Free NetBackup Reader: S2|DATA's Game-Changing Tool

You found the backup wrap up your go-to podcast for all things

backup recovery and cyber recovery.

In this episode, we're excited to announce something that's going to make life

easier for NetBackup users everywhere.

A completely free NetBackup reader S2|DATA.

If you've got NetBackup disc images lying around and you need to know what's on

them, or you need to get data off of them.

You don't want to maintain or pay for a full NetBackup environment.

This tool is for you.

We're joined by Brendan Sullivan, CEO S2|DATA to discuss why they created

this free tool and how it can help you take control of your backup data.

Full disclosure, I work for S2|DATA and am just as excited

about the tool as Brendan is.

By the way, if this is your first time listening and you don't know who

I am, I'm w Curtis Preston, AKA, Mr.

Backup, and I've been passionate about backup and recovery for over 30 years.

Ever since.

I had to tell my boss that we had no backups of our production

database that we had just lost.

I don't want that to happen to you, and that's why I do this.

On this podcast, we turn unappreciated backup admins into cyber recovery heroes.

This is the backup wrap up.

Welcome to the show.

Hi, I am w Curtis Preston, AKA, Mr.

Backup, and I have with me my fellow Wicked.

Convert Prasanna Malaiyandi, how's it going?

Prasanna?

I'm doing well,

Curtis.

it's an amazing movie.

I had never seen the musical, right, and I heard someone enjoyed it so

much that they decided to go see it twice this weekend, helping contribute

to that $114 million box office

earnings.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It, it.

I did enjoy it enough to go see it twice.

I would totally go to see it a third time, but the reason I saw it twice,

because the first time I saw it, I saw it by myself and then I, I made

sure that my wife got a chance to see it, and she of course loved it.

Uh, my favorite part was, you know, there's the one really sad slash

touching part, and my granddaughter, who wasn't with me during either of

these, my granddaughter, when she was watching it with her mother.

She, um, she turned to her mother and said, I bet Papa

is crying during this part.

And Papa is what she calls you.

Yeah, yeah.

Papa is what she calls me, and yeah, she was right.

Uh, it was a great movie.

Um, you know, and for, for the, for just for frame of reference, I typically

hate Hollywood versions of my favorite musicals, but this one, they knocked

it outta the park in every sense.

I have no complaints and I'm no.

My only complaint is that I have to wait a year to see part two.

Right.

Yeah.

But at least they're making part two.

Yeah.

Right.

So I took my wife to go see it, and I would say the only complaint that we

had was, it's a little long, right?

For a couple

that watches Bollywood movies on a regular basis.

You think that this movie was long?

Yes.

Okay.

Well, it was

just a touch long, but

two hours and 40 minutes.

Yeah.

Plus if you add the 15 or so or 20 minutes of previews Right, you're

sitting there for three hours.

Right.

Which is just long enough to get a Bollywood movie started.

So, um,

but no, it was great.

Yeah, like, uh, my wife was like, I really, really, really wanna see it again.

So we will wait.

Maybe we will watch it on streaming whenever it comes out.

I'm glad, just so

we can pause, take breaks in between, you know, that sort of thing.

Oh, right.

Yeah, that makes

sense.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So we have someone chomping at the bit.

We once again are visited by the CEO of S2|DATA.

Brendan Sullivan.

How's it going Brendan?

Not too bad at all.

How are you doing?

I, I'm, I'm just gonna go on a limb and say that you did

not see Wicked this weekend.

I have not seen Wicked.

You, you are missing out, my friend.

Missing out.

Um, but we're, we're here to actually, to talk about some pretty big news and

so I'm, I'm, I'm just gonna jump right to the, you know, the, the news release

that's, that's basically going to go live today as the, the day that we're, um,

uh, publishing this particular episode.

And that is, that S2|DATA is releasing a free NetBackup reader.

So do you, you want to just give a summary of that and then we will jump

into why would you do such a thing?

Yeah.

So, um, what it is, is a standalone application that, uh, anybody can

download and, uh, if they have, um, old.

Uh, NetBackup disc images lying around that, uh, they wanna know what's on

there, or they know what's on there and they want to get what's off those images.

