Cohesity DataProtect Reviews

One of the most valuable features is the restore functionality that they offer.

They are really ahead of the curve concerning development and telling it to the market. We are a partner, and we know that sometimes a certain technology about which they have been telling a broad audience is not really production-ready, or it is in a feature release. There is always a difference between general availability and general deployment. Sometimes, we sell the feature, but it is not in the GA. It is in one of the future versions. That's one thing.

The other thing is that they lack visibility. When talking about backup, the first thing that everybody says is Veeam. If you are talking about the appliance part of the backup market, Rubrik is the first one they're mentioning, but a lot of the Rubrik customers don't know Cohesity.

I would like to see the management of multiple nodes inside a tenant. If you want to manage a Cohesity environment, you either go on a per-node base, and you can hop from one node to the other, or you need to implement their SaaS capability but it always needs an internet connection. We would really like to have some kind of local management entity so that we can see all the Cohesity nodes in a customer environment and manage those nodes centrally. That's something that we would really like, and they are really working on it.

I have been working with them for the past two and a half years.

It is stable.

It is very scalable, and the nice thing is that you can use it in combination. You can use it as a backup solution, but you can also use it as a file system solution with NAS capabilities.

They're really good. A technical support guy can be a co-owner of a case. They are very good at connecting with the customer. The tools they provide to solve problems are very useful.

We also use Commvault. We see Commvault more as the Swiss army knife for backup solutions with a lot of features and functions. When we want to make backup more easy and robust, then we're positioning Cohesity. We see that one part of the market really likes the Commvault features and functionality, but there is another part in the Dutch market that says, "I don't want all that complexity. I just want it set and go," and that's when we're positioning Cohesity.

It is really easy.

It has reasonable pricing, and we know they can give discounts. If you look at the primary pricing or the list pricing, it conforms to the market pricing, but you have to have a discount on it. Otherwise, it is way too expensive.

You have to get the network right. The network stuff is really important for Cohesity, but we see that its implementations are way simpler than, for instance, Commvault implementations. For all the features, follow the documentation. There is a really good setup guide with some fill-in forms that you can use to get all the details you need, and if possible, consult a partner just to know all the functionality that Cohesity is offering. We sometimes see that people buy a Cohesity appliance, and they're just setting it up rudimentary for backup. When we come in and talk to the customer, we say, "Hey, this is also a feature. You can also use this. Have you looked at this part?" So, it is feature-rich, and you need to consult a partner to get to know the product better.

I would rate it a nine out of 10. It is a real robust product.

We were looking to replace our legacy tapes and Veritas Backup Exec. We were tired of spending money on tapes and the time it took to physically handle and transport the tapes as they cycled through the system. We were also looking to do something to get rid of some of our older legacy NetApp devices. In the end, we were looking for a solution with redundancy and support for encryption for data at rest. We were also hoping for something that would enable on-prem storage, but at the same time, give us cloud capabilities down the road when the organization was ready to make that leap.

We were able to eliminate tape backups by utilizing Cohesity to backup our VMs. We then replicated the backup data to a second offsite Cohesity cluster. In the future, we will archive older backups to the cloud as well via Cohesity. We have also been able to utilize Cohesity as a replacement for our older legacy NAS devices  - serving up unstructured data on file shares. This was a major win for us, as it greatly simplified our environment and we saw a substantial increase in speed from our legacy NetApp devices.

The overall ease of implementation and use has been outstanding. Upgrades are easy because of the way that redundancy is built into the Cohesity solution. You simply go to the web-based GUI, download the update, and apply. 

The system automatically takes down the nodes one at a time and performs the upgrade and brings the node back up before proceeding to the next. Upgrades can now be done at any time with a high level of confidence. 

The engineering team also seems to be working hard to constantly add new features. Since we purchased the product, Cohesity added the ability to perform Office 365 backups and AD backups at no additional cost. The features just showed up in the new release, which was great.

There have been a number of improvements since we purchased the product two years ago that has since made it even more attractive to users. Things liked education and training have been a greater focus. Cohesity now offers "Cohesity Academy" for education, and recently launched Cohesity User Groups for people to join other Cohesity users in discussing best practices, use case scenarios, etc.  

In terms of the product itself, there have been a handful of patches that have had to be applied outside of the GUI via the command line. It's very straightforward and easy and in the same redundant fashion, but not quite as simple as one or two clicks. I'm hoping that will decrease going forward.  

