Looking to hear others experiences with Data Protector and its virtual integration (VEPA), specifically with VMWare.
After using DP for 3+ years (spanning v6.11,v7.01,v8.11) we are re-evaluating our backup solution. Do we stay with DP or move on to some other solution (currently evaluating Avamar). ?
Our experiences with VEPA integration has been spotty and frustrating. VEPA sessions constantly leave a mess of snapshots behind, and in our environment using virtualized VEPA servers, leave the hot-add disks behind as well.. This leaves us with a mess to manually cleanup every moring and a waste of valuable time.
Random failures of VEPA backups have also caused issue with our annual disaster testing over the years where we thought backups were good only to find out that there were unregistered failures in our differential+full stream causing us to revert to previous/other weeks in order to DR testing. (good luck finding completely successfull jobs)
Implemented v8.x in the past 90 days, hoping to find some stability. Alas, there is little. The only bright spot is that after cleanup, jobs can be restarted. (which I believe is now available in the latest version of 7.x ).
Support calls have been opened with HP but no solution other than to continue to apply patches as they come out (8.11 is current). The latest non-solution... In January 2014 timeframe DP v8.1 supported vCenter 5.1.x, issues started arising and now the March support matrix states vCenter 5.1.2 is the minimum. No troubleshooting from HP now til we update our vCenter. argggg.
v8.1 to me is a step backwards from 7.x.
Appreciate anyone sharing their VEPA experiences while we evaluate other products or decide to stay with DP.
Thank you all in advance !!