Then you have two choices.

You, you, you either crank up the, the legacy NetBackup environment

or the existing NetBackup environment to restore them.

Um, or you can download our app.

And find out what's on them and restore what's on them, or just

get an index of, of, uh, all the metadata and, uh, find out that way.

And, and the, the kind of the driver to do it, um, is largely because, you

know, there's, there's a lot of legacy backup environments out there, and.

As is often the case data outlasts the infrastructure or the environment

in which it was created in.

Um, things like, uh, litigation, business compliance, regulatory reasons actually

compel companies to either keep it, um, or extract it long after they've paid

for or maintained the environments.

So this application allows them to do that, whether they have

the environment in place or not.

So this sounds amazing, Brendan, but I guess one of the questions

some listeners may have is you did a backup using, say, NetBackup, right?

And you're keeping it around.

Why would I need a tool like this given that I have like my backup sitting?

Like, is there a reason why I can't just reuse NetBackup that

I have in my environment already?

No, there's no reason you couldn't use that.

And really the, the reason to use the application is if you no longer have that.

And so what is often the case is that, customers.

Haven't got the, that existing environment around, no longer have the support, no

longer have the hardware infrastructure or the software licenses to do it.

Um, but yet they still need to find the data.

So it is actually only in the instance when you don't have

the environment around and.

We, we see that that is happening with increasing frequency, that,

uh, companies are moving on.

They're moving on to, you know, backing up to the cloud or other

versions or other flavors of backup.

And, um, they've got all data out there

I guess one of the reasons that, especially let's say a, a Veritas

customer might be in this scenario.

Is if they are considering moving on to another product, or perhaps they're

concerned about the Cohesity news, even though Cohesity is, you know,

made it clear they're not killing off NetBackup, they're not, you know,

they're not gonna orphan these customers.

I think there's still a certain amount of uneasiness there.

Um, and this gives them that option right?

To, to use, to continue to read their backups.

But while they don't have to keep the NetBackup environment around, if

they still have it right, it, it'd be like you said, it, it, there's

no reason to use the tool if you have the NetBackup stuff running.

But if you have backups, uh, but don't have NetBackup or don't want

to continue paying, uh, Veritas, then that would be the u use for the tools.

Does that sound about right?

That sounds about right.

I would say that, that it's also fast.

You point it to, um, a location, a path, or a, uh, a destination, a local

destination drive and say, gimme the index of all the files on, on this disc image.

And it does it extremely quickly.

So there's no, there's no convoluted path that you have have to go through other

than a couple of clicks of a button.

So, uh, it can also be pretty quick.

Um, but really the driver is.

You wanna, clients wanna have their data in their own hands

under all circumstances, and, uh, for, for as long as they want it.

Um, this, this is not a replacement, this is an alternative for a

certain, certain situation.

And, um, you know what, what might also be interesting is, is.

Why did we do this?

Uh, or what, what gave rise to it?

Because we're an IT professional services company and we make our money by offering

services to find, restore, delete, dispose of, et cetera data from all sorts of

legacy backup environments and current backup environments for that matter.

Um, and we were, uh, doing a project internationally actually in Europe about

a year or so ago, and, uh, the project was going well and there was lots of

different, uh, sources of, of, um, or destination sources where data that was

having to be collected was collected from.

And one of the challenges with this, with companies is, is that.

If they don't necessarily want to because of data privacy or, uh, regulation or

because of their own business policy, then they won't, don't necessarily

wanna move that data worked on within our facilities or with anybody's

facilities other than their own.

And we were, so, we were on site behind the firewall doing this kind of work.

And uh, and then it became clear that certain.

Um, data sources were not in that physical proximity.

They were on some disc images, or they believed that they

were on some disc images.

So we developed, um, a kind of a piecemeal solution at the time and said,

look, we can pull this into the, the, the grander population of, of data.

If you run this, run this, we'll get an index of, of, uh, of the

content, of, of those disc images that are in a different location.

Did that work fine?

Sent some data, didn't send others, and the project was complete.

And at the end of the project we thought, you know, that's a

pretty useful utility for, for anybody to have, you know, so, um.

