everything, implementing a simple, user-friendly and effective backup and business continuity (BC) solution is essential for all businesses — after all, only 10% of business without a disaster recovery plan survive a major failure. 

Knowing the right backup and disaster recovery (DR) solutions to invest in for your business can be difficult. Choosing the right hardware and software to employ is just the first step — your business also needs to think about costs, operations and scalability. 

While there are many solutions out there, Veritas NetBackup and Arcserve UDP are two big players in the backup and DR market. While both are fairly similar, they each have slight differences which can impact your business. 

It’s always worth asking for advice from IT specialists when choosing BC solutions, but this article will explore the main differences between Veritas NetBackup and Arcserve UDP to help you get started in choosing the right solution for you. 

ArcServe UDP: A Unified Solution to Data Protection 

Arcserve provide cloud-based and on-premises backup solutions, data recovery and protection for businesses’ entire IT ecosystems. Originally founded in 1983 as Cheyenne Software, they provide a range of solutions but their flagship product is called Arcserve UDP (Unified Data Protection). As the name suggests, Arcserve UDP aims to provide a unified solution to data protection and recovery by integrating backup and disaster recovery into one unified system.

Arcserve’s publicity materials state the importance of “products that work the way you do”. As such, what makes Arcserve UDP appealing for businesses with limited IT expertise is its simplified architecture which is geared towards making data protection tools for businesses more user-friendly and easy to integrate into their operations without the inevitable downtime caused by employee training and onboarding.

The software is designed to be easily integrated across a range of IT infrastructures, making the process of data recovery easy and time efficient in a range of physical, virtual and cloud-based storage platforms. This gives businesses a universal solution for companies that keep data in silos which are far from universal in nature.

Another thing that makes Arcserve UDP appealing to businesses of all shapes and sizes is its scalability. No nascent enterprise wants to pay over the odds for software solutions that are surplus to requirements, but they need to be sure that their solutions can grow along with their enterprise. 

Veritas NetBackup: An Adaptable Backup Solution

Veritas (emerging from under the shadow of Symantec in 2016) was also founded in 1983 and is part of the Carlyle Group. Originally known as Tolerant Systems, Veritas is a California based data management company with what CEO Bill Coleman describes as “a startup, win-in-the-marketplace, customer-first culture”.

Today, its offering NetBackup is the company’s bread and butter and was once considered the veritable king of the backup world. It still makes for an attractive proposition for businesses looking for backup and recovery solutions which are optimised for the multi-cloud.

One of the things that makes Veritas’ offering a popular solution with businesses (aside from name and brand recognition) is the speed at which NetBackup evolves to meet the changing needs of its users. As one happy client states on the Veritas website: “Veritas development cycles are about twice as fast as at our previous backup vendor”. It also has an excellent reputation for backup success rates. 

Netbackup’s emphasis is on scaled out protection for the increasingly scaled out workloads of businesses with next generation data management needs.  With its new parallel streaming architecture, Netbackup is designed to handle the robust needs of multi-node workloads with peta-byte scale. 

Yet, its robust capability is tempered by an emphasis on easy integration with other systems. Netbackup currently offers support for Nutanix, Hadoop, MySQL, PostgresSQL, SQLite and MariaDB, with more in the pipeline. 

Veritas NetBackup vs. ArcServe UDP

On the face of it, NetBackup and ArcServe UDP seem like two fairly comparable data storage and recovery solutions. How are they different? While both solutions do ostensibly the same job with similar functionalities, their subtly different emphases will inevitably play a part in their suitability for your enterprise.

Ease of use vs. next-gen functionality

Arcserve UDP has its emphasis firmly on user-friendliness and ease of access while NetBackup has its sights set squarely on meeting the ever-evolving needs of hyperconverged and open source big data. 

In an era where “more data has been created in the past two years than in the entire history of humanity”, it’s important to ensure that you have future proof solutions. However, even the most robust suite of features is rendered less effective if your team is unable to properly implement them. What makes ArcServe so appealing, especially for new startups and small businesses, is the way in which it can make data storage and recovery simple even for one person IT departments.

While Netbackup appears the solution of choice for businesses facing exponential growth, it may not be the most user-friendly tool for newcomers. 

Ease of integration

Both solutions offer relatively easy integration into your hardware, software and operations. UDP’s Universal Management Console allows users to easily design and manage their entire data protection strategy remotely and scale backup coverage up and down with just a touch of a button. 

Similarly, NetBackup is designed to ease infrastructure management, simplifying administrative tasks for users down to a few clicks. 

Price points

If you’re shopping for a solution on the basis of price, you may find that Arcserve will suit your business, as it has a fairly industry standard price point. While NetBackup is relatively costly even at entry level, enterprises with growth in mind may find that its price points become prohibitive as they scale out. 

Which solution is the best for your business?

As you might expect, the right choice for your business depends on the size, scope and specific needs of your enterprise. 

NetBackup has the name recognition and a worthy reputation that make it an excellent choice for businesses with complex needs. It outpaces the increasingly speedy growth of the data centre and allows businesses to be more agile in their data backup and recovery across virtual, physical and cloud-based environments.

However, its pricing and functionality may be surplus to requirements or cost prohibitive to smaller enterprises with less than 1000 clients. Smaller businesses that value ease of use and integration over robust capability may benefit more from Arcserve’s offering.

Whatever the nature and size of your business, however, it’s important to remember that disaster recovery is accomplished through a combination of processes, hardware and software. The right software solutions make the control of that hardware much simpler but only when they are integrated seamlessly into your business operations. Thus, you need a total business continuity solution and you may need some support in choosing one.

Even when your gut instinct pulls you in a particular direction, it’s still advisable to rely on the advice of specialists who can help you to construct a total solution in line with your business’ unique needs.