Diego Torres - PeerSpot reviewer
Founder at AT Vault
Reseller
Top 5Leaderboard
Provides efficient availability of servers and administers multiple solutions
Pros and Cons
  • "The product has the best features for scaling up and administering all the solutions from a single platform."
  • "There is room for improvement in the data center application running on the cloud for the platform."

What is our primary use case?

We use Commvault HyperScale X for effective backup, recovery, and archiving of hardware and software solutions.

What is most valuable?

The product has the best features for scaling up and administering all the solutions from a single platform. They provide a duplication database as well.

What needs improvement?

There is room for improvement in the data center application running on the cloud for the platform.

How are customer service and support?

The technical support is good. However, the support company is quite expensive.

Buyer's Guide
Commvault Cloud
May 2024
Learn what your peers think about Commvault Cloud. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: May 2024.
771,063 professionals have used our research since 2012.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

How was the initial setup?

We provide a complete installation for the product. It has medium complexity. One can set it up by reading the documentation. But in many cases, one needs technical support from the vendor or partner.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

In our country, hardware solutions are very expensive. But the product is very competitive for pricing in some countries because it is possible to set up Commvault hardware with other vendors like HP, Lenovo, or SuperMicro using its certification.

What other advice do I have?

The product provides the availability of servers. If one server is down, the other two work in that space. You get all solutions in one product and don't have to worry about the type of server, storage, or switch network you need to buy to set up the backup software.

I rate Commvault HyperScale X a nine out of ten.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
PeerSpot user
PeerSpot user
General Manager of Sales at Ashtech Infotech Pvt Ltd
Real User
Top 20
Helps with cloud and data backup
Pros and Cons
  • "We use the solution for cloud and data backup."
  • "The tool should revise its licensing."

What is our primary use case?

We use the solution for cloud and data backup. 

What is most valuable?

I like the tool's Metalix compatibility and data availability. My customers also enjoy easy licensing and configuration. The tool also offers protection from ransomware. It offers easy integration with the cloud. 

What needs improvement?

The tool should revise its licensing. 

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been working with the solution for five years. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The product is stable and works fine. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The tool is scalable. 

How are customer service and support?

The toll's technical support is good. 

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

How was the initial setup?

The product is easy to setup. We will first understand the customer requirements and then install the latest version of the solution. We need to also setup a backup policy configuration. The product's installation can be handled by a single person. The tool's deployment depends on the customer environment and policies. It can take anywhere between three days to two months for the solution to deploy. 

What other advice do I have?

The tool is a feature-rich product. 

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Integrator
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Commvault Cloud
May 2024
Learn what your peers think about Commvault Cloud. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: May 2024.
771,063 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Systems Administrator Team Leader at a retailer with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Easy to use, good speed performance, and the technical support is strong
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable features are the ease of use, the graphical interface, and it's high speed."
  • "Persistent binding is a feature that I would like to see in the next release of Commvault."

What is our primary use case?

We are using it for backing up all of these services in the full infrastructure.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable features are the ease of use, the graphical interface, and it's high speed.

The GUI is easy to use.

The compression and deduplication ratios are very good.

What needs improvement?

The price could be lower.

When I compare it with Dell EMC Networker, they have a feature called persistent binding, which means that the backup would be going through the fiber channels instead of the network. Commvault relies on the compression and deduplication ratio, although they could also utilize the fiber channels. Persistent binding is a feature that I would like to see in the next release of Commvault.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Commvault for more than one year.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I experienced instability only one time, but it was restored.

It's very stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It's scalable. That's why it's HyperScale.

We have four administrators in our company who are managing the infrastructure. 

How are customer service and technical support?

Technical support is very strong.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

When we made a paradigm shift after moving from the EMC network to Commvault, there is a difference when using both of the products. The other one is powerful but it's more complicated. This one is easier.

How was the initial setup?

It's a Commvault HyperScale model, which is easy to scale.

If you refer back to the manual system, it's straightforward and the architecture is very easy to understand. Implementation is easy.

It's based on a HyperScale with three different nodes running on a RedHat operating system.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The price is not cheap, but when you compare it to the other products they are all almost the same level in terms of price.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

If we compare with other products we can recommend Veeam. 

Veeam and Commvault are almost the same but Commvault made an announcement EMEA and Commvault now have a fully managed product and they have a backup as a service with unlimited storage. 

We are also evaluating Barracuda.

What other advice do I have?