It's not always the case that you can be on site.

It's not always the case that you want to do anything extravagant or

anything comprehensive with your date with the data, like an e-discovery

production or something like that.

Maybe you just want to know to rule in or to rule out whether or not

target data, um, is actually there.

So we built that application.

We thought that's pretty useful and it could be useful going forward.

So why don't we put that in a, uh, a, you know, get a.

Quite attractive user interface.

I may, I may add, and a standalone application that'll boot it, boot

itself and, uh, it could be quite useful for clients to have it.

So that was the, that was the driver.

Having worked at a quite a few backup vendors, uh, uh, one of the things that

we would always talk about is, Hey, let's always have our own proprietary format,

because then it makes it so sticky, right?

A customer can't easily switch from your software to a different software

because like you said, they have all this data, what are they going to do with it?

And so you kind of become very sticky, which for a vendor

is good, but for a customer.

Isn't always the right approach because you might want to pick a different

vendor because there is a new business problem or challenge you have that

requires a different solution and now you're kind of stuck, right?

Yeah.

So it's great to hear.

See tools like this that gives you, gives customers that freedom to decide

what tools they should be using, what vendors they should be using,

and not necessarily be stuck because they made a decision in the past.

Yeah.

So, uh, I, I just wanna jump in here.

Full disclosure, uh, I work for Brendan.

I guess I maybe should have started with that, but I do work for Brendan.

I just wanted to jump on a piece that you said earlier, Brendan, and that is that.

This is one of the businesses that S2|DATA is in, is to, is to do exactly

what, uh, Prasanna talked about, is to give people the freedom to

use their old backups, but without having to be tied to that old backup

company if they don't want to.

Yes.

Right.

That is

correct.

Yeah.

And if I can kind of just add on, um, what, what Ana just

said, it's the client's data.

It's not the backup software's data.

Um, the, the companies that create, uh, these environments, it's not their data.

It's the client's data and they want to have total command of it.

And that's one of our taglines.

We give you total command of your data.

So, you know, you, you hear over the years we've heard a a lot about, you

know, standardization of formats and why can't we have, uh, you know, the, some

level of standardization here or there.

But the reality is it's a market environment.

Uh, everybody wants the standard to be their own standard.

Uh, and as long as they never go out of business or as long as their

standards never change and everybody's happy, but of course we all know that

that is a, that's never gonna happen.

So this is, this is all about really just giving the tools so that clients can

be in total command of their own data.

Whenever they need it to be.

Yeah.

And even with standardization, like I just think about NDMP and even though

NDMP is a standard, every vendor has their own format within NDMP, so you don't

end up with that cross compatibility.

So, yeah.

When you talked about, you said that it can, it can catalog the

data and it can restore the data.

What format is that catalog output?

The catalog output is, is CSV.

Um, so you, you can, you know, read it on an Excel spreadsheet, you'll

just get a dump look to a local disk, and then you'll have a list

and it'll have the major pieces of metadata of those individual files.

So things like, um, file name, file extension, the

path that it was originally.

Backed up to create modified access date file extension and the size of the file.

So standard type information that you might need for future discovery

or future production of that data.

Yeah, I like that.

'cause the idea, you know, again, you know, you talked about faster, like

in, in the case of NetBackup, which is what this tool, uh, right now is

designed to, to work with the first tool.

The catalog is great.

Yeah.

What was that

the first tool?

NetBackup is a, you know, huge amount of users out there.

But this is not to say that we can't develop subsequent

apps on all of the other major backup software, uh, platforms,

right?

The, the, the NetBackup catalog is nice, but also this idea of

being able to create sort of a.

Human readable, um, catalog as I make quotes in the air, but basically if

I could create a CSV file of every one of my backups, that that's,

there's a lot of things that I, as a, a UNY type person can do with that.

Right.

You know, beautiful words like GR and sort, and all sorts of things.

I can, I can find really interesting things in that data if you give me.

The data in a format that allows me to do text manipulation.

I, I think that's a, that's something that this offers, that even, even if you

have NetBackup, it doesn't necessarily offer that, uh, at least, certainly

not in in as easy a format of, of this.

