MS Data Protection Manager vs. Symantec Backup Exec
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Microsoft Data Protection Manager vs. Symantec Backup Exec Comparison
Our Data Protection Manager Consultants can keep your valuable business data safe from loss and external threats. Our Microsoft DPM Experts have gained deep expertise on protecting enterprise critical data from network outages, hardware failures and physical disasters.
Introduction
Few tasks are as mission critical as effectively protecting an organization’s data. A server that suffers a physical hardware failure can be repaired or replaced. However, organizational data, such as emails from sales contacts or customer purchase orders stored in a database, cannot be replaced. When an organization loses this sort of data, it also loses time and money. Inefficiently used or poorly understood data protection and recovery applications can cost an organization even more of both. Systems administrators have a certain set of requirements when it comes to assessing a switch to a new data protection and recovery solution.
A recovery solution has to integrate well with the products it protects. This means that the recovery solution needs to be straightforward to install, rather than requiring hours of fiddly configuration and testing to make sure everything works.
For Windows-based ecosystems, the current industry-leading data protection solutions are:
- Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager 2007 (DPM 2007)
- Symantec Backup Exec 12.5
One of the first questions to ask when purchasing a data protection solution is whether to use a mix of these different products to build a heterogeneous environment, or to stay with a Microsoft-centric environment to best take care of an enterprise’s needs.
Cost and Value
An important consideration when choosing a data protection solution in which to invest both time and money is the licensing fee. As discussed earlier, depending on what the core product includes, it may also be necessary to purchase additional modules which incur additional license fees.
In order to compare license costs between Microsoft Data Protection Manager and Symantec Backup Exec, we used an environment consisting of storage area network, Windows file servers, SharePoint, Exchange 2007, SQL Server 2008, Active Directory and Hyper-V deployed, including the ability to perform bare-metal-restore. To protect such environment, we used the following licenses, agents and options for Symantec Backup Exec 12.5:
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Symantec Backup Exec 2.15 Solution |
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Backup Exec 12.5 for Windows Server |
1,279.51 |
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Backup Exec System Recovery 8.5 Server Edition |
2,915.41 |
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Backup Exec 12.5 Agent for MS Virtual Server |
1,162.66 |
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Backup Exec 12.5 Agent for MS Exchange Server |
1,162.66 |
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Backup Exec 12.5 Agent for Active Directory |
1,162.66 |
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Backup Exec 12.5 Agent for MS SQL Server |
1,162.66 |
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Backup Exec 12.5 Agent for Microsoft SharePoint License |
1,162.66 |
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Total |
$10,008.22 |
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Then the following Microsoft Data Protection Manager Licenses were used to protect the same environment:
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Data Protection Manager 2007 Solution |
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1 DPM Server license |
$579 |
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5 Enterprise DPML |
$2,155 |
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1 Standard DPML (File server) |
$157 |
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Total |
$2,891 |
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In this case the additional options for Backup Exec 12.5, while allowing an administrator to tailor the product to their specific environment’s needs, do not lead to any significant saving in licensing cost. The same data protection and recovery workload is handled by DPM 2007 at roughly one-third the licensing cost.
Rather than providing an all-in-one data protection solution for Microsoft ecosystems out of the box, these competing products require administrators to select additional functionality modules to meet specific needs. For example, a special virtualization module to protect Hyper-V servers, a special open-file module to back up open files, a special shared storage module to protect SAN data and a special SQL Server module to protect SQL Server databases.
The data protection and recovery market is highly competitive - this means that competing products tend to do the same thing. What differentiates these products is the way in which they perform the tasks they are designed to do. The tables here show a quick comparison of how each industry-leading product in the data protection market stacks up with Data Protection Manager 2007 based on the points this paper discusses. Taken together, these charts show our analysis of important strengths and weaknesses in each solution, and highlight areas where products are indeed evenly matched, if not identical.
The first comparison category is Administrator Needs. This table shows our take on each product in the areas of presentation of features through the user interface, quality and quantity of training and documentation, and overall value based on license cost.
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Administrator Needs |
Documentation |
Value |
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Data Protection Manager 2007 |
Strong |
Strong |
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Symantec BackUp Exec 12.5 |
Strong |
Competent |
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Ease of use and the value of making the best use of an administrator’s time is a key comparison point between competing products. This table compares the familiarity system administrators may have with a product’s features, how easily a product integrates into a Windows-centric environment, and how robust the feature set was found to be.
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Product |
Familiarity |
Integration |
Features |
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Data Protection Mgr |
Strong |
Strong |
Competent |
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BackUp Exec |
Competent |
Strong |
Competent |
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Our final comparison drills down to selected features that administrators generally look for when assessing whether a data protection solution is a good technology fit for their existing environment and/or one they may look to build. These are RTO/RPO, the ability to perform a bare metal recovery, and support for granular recovery. In the feature comparisons below, please note that the features reviewed are not part of all products’ design due to what the product is intended to do.
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Protection & Backup Features |
RTO/RPO |
Bear Metal Recovery |
Granular recovery |
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Data Protection Mgr |
Competent |
Competent |
Strong |
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BackUp Exec |
Not available |
Strong |
Strong |
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For the most part - and for fairness of comparison - the products that DPM 2007 competes with in the marketplace such as Symantec Backup Exec, can be used to accomplish the same core data protection and recovery objectives. However, DPM 2007 SP1 provides coverage for the most common Windows environment data protection scenarios.
Although competing products may have features that are not present in DPM 2007 SP1, these features tend to be used in exceptional circumstances rather than in an administrator’s daily data-protection routine. Another advantage for DPM 2007 SP1 is that it is a complete data protection solution for critical services and applications that run on Microsoft platforms.
About Miles Consulting Corp
We are a Microsoft Golden Certified Partner and provide IT Outsourcing services nationwide. Our Data Protection Manager Experts are Microsoft Certified Consultants. Call us at 866-844-5055 so our Data Protection Manager Specialists can give you a free assessment. |
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