We compared Cohesity DataProtect and Dell Avamar based on user reviews in five categories. We reviewed all of the data and you can find the conclusion below.
Features: Cohesity DataProtect offers instant recovery and built-in integration with Office 365 and Active Directory. Dell Avamar earns acclaim for its scalability, data compression capabilities, swift incremental backups, and seamless integration with Data Domain and VM stacks. Cohesity DataProtect users have suggested enhancements to its user interface, rollback methodology, and cloud data recovery. Other pain points include file server capacity and legacy platform support. 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: The customer service experiences for Cohesity DataProtect have been mostly positive, but some say the quality of Cohesity's support may differ depending on the region. 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.
Ease of Deployment: Most users consider the setup process for Cohesity DataProtect to be easy, although a few found it more complex than other products. 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: Cohesity's pricing is higher than its competitors, although some customers consider it affordable. Dell Avamar’s pricing is generally seen as reasonable, but some users think it is expensive.
ROI: Cohesity DataProtect provides security against ransomware and efficient file retrieval. Dell Avamar provides cost savings through data reduction, deduplication, and compression.
Comparison Results: Cohesity is regarded as an affordable solution that offers instant recovery and superior ransomware protection. However, users say its customer service is inconsistent across regions, and its rollback methodology has room for improvement. 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 most valuable feature is ease of use."
"The spin-up of a VM within a test environment for backup testing along with quick restores."
"The most valuable features of Cohesity DataProtect are SpanFS and the handling of hybrid workloads."
"We are happy with the support provided by Cohesity for the issues we've come across."
"Cohesity DataProtect is user-friendly and straightforward. The setup process was effortless, and both the backup and restore operations are speedy."
"Cohesity has very simple reports to help you stay in the know of which servers are being backed up or not."
"We like that we can use production data to run intensive reports that would otherwise bog down the production server."
"Converged system. It makes much more sense to have the backup server running on the same hardware as the storage for backup and recovery."
"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."
"Centralization is Avamar's biggest advantage. It moves data to a central location from various geographical locations."
"For the on-prem backup, it has all the necessary features that we require. They keep coming up with new scripts and new updates."
"The solution integrates well with Unix, Windows, Hyper-V and VM."
"The installation process is pretty straightforward."
"Graphically, it's very user interactive. It's got a very nice interface."
"The most valuable feature is the integration with Data Domain and your VM stacks."
"The performance of Dell EMC Avamar is good."
"I think Cohesity could add more platform support. For example, they could improve integration with DB2 or make the integration S3 object storage a little tighter. Some of that stuff could use some work, but overall, it's a relatively comprehensive platform."
"A little more documentation on standard faults would help, as new features are being released quite often."
"The support team sometimes takes a long time to resolve issues, although, in our experience, these have been specific things like SQL blobs."
"The product is still young and is continually improving. There have been a couple of buggy releases in the software that have caused us minor issues, so possibly some better QA before releasing would prove to be useful. We have also been inquiring about new app and functionality via the Marketplace that was teased months back but has yet to come to fruition."
"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."
"The solution's dashboard or UI can be enhanced and made more user-friendly than its competitors."
"We have had our share of minor bugs over the past two years and a few bigger ones."
"We aren't missing any features. In terms of the solution overall, it's so far so good."
"Some customers need to back up to tape, but Avamar lacks support, so it costs a lot."
"It's an expensive solution."
"What would make Dell Avamar better is if it can do faster backups because right now, PowerProtect Data Manager is better in this area with its new UI and a new way to implement backups. Customers nowadays also expect more up-to-date solutions, and this is another area for improvement in Dell Avamar. It's not as up-to-date, so I'm counting on PowerProtect Data Manager, but customers who have Dell Avamar don't want to switch because you don't have as many backup problems in Dell Avamar compared to other solutions. What I'd like to see in the next release of Dell Avamar is an updated UI and a different way to manage backups because currently, backup management is a bit heavy for customers using Dell Avamar."
"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 management of this solution is a little bit difficult for IT administrators. They have to be trained before going through the system."
"More integration would be helpful, as well as the addition of more applications."
"Dell EMC Avamar is a very complex product. It took a lot of time for the IT admins to get trained on how to use it. It is not very user-friendly, and we won't be using Avamar anymore. It needs a lot of improvement in terms of how the backups have been configured, and the reporting is too complex."
"The screen design is a bit back-dated."
Cohesity DataProtect is ranked 8th in Backup and Recovery with 67 reviews while Dell Avamar is ranked 12th in Backup and Recovery with 81 reviews. Cohesity DataProtect is rated 9.0, while Dell Avamar is rated 7.6. The top reviewer of Cohesity DataProtect writes "Easy to use, offers good scalability and responsive support ". 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". Cohesity DataProtect is most compared with Rubrik, Veeam Backup & Replication, Commvault Cloud, Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) and ExaGrid Tiered Backup Storage, whereas Dell Avamar is most compared with Dell PowerProtect Data Manager, Veeam Backup & Replication, Dell NetWorker, Dell PowerProtect DP (IDPA) and Azure Backup. See our Cohesity DataProtect vs. Dell Avamar report.
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