Yeah, that's, that, that's correct.

That's not in a simple format.

You'll typically have, you know, when you're creating a

backup, a NetBackup, Amazon.

A hundred percent sure.

You know, you'll, you know, you'll typically have a phase one import, a

phase two import, and then you'll have a process to go through to get those.

This is closer to a phase two import catalog for those

NetBackup users out there.

It's closer to that, but it also has backup session level information as well.

And, uh, you know, it's, it, it, it's quick.

So certainly.

From our company that has, um, developed a lot of its business from

servicing the legal technology industry.

Um, decisions are made, I don't know if it's more, but it's

certainly significantly, uh, evident that decisions are made.

Based on metadata, file catalogs, session catalogs, as much as the actual content

itself, because a lot of what discovery and production is all about, it's all

about ruling out rather than ruling in.

And so a catalog is, that's the most beautiful thing for it, or the most,

most common use for it, is to be able to rule out stuff because you wanna be

able to delete it in a defensible manner.

You wanna be able to ignore it and be able to say, here's why I ignored it.

And so the creation of a catalog.

Um, is is extremely important.

And Brendan, one question.

You mentioned sort of it being faster, and I know you talked about

import one, import two, I'm not as familiar with NetBackup terminology.

Could you sort of like high level, walk us through like comparing this tool

to like what a customer may have to do if they didn't have a tool like this,

like in, at a hypothetical scenario?

Right.

So I'm gonna answer that by se by referring you to.

Somebody who said they worked for me 10 minutes ago, and because I'll

wager that Curtis has used NetBackup a lot more than I've used it.

We

create, yeah, we've

created our native file restoration tools and extraction tools, so we

create emulated environments that that en, that enable you to do things with

data that was created by NetBackup.

But Curtis would've used NetBackup a lot more than me, so he might

actually be better placed to answer.

Curtis, you're on the spot.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So basically assuming what you have is a pile of NetBackup backups and

you don't have a catalog, right?

That the, the sort of the worst case scenario, the first thing you'd have to do

is to create a NetBackup environment, find some NetBackup software that's compatible

with diversion of NetBackup that you happen to have, which you're not sure.

So it's just, there's some, there's some uncertainty there.

You install the NetBackup software, um, and then you're going to do a phase

one and a phase two import on all of these images, and that will put it

into the NetBackup catalog, which then you would be able to, um, you know,

do the regular NetBackup searches.

Right?

Um, but.

You wouldn't be able to do this idea of just putting it into plain text and

then searching it with various tools.

Right?

Yeah.

Um, and you know, even, I mean, dare I speak even AI tools, right?

You could take this, you could take these text.

Uh, this tech CSV feed it into something like chat, GPT or, or, uh, Claude.

And, uh, and, and look at the stuff and tell me what you

can tell me about these files.

Right?

Yeah.

Um, so yeah, it, it, it's not that it's not doable with, uh, Veritas, right?

But there is that challenge of.

The, the first thing of getting the software Yeah.

That you may not even have anymore and you may not be able to get the software that's

compatible with diversion that you have.

Right.

And the cost associated with that too.

And the cost.

Well, yeah.

Right.

Um, the, the, um, I, not just the

software license, but also like.

The hardware, everything else you might need.

Yeah.

In order to be able to provision and run

you, you need, you definitely need a a, a, a server that can satisfy the, the basic

requirements of the Veritas software.

Uh, whereas this is a very basic app that can run on a desktop, uh,

and it just needs, uh, basically, uh, directory file access.

Right.

So NFS Mount or something like that.

Um, it's not going to handle like, um, things that were

backed up to object storage.

At least not yet.

And, uh, and if it doesn't handle what you have, right.

If you have tape NetBackups, if you have networker, TSM.

Arcserve, if you have all of those other formats, that's what, uh, S2|DATA does,

is they can handle all of those other formats on a professional services basis.

Uh, but this tool will do exactly what it says for the low, low price of $0.

And it basically to, you know, to, to get the tool, you just download it

directly from, um, we'll get the, we'll put the, um, the link in the show notes.