At the moment we are evaluating the additional features in terms of Office 365, backup, and SharePoint to analyze the differences.

Overall, this is a unified solution and it's wonderful.

I would rate Commvault a ten out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
VladanKojanic - PeerSpot reviewer
VladanKojanicProject Manager - Business Consultant at Comtrade System Integration
Real User

In the field of backup applications, there are various solutions. But certainly, Commvault should be ranked at the top of this list. Everything was created “in the house”, they listened to the needs of the clients. What I would emphasize is it is easy to use for users who are not backup administrators and with a single console for all activities.

CTO at Greenware Technologies LLC
Real User
Top 10
Supports most cloud vendors so we can back up cloud-based apps to on-prem and back up on-prem data to the cloud
Pros and Cons
  • "One of the most valuable features is the encryption which helps save you from ransomware. Because the data is already encrypted, it cannot be encrypted again."
  • "It takes a lot of technical expertise to implement. Commvault could increase the training it provides to customers and partners."

What is our primary use case?

We are a partner and a service provider for Commvault in the Middle East. We use it for both backup and recovery, and sometimes for replication. 

It has on-prem solutions and we are also going with Azure.

How has it helped my organization?

Commvault is the first software company to release software for Nutanix AHV backup. We have an implementation here, with a government company, where we are taking a backup of the Nutanix virtual machine and their database, and replicating this backup to the DR. That way, if the main site is down or something has become corrupt or something is wrong with the backup, they are able to restore from the DR backup. It is the largest implementation in the Middle East.

The solution provides us with a single platform to move, manage, and recover data across on-premises, hybrid, and cloud locations, making it very effective. We can replicate the data even when building a new data center for DR. That makes it easier for us because from there we are able to restore using Commvault.

It provides us with a single console where we can back up our software, our databases, and even our desktops and laptops, even if they are connected remotely, at any time and from any place. Whenever the bandwidth is available and whenever the process is available, it will take a backup.

Commvault also supports most of the cloud vendors. We can back up cloud-based applications like Office 365 to on-prem, and we back up our on-prem data to the cloud as well. It can be anywhere, either local or in the cloud.

It helps to minimize the time admins spend on backup tasks. Once it is configured perfectly you can forget about it, in terms of administration. It saves our admins along the lines of 20 weeks per year.

And with Commvault, you don't need multiple applications to back up different kinds of platforms. It can be OpenStack, VMware, Hyper-V, a physical machine, or Oracle. It's a single point for backups.

When it comes to saving on storage we are saving 20 percent. In terms of storage optimization, it is seven times more efficient. You can store 700 TB in about 100 TB of space.

We have helped many clients to recover from ransomware using Commvault. For one of our clients, we were able to get them back into production in one week. That was an environment with 200 servers and 1,400 user backups. Without Commvault it would have taken some months.

What is most valuable?

One of the most valuable features is the encryption which helps save you from ransomware. Because the data is already encrypted, it cannot be encrypted again.

The restore performance is better than with any other product. That's why Commvault is number-one in industry reviews.

With Command Center, you can view the backup schedules, the running backups, and the data availability.

What needs improvement?

It takes a lot of technical expertise to implement. Commvault could increase the training it provides to customers and partners.

Also, with technology changing, it could use more features. Maybe they could include artificial intelligence.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using Commvault since 2015.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability is really good. Once you implement it properly you can forget. It's an automated solution. You don't need to troubleshoot anything.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

As software, it's scalable. You can add any number of licenses as often as you want. Commvault has options to scale using appliances and software.

How are customer service and technical support?

Commvault's technical support is really good. I would rate it at nine out of 10.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We have used Veeam. Commvault is more of an enterprise product. In terms of the scope of integration across multi-cloud/hybrid environments, Veeam is a five out of 10, while Commvault is an eight.

How was the initial setup?

The setup is not straightforward. It is a little complex. It really needs expertise, unlike other software.

The deployment time depends on the size of the environment, the number of servers and the storage size. It has taken us anywhere from one week to three months.

As a result of our experience in setting it up, we have created our own plan for doing so. We do a complete environment study of the client by using a solution survey sheet. That gives us complete visibility into the databases they have, the number of servers, the virtualization platform, and the physical machines. According to that, we suggest a plan for the size, if it is on-prem. We have a project management professional to make the process smoother. We have four engineers who implement Commvault and they are also responsible for maintenance.

What was our ROI?

