Very difficult to answer question is. It depends from a lot of factors and most of them have been answered from Andrew, Jeff and the two Scott. The question is not about what is better to deduplicate or to use deduplication appliances or what is best to use NDMP...
If your main issues concern how to backup some NetApp appliances using NDMP/Snapshot technology and at the same time to have a "catalog" and a "media server" gorverning all the stuffs around a "large" backup the answer can come from SnapProtect: why not? It's a Simpana piece of software together with consolidated NetApp APIs. Cheap and easy to setup and run. Now there's a Symantec "answer" to SnapProtect, is a new plugin but it works in NAS environment only.
But you are concerned about application consistency, open files, imaging backup techs and other things now you've to consider the adoption of some backup software and as the saying goes :) there's no worst case that to have not just one but two different backup software. Each of them has nightmares and dreams :)
Personally I've always appreciated Symantec Backup Exec in environments essentially Windows based (also virtualized) but it can take backup for Linux and Oracle on Linux. The last versions use of course OST technology and can take advantages of some features that are built in in the dedup appliances like DD or Quantum.
In more "enterprise" environments there are old and consolidated sw such as Legato (EMC) Networker or Symantec NetBackup. But these are not alone...
Bye
Da: toasters-bounces@teaparty.net [mailto:toasters-bounces@teaparty.net] Per conto di Steffen Knauf Inviato: venerdì 2 marzo 2012 17:52 A: toasters@teaparty.net Oggetto: Experience with Backup Software using NDMP
Hi Toasters,
we consider to buy a new Backup Software and i don't know whats the best Software. Now, we are using Netvault (vian ndmp)but it don't works very well (e.g. problems with deduplication.....). We backup ~ 10 TB via NDMP to a LTO 5 Tapelibrary. Perhaps someone have experience with other Backup Software. Netvault sucks generally ;(
greets
Steffen