CommVault Ratchets Up Reporting

CommVault has apparently been paying attention to the startups that have sprung up out of the established backup vendors' failure to offer reporting capabilities.

CommVaults latest upgrade available today includes improved reporting features aimed at making it easier for customers to troubleshoot failed backup jobs. (See CommVault Enhances QiNetix.) Startups such as Bocada, WysDM, Illuminator Software, ServerGraph, and Tek-Tools have been selling backup reporting software trying to cash in on a lack of attention paid to backup reporting by backup vendors such as Symantec, EMC, IBM, and CommVault. (See Startups Strive to Save Backup, WysDM Software, {docink 81489}, and Tek-Tools Surveys Customers.)

Like the upstarts, CommVault’s backup software now pays closer attention to backup jobs, trying to tell customers exactly why a backup failed and even predicting failures. According to CommVault director of product marketing, Chris Van Wagoner, plain text messages for common backup failures have been added to tell customers exactly what went wrong. “For example, it might say, ‘couldn’t complete backup job because of a network outage between this time and this time,’” Van Wagoner says.

CommVault also does a pre-backup check to determine if there’s enough space on the backup disk or tape to hold the amount of data expected in a backup job.

Dominic Ferreri, IT analyst at the University of Cincinnati, says he’s happy with CommVault’s backup performance but its failure messages can be tough to decipher. (See University of Cincinnati.)“That would be a welcome improvement,” Ferreri says of improved backup reporting. “The messages can be a little cryptic, especially when you’re first getting exposed to the product. They can seem strange -- I have to hunt and peck for what went wrong.”

Still, Ferreri says he’s come to rely on CommVault reports, cryptic messages and all.

“My environment is relatively small compared to some instances where they’re trying to back up thousands of servers,” he says. “I have a dozen servers to back up. But anytime there’s more than one or two servers, reports are essential because it helps consolidate events into one concise view.”

Analyst Dianne McAdam of Data Mobility Group says Ferreri is far from alone in finding messages cryptic, regardless of backup vendor. (See CreekPath Launches Path to Value.)

“A common complaint I hear from users is, ‘They just gave a message saying backup failed and sent some code in non-human language. What does that mean?,’” she says.CommVault isn’t the first backup vendor to try to improve reporting. EMC struck an OEM deal last summer to resell WysDM’s software as EMC Backup Advisor for part of its Legato backup software family. (See EMC Makes Legato 'Wyser'.) Industry sources say Symantec is working on improving reporting features for its Veritas Net Backup and Backup Exec products.

Even if all the backup vendors one day have adequate built-in reporting tools, there may be a place for third-party tools. McAdam says a product such as Bocada’s can work with multiple backup applications, but backup vendors can do a deeper dig into their own software.

“The advantage for Bocada is if I’m working for a corporation running Veritas and buy a company that’s running Legato or CommVault, Bocada will talk to both and consolidate them,” she says. “Bocada probably can’t go as deep into CommVault as CommVault can. But CommVault can only talk to CommVault.”

The new reporting features are part of a free upgrade of CommVault’s QiNetix storage management and backup software available today. Last month, CommVault said it would offer a continuous data protection (CDP) application called ContinuousDataReplicator in this release. (See CommVault Advances QiNetix .)

— Dave Raffo, Senior Editor, Byte and SwitchOrganizations mentioned in this article: