I haven't looked at Commvault in about a year, but this is what I know from this time last year:
1) Commvault still requires you to do full dumps. They have lots of verbiage (single-instance store" and "synthetic backup") that they will use to make you believe they don't require fulls, but they don't have a central data base like TSM that tracks data at the file level. The software doesn't have the intelligence to identify files that are already backed up. I have customers that literally CANNOT dump all their petabytes of data across the network. And I've talked to Commvault users that have had to plan entire backup networks, with all the costs associated with doing so, to keep pushing all that data. For my customers with large numbers of "typical" servers - Windows or UNIX file servers, print server, app servers - the average change rate is 5-8% of data per day on non-DB data. That means with TSM, you are sending 5-8% as much data across your network. And that means you have a lot fewer failures, which makes your life much easier and your costs lower. 2) With Commvault, like any other product that requires full backups, every client is a new pain point. 3) Because Commvault is constantly resending the same data, they take more tape media. 4) I believe their dedup capability is an extra-cost option. (And just like everybody else, the dedup is done AFTER that data is sent across the network, not before. They will try to make you think it's done at the client end.) 5) Commvault does not have the capability to assign different retention rules to different data, the way TSM does. That being said, Commvault is very pretty. They have nicer GUI interfaces than TSM. They make setting up the clients (especially the TDP's) much easier and far fewer steps, whereas TSM has no "wizards" for installing the TDP's, it's a very very geeky manual process. Commvault is much easier to set up initially, and their web marketing pages are much, MUCH better. Commvault has focused much of its development on pretty, nice GUIs, ease of setup, and great marketing. TSM focuses its development on architectural function, not ease of install. What I tell customers is yes, TSm is harder to set up. But the idea is that you shouldn't NEED a pretty GUI to drive backups day to day, because with TSM you "set it and forget it", and let TSM automate everything, which makes life better in the long run. But It's very frustrating for me, because TSM marketing materials are very poor, IMHO, and don't explain well what the impact of TSM's features will be on the user's long-term management and support costs. IBM"s sales force, in many cases that I've seen, have very poor understanding of TSM and can't explain it well, and have no training whatever in the differences between TSM and Commvault. And so I see sites being lured into Commvault, without underanding that easier setup, does not translate into easier day to day management, and bullet-proof backups. Just a personal opinion. W . On Tue, Jun 23, 2009 at 2:45 AM, Christian Svensson < [email protected]> wrote: > Hi Guys, > We have a Business Partner coming to us on Friday and wanna talk about > CommVault and tell us how much better it is then TSM. > Can anyone give me some awesome questions that will kill them? Like NDMP, > Redbooks and the unique support error code that TSM has so it is much easier > to find a solution for our trouble tickets and of course you guys is a great > benefit. :) > > > > Best Regards > Christian Svensson > > Cell: +46-70-325 1577 > E-mail: [email protected] > Skype: cristie.christian.svensson