I've used the solution for about two years.

The stability is absolutely rock solid. I'm not aware of any issues with file services and the backups have been 100%.  We have not had any file share outage or issues with SMB which is awesome as SMB fileshares were a critical part of decision to purchase Cohesty.

The solution is very scalable. If you want to buy the boxes, this solution will work at the largest of enterprises.

Support has been very good - particularly in the last 6 months. They seem to have grown the support organization as the install base has increased and the quality of the engineers is very good. The remote support functionality in the product makes it very easy for Cohesity staff to diagnose problems and either guide you through the fix or even perform it themselves.

Previously, we used Veritas Backup Exec and LTO tapes. On the storage side, we had legacy Netgear and NetApp NAS devices that Cohesity replaced with a single device.

Cohesity sent a local sales engineer out and in an afternoon we had it racked, networked, and backing up.

Cohesity sent a sales engineer out and it was done in an afternoon. They made the whole process incredibly simple.

It's hard to estimate a dollar value for the peace of mind in knowing that my files and backups are there and they work. In the face of ransomware and other threats, I can roll back in a few clicks. Upgrades are simple and Cohesity has a security focus. I wish we could have made the change years ago.

The costs vary, but the vendors will sometimes work with you depending on your purchase and what time of year it is in order to make deals happen. The Cohesity licensing was pretty straightforward, which was also attractive in that we didn't have to license a whole bunch of features. Everything was bundled together.

We looked at Rubrik, which was pricier and did not offer file services at the time. We also looked at a budget play in Storage Craft but were not sure if the product was going to have enough market support to continue. Also, the features seemed rough compared to Cohesity, which felt more polished and finished.

We have been very happy with the performance and ease of use of the solution. Support has been very good - even as they have grown and scaled up in size.

On-premises

We use the cluster for local backup and restore as well as for sending backups offsite. We make use of the file server capabilities as well. We can spin up test and dev workloads as needed without impacting our production storage. This solution replaced Veeam and ExaGrid.

Backups and restores are much faster and we were able to increase our backup frequency where it made sense to do so in order to have lower RPO. We were also able to move our backup solution off of the fiber channel, which will help with our eventual decommissioning of that portion of our infrastructure.

Instant volume mount and the SpanFS filesystem itself, which has great dedupe and compression across all of our backups. Our admins have been able to run restore jobs with little training, as well. The dashboard makes it easy to see if you have any issues with your backup jobs.

Reporting is one area that isn't as robust as it could be. The next release supposedly improves upon that but I have not seen it yet.

We had real issues with restores on our older Red Hat 5.x systems, but we have upgraded those and no longer need support for that OS. 

We've had our Cohesity cluster in place for more than one year.

We previously used Veeam and ExaGrid. We liked Veeam, but we did not see any innovation out of ExaGrid and they were becoming progressively more expensive. I was wary of vendor lock-in if we continued to invest in that platform. The speed of their solution was just not good enough for us.

I advise others to spin up a Cohesity virtual edition on their infrastructure. We ran backups in parallel for a month to test all features before even bringing in test hardware. Spinning up the virtual edition was quick and painless.

We evaluated Veeam with other back end storage as well as Rubrik. Rubrik looked nice but was more expensive and we felt it was lacking features. It would have been a step up from our tired ExaGrid solution.

I would say that Cohesity seems like they are a very forward looking company. They are adding features with each release and seem to be investing heavily in extending their product. I feel like we will get good value out of our investment.

We are using this solution for the DataProtect feature in our VMware environment. It is also protecting SQL and Exchange 2013 servers.

We have two clusters that replicate to each other; this process is also very fast.

This solution has given us a three-fold performance increase.

The most valuable feature is the instant mass restore of VMs. I am able to restore VMs in a few minutes.

The other great thing is the Google search, as it helps a lot and accelerates the restore process.

Apps are very cool too!!

The Cloud Archives are very easy to configure. We are using AWS Glacier.

Fully hydrated Snapshots give you the ability to do incremental forever.

The GUI is simple and very responsive.

This solution is easy to manage. Just a quick look to the dashboard every morning and that's it. You will spend ten minutes, max, of your day on Cohesity.

Being able to take a backup of OneDrive and Sharepoint in Office 365 would be great. It is in the Roadmap, but we would like to see it in the next release of this solution.

