We compared Commvault Complete Data Protection and Dell Avamar based on user reviews in five categories. We reviewed all of the data and you can find the conclusion below.
Features: Commvault Complete Data Protection is highly regarded for its extensive recovery options and compatibility with diverse storage systems. Dell Avamar earns acclaim for its scalability, data compression capabilities, swift incremental backups, and seamless integration with Data Domain and VM stacks. Users suggest that Commvault Complete Data Protection could offer more Windows security features and a unified console. They said Commvault should expand support for container-based systems and improve its ability to archive large video files. Dell Avamar could improve its tape connectivity and bare-metal restoration. Users also requested better Azure backups and a more user-friendly interface.
Service and Support: Commvault Complete Data Protection earned mostly positive feedback for its customer service, but some Commvault customers mentioned concerns about network-related support and the need for more direct access during emergencies. Some customers express satisfaction with Dell support, but others said there is room for improvement.
Ease of Deployment: The setup process for Commvault Complete Data Protection is complex, time-consuming, and may require outside help. The lack of sufficient documentation and online resources adds to the difficulty. 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.
Pricing: Commvault may need to lower its price to attract customers in certain regions and customer segments. Dell Avamar’s pricing is generally seen as reasonable, but some users think it is expensive.
ROI: Commvault Complete Data Protection offers significant cost savings. Some enterprise customers estimated that they saved between $100,000 to $300,000 by reducing labor costs, speeding up backup and recovery, and implementing remote access. Dell Avamar provides cost savings through data reduction, deduplication, and compression.
Comparison Results: Commvault Complete Data Protection is a robust and flexible solution with the potential to save customers money, but users say the setup is too complex and it needs better support for container-based systems. 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.
"The 1-Touch recovery feature is helpful for all customers."
"It is just about as flexible as you can get; simple. You can put it anywhere you want. You can put it on-prem or in your cloud. I could see where a team that's looking for more of a follow the bouncy ball type of solution might get a little confused. "Oh, no. What do you mean I might have to do it this way or I can't do it that way?" Sometimes, people just want to be told what to do. For an enterprise environment, like we are at NDOT, everything we do is not standard. It is not industry standard; it is not normal. We have all kinds of one-offs. We do need flexibility in the solutions that we get. I will say that Metallic has been extremely flexible in that sense, where we are able to follow the bouncy ball if we wanted to. Obviously, we didn't. We did it our way and Metallic, as a whole solution, provided that to us with no issues."
"The solution includes the best compatibility metrics for integration and they are managed by Google support."
"Real-time synchronization is a good feature."
"It is much more scalable and flexible than everything else in the market."
"It never fails. Sometimes we miss a backup, but there's always a reason for it, and it's not the fault of Commvault. In the last three years, we've never had to open a ticket with Commvault."
"The expanse of the decoys that they have is valuable. They cover everything on the corporate side that you would think of, such as Windows, Linux, and even applications like SAP. They also go into the OT environment and emulate OT devices as well."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"Its stability and deduplication capabilities are most valuable."
"The most valuable features are image backups and file backups."
"Scheduling is valuable. It does a good job of backing up, and it does a good job of restoring. Nobody has got a problem with that. The agents are well supported."
"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."
"The backup and recovery speed is very fast."
"Effective in protecting the virtualization system and end points."
"The entire system operates seamlessly, with minimal hands-on involvement, allowing us to focus on monitoring rather than constant adjustments or deployments, as seen in larger, more dynamic environments."
"The local support could be improved."
"Our main pain point is that some of our hardware is old. For example, the SSD disks for our application database are slow. It's hard to avoid a slowdown in our environment because the size of our backups is growing every year. If you're growing and don't upgrade the environment, you will see slower backups and restores. You must enhance the environment if you are growing."
"The solution is expensive in comparison to similar solutions."
"The pricing could be more flexible in terms of licensing."
"Commvault likes to be ahead of the game when it comes to merging with other platforms, but sometimes it's before they have the solution truly baked in. Office 365 is an example. I feel that my company might be a litmus test for their solution, because we have such a large environment. Some of the promised solutions that we received from Commvault were more like testing solutions. They weren't really validated, meaning they were possibilities. There have been a lot of hot fixes for the solution that we're using right now, more than we expected."
"The initial setup was complex."
"Bare-metal restore needs some work. It's not intuitive and seems to have been an afterthought."
"When you deploy Complete Data Protection for past services, it's more complicated because you cannot directly back up from the previous service host. We have to build a proxy server, like a middleware, to directly access the past database server. It's complex and hard for beginners to figure out."
"The solution could be a bit easier to use in the sense that they need to make it simpler to backup products and restore items."
"The solution used to freeze sometimes while taking a snapshot backup."
"The user interface still needs to have some level of improvement. It could be more user-friendly and intuitive."
"It would be helpful if the product offered more integration potential."
"Avamar cannot back up Nutanix as a virtual solution."
"Avamar is dependent on the hardware. It can't be implemented with ordinary storage. It can only be implemented with an EMC product. We want to have a backup solution that allows us to use independent storage and other hardware. It would be good if they can simplify its technology and make it possible to implement it with another storage. This is probably not possible because Avamar is an EMC product, and EMC would like to sell its own products."
"The solution, in the future, should offer support for mobile."
"The reporting should be improved, as we currently have to use another tool for that purpose."
Commvault Cloud is ranked 3rd in Backup and Recovery with 104 reviews while Dell Avamar is ranked 11th in Backup and Recovery with 81 reviews. Commvault Cloud is rated 8.6, while Dell Avamar is rated 7.6. The top reviewer of Commvault Cloud writes "Provides excellent visibility and helps reduce costs and time". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Dell Avamar writes "Stable, integrates well with other solutions, and has a good price, but its UI needs a refresh". Commvault Cloud is most compared with Veeam Backup & Replication, Rubrik, Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365, Azure Backup and AWS Backup, whereas Dell Avamar is most compared with Dell PowerProtect Data Manager, Veeam Backup & Replication, Dell NetWorker, Dell PowerProtect DP (IDPA) and Cohesity DataProtect. See our Commvault Cloud vs. Dell Avamar report.
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