We compared Dell Avamar and Zerto based on user reviews in five categories. We reviewed all of the data and you can find the conclusion below.
Features: Dell Avamar earns acclaim for its scalability, data compression capabilities, swift incremental backups, and seamless integration with Data Domain and VM stacks. Users say Zerto offers excellent data protection, and it’s easy to create VMs. Zerto users also like its real-time replication features. Dell Avamar could improve its tape connectivity and bare-metal restoration. Users also requested better Azure backups and a more user-friendly interface. Zerto could improve cloud environment configuration, PowerShell scripting, and multi-site replication.
Service and Support: Some customers express satisfaction with Dell support, but others said there is room for improvement. Customers have generally had positive experiences with Zerto's customer service, noting their quick response times and ability to resolve issues. Some customers have encountered slower response times and needed to go through multiple levels of support to get their issues resolved.
Ease of Deployment: Opinions on Dell Avamar’s setup were mixed. Some users found it to be straightforward, while others considered it complex and difficult. Deployment time ranged from a few hours to a week, and assistance from Dell engineers might be necessary. The setup process for Zerto can be either simple or complicated, depending on the individual's experience with backup solutions.
Pricing: Dell Avamar’s pricing is generally seen as reasonable, but some users think it is expensive. Zerto’s price tag is considered reasonable and in line with industry norms. Others said it was somewhat expensive but still worth the cost.
ROI: Dell Avamar provides cost savings through data reduction, deduplication, and compression. Zerto reduces risks while saving costs and time. It increases efficiency, ensures compliance, and helps businesses grow.
Comparison Results: Dell Avamar is a scalable solution that offers excellent data compression and fast compression. However, Avamar earned mixed reviews for support, deployment, and pricing. Users also requested better Azure and bare-metal backups and restoration capabilities. Zerto offers top-tier data protection, excellent customer service, and real-time replication, but some users say its cloud and multi-site functionality could be better.
"Easy to configure and highly reliable for backup."
"Graphically, it's very user interactive. It's got a very nice interface."
"Its deduplication technologies are the best in the market, currently."
"I think the brand is very good. Support is also very nice for end users and integration with EMC products for businesses."
"They are extremely reliable and scalable — they provide the best de-duplication on the market."
"We have seen huge data reduction and data deduplication and compression, which is very cost-effective and cost-reducing for the company."
"Quick incremental backups and product replication are the two highlights of the product. Once you capture a full backup, incrementals are pretty quick. It is fairly efficient from that perspective."
"Dell Avamar has helped our organization by allowing us to do backups."
"Real-time or near real-time replication has been the most valuable feature. Our RTO is generally between six and eight seconds. The impact on our RTO is essential."
"Journaling allows us to leverage Zerto's journal for sub-minute recoveries, instead of having to wait for the storage array to replicate."
"The fact that we are able to test the failover of live systems during regular hours is invaluable to our organization."
"It has enabled DR protection for virtual appliances with minimal administrator time."
"There are two things that are keeping us with the solution: 1. It does a very good job of keeping the data in sync at all times. 2. In the event of a failover or in the event of a contingency, we are able to retrieve the data very quickly without any issues."
"The biggest benefit is the application-consistent disaster recovery functionality."
"Journaling is by far the most valuable feature. We have used it several times for customers who have gotten ransomware and had to do a rollback. Having the right time period was important. Some of them had their backups encrypted. So, they didn't encrypt the Zerto machine seven days previously, and we were able to bring that back up."
"In our DR testing, Zerto allows us to go work on other things while it takes care of everything. That's valuable because we know that we can still hit all of our SLAs in a real disaster."
"The recovery is a bit slow."
"Avamar is still competitive because of the way we have deployed it, but we need to diversify and shift away from specific technologies. In addition to hypervisors, virtual machines, and bare metal servers, our customers need protection for Microsoft 365, SaaS, and the public cloud, so we need other technologies in the business to cater to those customers' needs. Those are the enhancements we would want from the Avamar platform, but that's not likely to happen. Dell has PowerProtect and Apex backup services. There are other Dell solutions that we'll use to fulfill our customers' requirements."
"I want to see a more user-friendly and administrator-friendly Dell Avamar. The solution also needs a better UI and dashboard."
"Technical support should be more knowledgeable."
"The interface has room for improvement. It's not ideal right now."
"Its ability to back up very large objects can be improved. In terms of new features, they can include the ability to use cloud services, like S3, more natively."
"It would be better if we could integrate easily with other platforms."
"We have had a lot of problems with the Dell EMC Avamar solution. The snapshots are not being erased after backup."
"I would like to request better reporting in Zerto. I can see the data that I need in the console, but if I need to put the data or the history into a report, it is difficult. It is something that auditors might require, so reporting is something that needs to be improved."
"The biggest pain points we have experienced are related to some of the SQL-intensive workloads just because the VPGs struggle a little bit to keep up. That might be because we are pushing too many transactions."
"I would like to be able to replicate one to multiple without having to recreate every VPG. That would save us a lot of time. When we add a site or move our DR to a different site, I have to recreate everything from scratch. So, it'd be cool to be able to just repoint an existing VPG to a new site without having to recreate everything."
"Improvements in stability would be welcome; there are some software bugs that can affect RPOs. We want more of a guarantee that we won't lose any of our backups, even in the event of a disaster."
"There should be an automatic installation in a cluster. When I add a virtual client or ESX source to the cluster, it should automatically install that. There should be automatic installation. Currently, I have to do that manually."
"When we do failover and failback, it doesn't maintain some of the settings that it should and I don't really understand why that happens."
"If I were to nitpick, I would say that I wish I had a better account manager. Our sales guy has changed a couple of times. I would like a little more responsiveness from our account manager. I've had a couple of issues where getting in touch with him has been a little difficult, and I end up just going around him and dealing with support and support has handled it right away."
"Even though Zerto is for disaster recovery, it would be nice if it can also make backups."
Dell Avamar is ranked 12th in Backup and Recovery with 81 reviews while Zerto is ranked 2nd in Backup and Recovery with 236 reviews. Dell Avamar is rated 7.6, while Zerto is rated 9.0. The top reviewer of Dell Avamar writes "Stable, integrates well with other solutions, and has a good price, but its UI needs a refresh". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Zerto writes "Gives us business continuity capabilities during hurricane season and in case of ransomware". Dell Avamar is most compared with Dell PowerProtect Data Manager, Veeam Backup & Replication, Dell NetWorker, Dell PowerProtect DP (IDPA) and Nutanix Mine Integrated Backup, whereas Zerto is most compared with Veeam Backup & Replication, VMware SRM, Rubrik, Commvault Cloud and Dell RecoverPoint for Virtual Machines. See our Dell Avamar vs. Zerto report.
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