CommVault Simpana Delivers the "Wow" During Herbalife's Backup Software Evaluation
The "Wow" factor. Everyone innately knows that's what separates the great from the good in any industry no matter what product or service it is that they are evaluating. Of course, no one ever really knows exactly when it is the "Wow" moment will occur and it was no different for Herbalife's Principal IT Engineer, Andy Hansen, when he was evaluating enterprise backup software products from CommVault, EMC and Symantec. But like when most "Wow" moments occur, it was not a scenario that he had planned for ahead of time as it occurred rather unexpectedly while he was evaluating these different backup software products.
In a previous blog entry, I examined the combination of problems that Herbalife was experiencing with its current backup software and its data growth necessitated that it upgrade to enterprise backup software to minimize its current level of exposure. But bringing in three different enterprise backup software products in-house and then performing a thorough evaluation of each of them is no trivial task. It is both difficult to execute upon and has long term ramifications for his company. So to cope with this, he adopted a two-step process to make the appropriate decision.
His first step in the evaluation process was to prepare a detailed check list that compared the technical features of each backup software product in terms of what he needed for his environment. Overall he found that CommVault® Simpana® and Symantec NetBackup compared favorably from a technical perspective but he quickly ruled out EMC Networker. One of Herbalife's sites was already using EMC Networker and he knew from past experience that it broke frequently in his environment. So at that point Hansen proceeded to his second phase of testing: in-house testing of the remaining two products.
Hansen found that both CommVault Simpana and Symantec NetBackup installed relatively easily in his environment but there were two specific areas where he consistently gave CommVault higher marks than Symantec NetBackup.
This was when the "Wow" moment occurred. Since the deletion of the AD groups had just occurred, Herbalife's IT staff knew almost immediately what the source of the problem was. However fixing it was normally no easy proposition and it could take hours to complete with a substantial disruption to user processes in the meantime.
However because of CommVault Simpana's deep integration with Microsoft Windows AD, it included a restore option that enabled Herbalife to restore the deleted AD groups in about two minutes. This not only prevented an unnecessary disruption to Herbalife's production processes but was the "Wow" moment that Hansen had been looking for and cemented in his mind why he should select CommVault Simpana as Herbalife's enterprise backup software.
However now that he had made up mind and reached his technical conclusion, the task that still remained in front of him was to cost-justify his decision and convince his management on how to proceed. I'll cover the arguments he used to support his rationale to proceed with the purchase of CommVault Simpana in a forthcoming blog entry.
Part 1 in this 3-part series took a look at what issues Herbalife was experiencing with its existing backup software that prompted it to look for a new solution.
In a previous blog entry, I examined the combination of problems that Herbalife was experiencing with its current backup software and its data growth necessitated that it upgrade to enterprise backup software to minimize its current level of exposure. But bringing in three different enterprise backup software products in-house and then performing a thorough evaluation of each of them is no trivial task. It is both difficult to execute upon and has long term ramifications for his company. So to cope with this, he adopted a two-step process to make the appropriate decision.
His first step in the evaluation process was to prepare a detailed check list that compared the technical features of each backup software product in terms of what he needed for his environment. Overall he found that CommVault® Simpana® and Symantec NetBackup compared favorably from a technical perspective but he quickly ruled out EMC Networker. One of Herbalife's sites was already using EMC Networker and he knew from past experience that it broke frequently in his environment. So at that point Hansen proceeded to his second phase of testing: in-house testing of the remaining two products.
Hansen found that both CommVault Simpana and Symantec NetBackup installed relatively easily in his environment but there were two specific areas where he consistently gave CommVault higher marks than Symantec NetBackup.
- Service and support. Throughout the entire testing period, he found that CommVault consistently provided high levels of service and support for his team as Herbalife tested it in conjunction with its different operating systems, applications and at its remote sites.
- Level of integration between products. Due to CommVault's singular design, he also found it extremely beneficial that while he was installing CommVault's backup software for testing that he could also install and test its archiving software. Both the archiving and backup software were managed through the same management interface which made it easy for Herbalife to see exactly what was going on as well as set policies that applied to both the archiving and backup software.
This was when the "Wow" moment occurred. Since the deletion of the AD groups had just occurred, Herbalife's IT staff knew almost immediately what the source of the problem was. However fixing it was normally no easy proposition and it could take hours to complete with a substantial disruption to user processes in the meantime.
However because of CommVault Simpana's deep integration with Microsoft Windows AD, it included a restore option that enabled Herbalife to restore the deleted AD groups in about two minutes. This not only prevented an unnecessary disruption to Herbalife's production processes but was the "Wow" moment that Hansen had been looking for and cemented in his mind why he should select CommVault Simpana as Herbalife's enterprise backup software.
However now that he had made up mind and reached his technical conclusion, the task that still remained in front of him was to cost-justify his decision and convince his management on how to proceed. I'll cover the arguments he used to support his rationale to proceed with the purchase of CommVault Simpana in a forthcoming blog entry.
Part 1 in this 3-part series took a look at what issues Herbalife was experiencing with its existing backup software that prompted it to look for a new solution.
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