This solution is only compatible with a limited number of storage arrays, including Pure and Cisco Hyperflex.

The cloud management solution needs a little more development.  Now it is really like the same dashboard than the one you are using locally.  They put some AI in the prediction  of when you will be out of space but I would appreciate more AI to discover malware (but is in the road map for version 6.4 I think)  .

We have been using this solution for six months.

This is a stable solution. It is running by itself.

The scalability of this solution is impressive.

Technical support for this solution is excellent.

Our previous solution which was Quest Rapid Recovery. We switched because of the performance, which is three times better with Cohesity.

The initial setup of this solution was very easy.

Implementation took only a few hours and backups begin the same day it has been physically racked.

We were assisted by the vendor team. The knew what they were doing!

In a few hours, the solution was in production.

Prior to choosing this solution, we evaluated Rubrik and Commvault.

The software is running by itself! It was a very great acquisition for us.

Our experience with the Cohesity DataProtect Platform has been overwhelmingly positive as we been able to manage our 500+ VMs and physical servers with only a few backup policies. Backups: VMs are currently being added to jobs automatically through tagging. But, we also manually add VMs to jobs at times as we need to split up the load of VMs to multiple backup jobs. We try to keep a ratio of 15 VMs to 1 job. After getting a Cohesity Agent on a SQL server and syncing it with Cohesity, it is simple to set a backup/retention schedule for Log, Incremental, and Full backups based on policy. We utilize the Cohesity APIs to produce daily reports on jobs that have succeeded, failed, paused, etc. We send an email to our Systems team with this information and log it in a .csv. This allows us to give a timeline to backup auditors as well as let us know when something isn't going right. Restores: We have used Cohesity to restore granular files as well as restore SQL databases. VM's restore to vSphere directly. VM's typically restore quite quickly and work right away as long as they're restored to the original vSphere they came from. Individual files can be searched on multiple VM backups and downloaded locally or placed back on source machine. SQL Databases can be restored to any SQL server instance, not only the original. As long as the SQL versions match. *We have had some luck restoring databases from older SQL versions to newer SQL versions. Support: Cohesity has been very responsive to support requests and resolved issues in a timely manner. They openly assist in filling in knowledge gaps about the application.

Our previous backup solution was unable to be upgraded after several engagements.

I was surprised to see how well the Cohesity appliances performed and how easy the setup was. After a couple of hours, the cluster was up, and we were able to take backup of our VMware infrastructure. After that, I tested a few backups and restores, and everything was running smoothly.

Our previous backup solution was unable to be upgraded after several engagements.

I was surprised to see how well the Cohesity appliances performed and how easy the setup was. After a couple of hours, the cluster was up, and we were able to take backup of our VMware infrastructure. After that, I tested a few backups and restores, and everything was running smoothly.

Reliable backup solution with many options and friendly/logical backup/restore infrastructure.

The product is easy to put in place, all backups are done very quickly, and it's easy to perform restores. What I prefer in the product is its simplicity. No useless settings to define, everything is ready just after the initial setup.

I also had the opportunity to deploy new nodes and upgrade the cluster; everything is well thought and is running very well.

Reliable backup solution with many options and friendly/logical backup/restore infrastructure.

The product is easy to put in place, all backups are done very quickly, and it's easy to perform restores. What I prefer in the product is its simplicity. No useless settings to define, everything is ready just after the initial setup.

I also had the opportunity to deploy new nodes and upgrade the cluster; everything is well thought and is running very well.

Volume Shadow Copies can get very large on SQL servers so be aware of this if OS says a drive has a lot of space but everything else is saying that the drive is out of space. This mostly occurs when the backup job fails, which is very uncommon. We've run into issues where network segmented computers couldn't reach back to Cohesity over 445 and that has caused restores to fail. Split large Database/NAS/Phycial backups into their own backup job so smaller devices can stay on their backup schedules and backup more often. SQL and Physical (Block Level) backups need to have a Cohesity Agent installed (requiring a restart) and they have to be manually added into Cohesity but the process is still pretty simple. Cohesity cluster upgrades have not been as easy as a single button click but a manual process that requires upgrading each node in the cluster individually. The upgrades do go pretty smoothly though.

Less than one year.

We use it in the realm of data protection. We have comprehensive coverage, including backups for all our databases, VMs, file systems, and various auxiliary components.