ROI with Commvault will take about five years. It's cost-efficient when it is used at the enterprise level.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Some years ago, Commvault had a huge price. Now, it is cheaper than Veeam.

It's also available per VM license or per socket or per storage capacity and you can mix licenses. You can have some VM licenses and some socket licenses, for example.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We evaluated NetBackup. Commvault has better encryption technology and restore performance.

What other advice do I have?

Keep on training and select a proper implementation company. That is the most important thing.

Most of our clients are only using Commvault. If they go with Commvault they won't use any other product. It can back up everything: servers, databases, storage snapshots — everything. They don't need other software.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner/service provider.
PeerSpot user
Sr. Network Analyst at a government with 5,001-10,000 employees
Real User
We save significantly on space through deduplication, but a lot of effort is required to keep it running
Pros and Cons
  • "The solution provides us with a single platform to move, manage, and recover our data across on-premise locations. Some of the guys have been using it to move a virtual machine from VMware to the Microsoft solution, Hyper-V. They back it up and then they restore to the different virtual machine provider, and that works great."
  • "Just to keep it running is time-consuming. There are five people on my team. Commvault was supposed to be one of the less time-consuming solutions, but in reality it takes 60 percent of our time just to keep it running, and that's not even fine-tuning it; that's just to keep it running."

What is our primary use case?

We use it to back up NetApp shares, servers, and virtual servers. We also use it for Active Directory and databases. We used to use it to back up Exchange servers, but we're moving that to the cloud. It has a lot of features but we mostly use it to back up and recover stuff.

How has it helped my organization?

I can't really say how Commvault has improved the way our organization functions because, while I know there was use another product in use before Commvault, I came here way after the company started using Commvault. I wasn't in this role during the transition. When I've talked about this with the more senior guys, they say Commvault is supposed to be the best product available at this moment.

In general, it gives people confidence knowing that their data, on their servers and home shares on shared drives, is backed up. It gives our end-users confidence.

And the solution has helped us to optimize infrastructure usage. The deduplication in Commvault is great. We have 90-something percent savings using its deduplication technology. It's awesome. I love that aspect.

What is most valuable?

The solution provides us with a single platform to move, manage, and recover our data across on-premise locations. Some of the guys have been using it to move a virtual machine from VMware to the Microsoft solution, Hyper-V. They back it up and then they restore to the different virtual machine provider, and that works great.

What needs improvement?

We have never managed to use it to full potential because we don't have a dedicated team to take care of Commvault, so we barely keep it running. It takes a lot of our time when we have ten other systems to take care of. That's why I'm not the biggest fan of this. Just to keep it running is time-consuming. There are five people on my team. Commvault was supposed to be one of the less time-consuming solutions, but in reality it takes 60 percent of our time just to keep it running, and that's not even fine-tuning it; that's just to keep it running. It's a pain.

It constantly breaks and then we spend three or four days trying to fix the issue, working with support, going back and forth. When we finally resolve something, another issue pops up. Then we spend another three or four days trying to make it work. I'm not saying it's the product's fault. Maybe we didn't implement it correctly in the first place. I don't know, I wasn't here. But it takes a lot of time, and every issue is different so I cannot build experience. With another system, I know if I do this, this, and this then it breaks, and I know that I have to do this, this, and this to fix it. But every time Commvault breaks, it's something different, so it takes us a lot of time to fix it. It is frustrating.

Another thing I find frustrating is that when it fails and it says something like "Error code 19: etc., etc... Click here for more information," when I click I get an error page. Having the error codes documented in the Commvault Knowledge Base would help us a lot.

When I came to the role, they said, "Oh yeah, you're going to be doing this, this, and this, and maybe a little bit of Commvault. In reality, 60 to 70 percent of my day is just tinkering with Commvault.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using Commvault for about two years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It's not very stable in our environment. Every day there is something weird going on. When we solve the "weird thing of the week," the next day something different goes on.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The issue of scalability isn't applicable to us because we're not trying to just grow, grow, grow. It's not that we're going to have 200 percent growth next year. Our environment is more or less stable. We have 800 servers. Next year we might have 850, but it's not doubling.

Pretty much everything we back up is done via Commvault, except for desktops or laptops.

How are customer service and technical support?

Their follow-up is great. If they send an email saying, "Hey, can you try this and this," if I'm busy with other stuff, the next day they follow up again and again and they harass me. But it's great because my experience with other companies' support is that you have to chase them instead of them chasing you.

