DPM vs. Symantec Backup Exec

Have you ever been asked how DPM holds up to Symantec Backup Exec? I have. Up until today I have not been able to find a decent report about this only forum threads. This is the best comparison I have been able to find on DPM vs. Symantec Backup Exec

http://www.milesconsultingcorp.com/MS-Data-Protection-Manager-vs-Symantec-Backup-Exec.aspx .

It is by a DPM consulting vendor so it is somewhat biased in favor of DPM and is based on DPM 2007 but it is still the best one I could locate and it is pretty good.

The price point alone of DPM gives it some serious leverage over Symantec . Check out the cost chart from that website:

In order to compare license costs between Microsoft Data Protection Manager and Symantec Backup Exec, we used an environment consisting of storage area network, Windows file servers, SharePoint, Exchange 2007, SQL Server 2008, Active Directory and Hyper-V deployed, including the ability to perform bare-metal-restore. To protect such environment, we used the following licenses, agents and options for Symantec Backup Exec 12.5:

	Symantec Backup Exec 2.15 Solution
	Backup Exec 12.5 for Windows Server	1,279.51
	Backup Exec System Recovery 8.5 Server Edition	2,915.41
	Backup Exec 12.5 Agent for MS Virtual Server	1,162.66
	Backup Exec 12.5 Agent for MS Exchange Server	1,162.66
	Backup Exec 12.5 Agent for Active Directory	1,162.66
	Backup Exec 12.5 Agent for MS SQL Server	1,162.66
	Backup Exec 12.5 Agent for Microsoft SharePoint License	1,162.66
	Total	$10,008.22

Then the following Microsoft Data Protection Manager Licenses were used to protect the same environment:

	Data Protection Manager 2007 Solution
	1 DPM Server license	$579
	5 Enterprise DPML	$2,155
	1 Standard DPML (File server)	$157
	Total	$2,891

Keep in mind that they based their comparison on DPM 2007 pricing so it is old. You no longer need a DM server license. The most current pricing can be found here: http://www.microsoft.com/systemcenter/en/us/data-protection-manager/dpm-pricing-licensing.aspx#Lic 

On this article they also go into more detail looking at the strengths and weaknesses of DPM and Symantec, and they highlight areas where each product is matched in feature sets. Here is the link again: http://www.milesconsultingcorp.com/MS-Data-Protection-Manager-vs-Symantec-Backup-Exec.aspx

They should do another report using 2010 or maybe they will do a new one when 2012 comes out.