One of the notable benefits is its user-friendly interface, making it easy to navigate. Additionally, it demonstrates faster performance compared to other vendors.

The recovery process is effective, especially when it comes to other types of data, such as VMs, and overall, the performance is commendable.

We have been facing challenges, particularly with HANA databases. Despite initial promises of delivering an agent within a few months, it has been over two and a half years, and there is still no indication of when the Cohesity agent for HANA systems will be available. The absence of an agent for replicated recovery makes it impractical for our current needs. We are highly dissatisfied with the level of support and functionality provided for HANA within the Cohesity product.

I have been working with it for two and a half years.

The overall stability has been consistent. The only noteworthy concern is related to the HANA aspect, which falls short of expectations. However, in terms of performance and support, there have been no issues.

I would estimate that approximately two hundred users are involved.

The support quality is commendable – upon opening a ticket, a responsive and capable team promptly assists. However, managing cases with a global team working across different time zones can pose challenges in terms of knowledge transfer and handovers between teams. Occasionally, the transition between teams for a specific case doesn't go smoothly, resulting in the need to repeat explanations for each new team member involved. I would rate it seven out of ten.

Neutral

The installation process requires a couple of straightforward connectors to be installed on our servers, and the setup is quite simple. It's a one-time task, and overall, we haven't encountered any issues with the setup.

We conducted a POC with testing and various evaluations, completing it in a couple of months. The deployment spanned across a broad range of systems, including both production and non-production, and we successfully implemented it within three months. This encompassed all our SAP systems, including ECC, BW, and others, up to ADA and earlier versions. Maintenance is necessary, but the majority of patches and updates at the cluster level can be seamlessly handled online.

Despite encountering challenges with HANA, I would recommend moving forward with Cohesity. The observed improvements and overall convenience make it a worthwhile choice. Comparatively, the experience has been preferable to Symantec or other alternatives. It is an evolving product, and we've witnessed substantial enhancements from its initial stages. Overall, I would rate it seven out of ten.

On-premises

We are using Cohesity DataProtect to protect our internal data, specifically on the servers. We are also incorporating some capabilities for SQL and Java.

Its flexibility is the most valuable. Being a cloud version, it has more flexibility, and it allows me to incorporate different workloads and consolidate all the data in one place. It has good high availability, and it is also easy to maintain.

We would like it to have more capabilities for different kinds of PaaS or SaaS services in the Azure cloud, such as Azure SQL or Azure Cosmos DB.

We have been using this solution for less than a year. We got it last year, but we implemented it in our company this year.

It is a very stable product.  We don't have any problem with the solution at the moment.

Its scalability is very good. You just need to add another node. Currently, we have ten users who use this solution, and they belong to the IT group. However, we are using it to protect the data for the whole company in some of the cases.

Their support works very well. From the technical aspect, they are very good. I would rate them a nine out of ten because it is always possible to improve.

It wasn't easy, but it also wasn't complicated. We completed the deployment in two or three months.

It is important to establish beforehand what you are going to use because you need to pay for the license based on your subscription. It is a very good product. We have a good experience in using this product.

I would rate Cohesity DataProtect a nine out of ten.

Hybrid Cloud

We primarily use the solution for VMware Backup and SQL backups that are replicated and copied to the cloud.

They basically can do what Rubrik does. It's a backup device. There aren't necessarily any special features. 

What it does well, it does very well. It just works. 

The initial setup is easy.

It's stable.

The solution scales well.

It's not overly expensive.

Support needs improvement, but the product is fine when well deployed.

I've used the solution for a few months.

This is a solid product. It's quite stable. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable. 

I found the product to be scalable. You just add nodes if you need to. It's a hyper-converged solution, and scaling is easy.

I have not had a good experience with support.

Neutral

I am also familiar with Rubrik.

I've also worked with Commvault and find that you do have to do a lot of fine-tuning with it during implementation. This solution is easier. Commvault is also a lot more expensive. Cohesity has a simpler workflow and for people in operations, it's a blessing. 

The setup process is very straightforward and simple. It doesn't have huge requirements and it is not that complex. 

The pricing is okay. I'd rate it seven out of ten in terms of affordability. How expensive it is depends on how big the contract is. 

I'd advise potential new users to do their due diligence before, know what they want, and get some training.

I would rate the solution eight out of ten.

On-premises