You can download it directly from S2|DATA.

It, it is a signed app by the way, for those are concerned about that.

But it downloads and it installs, um, and as a demo version.

And that will do a certain number of files.

Um, you know, without putting in the license, the license is free, but you do

need to contact us to get the license.

It's sounds so amazing, but the one question I have is like, why

has no one thought of this before?

You know, like, it seems like a common problem that like every customer.

Dealing with their backup environment, migrating from one environment to

another would have, and yet, like it, like I've looked online and I

haven't heard or seen anything like this, so it's kind of surprising.

What do you think, Brendan?

I think, um, I think there's definitely an element here that we're market

shaping, um, as, as much as anything, um.

I can't tell you the number of times that when we've had potential projects,

uh, that we've been scoping and we've been on conference calls and the client

explains their environment and they say, we need to get this data and

that data, and uh, can you do this?

And we say yes.

And they say, so you have this environment.

And then we say, no, uh, we have our own, uh, application here with our own

technology and we can restore your data.

And they say, not everybody.

Uh, uh, thinks that we can do it or thinks that it's possible.

And of course, it is possible.

We're not the only company in the world that does this kind of non-native file

restoration, uh, type, uh, type approach.

Um, but so number one is, largely within the IT backup world,

like when we hired Curtis.

He was surprised at what we do because he's been living with the, in, in the

world of using licenses and infrastructure and, and handshakes with certain library

types, et cetera, et cetera, to, uh, to get hold of his, uh, the data.

So it's just that not everybody has necessarily thought that

there may be an alternative way to get access to your data.

Mm-Hmm.

Other than the original native environment.

So that, so there is that and it's, that's part of the driver if you like.

Um, towards launching a free app.

It's the, the world of getting data back for clients or helping data

get back for clients is very broad.

We're an IT professional services company primarily.

And, um, you know, there's, there's a lot of ways for us to

have relationships with customers.

And so we thought, you know, this is one good way here is, is, uh, we know that

a lot of the times it administrators, um, like Curtis from a past life.

They wanna get hold of the application themselves and play around with

it rather than speak to somebody.

So what we're doing is we're allowing them to get hold of an application

and see what can be achievable.

And if they achieve what they want, great.

And if they need more information, because they've got a larger

requirement we're there, too, for that.

So they're the, they're the drivers really for, for, for doing this.

Yeah, I like that.

And, and, and today it's NetBackup disc, and it's free tomorrow.

Who knows, right?

Who knows what applications, uh, you know, what, what forms this will take over time.

I'm super excited for, I mean, both, both for you, uh, Brendan,

like for, for the company.

Uh, but also because I'm sitting here waiting to see how this thing,

we've been talking about it for a while and, uh, release releasing it today.

I know that the, the journalists that I've spoken to, they were very interested.

They were like, oh, this, you know, they, it was

sort of like you, what, what you said of like the, the, um, the disbelief, right?

Um, and it's like, what, you know, why would you release a free tool?

You know, that whole thing, right?

What I think it does, is it demonstrates the kinds of things that are possible.

I think that's a good thing.

Any final thoughts?

Um, no.

I'm kind of, uh, waiting to see how it goes down as well.

I have a, i, I have a suspicion that there's gonna be plenty of downloads.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I, I, I suspect the same.

We'll be, we'll be watching the same logs, I'm sure.

Um, all right, well, uh, thanks Prasanna for the usual chat.

No, thank you and super excited to hear the uptake in this tool.

I think it's a great way and hopefully more companies realize

they shouldn't lock users in so luck.

Yeah.

That should hopefully

change

things.

Luck.

Good luck with that.

Thanks Brendan.

Thanks for coming on.

Thank you very much.

All right, and thanks to our listeners, we'd be nothing without you.

That is a wrap.

The backup wrap up is written, recorded and produced by me w Curtis Preston.

If you need backup or Dr.

Consulting content generation or expert witness work,

check out backup central.com.

You can also find links from my O'Reilly Books on the same website.

Remember, this is an independent podcast and any opinions that you

hear are those of the speaker.

And not necessarily an employer.

Thanks for listening.