Some of Commvault's people are better than others. That's normal. We're humans after all. I only had one case in which I could not agree with the guy, so I had to request another person. But most of the time they're okay or good. Once in a while, you get this really great person, someone who is really awesome. Overall, the support is good.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

There were a couple of guys from Cohesity trying to get business from us. We met with them, but it never went anywhere. We heard what they had to say and it looked cool, it looked promising, but of course they are much smaller than Commvault. We didn't try Cohesity. They only did a demo for us.

It's not easy for us to make those kinds of changes. If we have a contract with Commvault, we can't just say, "Okay, let's forget about this. Let's bring in somebody new." We are government, so we can't just do that. We need to go through a bid process so it's not as easy as in other companies.

What other advice do I have?

My advice is to have a dedicated team for Commvault, if possible. In our team we are dealing with DNS Exchange, antivirus, Active Directory, and Commvault. I feel I'm not successful enough in Commvault because I am always thinking about multiple things. If you really want to be successful with the product and use it to its full potential, a dedicated team just doing Commvault would be great. In reality it might not be easy to do, but if I had a magic wand, I would have two or three people just doing Commvault.

I think it's a great product that we are under-utilizing. The lesson I have learned from using it is that when I think I'm getting a handle on Commvault, when I think I'm learning it, something else happens that shows me that I know nothing about Commvault. It's a good product, but it's just it takes a lot of effort to support it. Sometimes we just don't have the time. When it works fine, it's awesome.

IT has the regular ComCell Console that looks ugly but is full of functionality. And it has another way to manage it called Command Center that is a nice-looking web interface but I find it doesn't have all the functionality, so I stick to the old interface because I can do everything there. I haven't used Command Center often. I don't find it's the best feature because there are some things that I cannot do in there. I got used to using the ComCell Console and have kept on using it.

The fact that the solution is a single platform hasn't really enabled our organization to accelerate growth or drive innovation. We're government, so we are not driven by growth or innovation. We prefer to have stability and reliability. We're not a company that is trying to quickly sell something. We don't care about that. We're not trying to grow; it's actually the opposite: The less impact that government has, the better.

In terms of the solution's breadth and depth of cloud support, we're not using cloud yet. In government, we don't want to have the latest and greatest and the shiniest thing. We have to be very careful. In a private company, somebody just says, "Okay, let's go cloud," and that's it. Next day everybody is in the cloud. But we have to be accountable to taxpayers and we usually have to justify the expense. Decisions are not made that fast, so we are not in the cloud yet.

We have not tried or simulated a disaster recovery scenario. It's something we have to test. We tried once and we killed the network and everybody complained, so we had to stop it. We have recovered the files here and there when people say, "Oops, I just deleted this file. Can you recover it?" But a whole disaster recovery is something we have never done, and I hope we never have to.

There are five administrators of it in our organization while a couple of more use it to move VMs from one place to another. There are three more on the SAP team who use it to push backups to us, and three more from the DBAs. We don't back up laptops or desktops. Our end-users don't have access to this, nor do our other IT teams such as the applications programmers. They have to come to us to restore something.

It works fine when it works. It's a good product but it takes a lot of effort to support it. I don't know if it's because we didn't implement it correctly or if it's our infrastructure or the product, but that's my general impression.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
Presales Technical Consultant at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Reseller
Keeps our customers safe from ransomware, and coverage includes every type of data center environment
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable feature is Commvault's coverage. It has wide coverage to back up every data center environment. The product can back up OpenStack, OpenShift, and competitive solutions don't have this feature. Commvault can handle backing up any virtual workload or enterprise application."
  • "Commvault has two management dashboards. The first is the CommCell Console, which is Java-based, and the second is Command Center. We don't always find all the features we need in the Command Center and we need to go through the Java console, and sometimes features are only on the Java console."

What is our primary use case?

My company is the official distributor of Commvault in Indonesia. Our job is to implement it for our customers and I have installed it for a number of customers. They have various environments: Some are on-premises and some have a cloud environment, and some are using both as a hybrid solution, where they back up from on-premises to the cloud.

We have a Commvault instance within our company as well, and we use it for demos and to back up our environment, such as our VMware database, to the local data center. And we also back up to the cloud.

How has it helped my organization?

Commvault is very helpful to our customers and to our company because ransomware is a nightmare for any business. In some cases, our customers have been running their businesses online and they have experienced a ransomware attack. With Commvault they have been able to resolve the problem by restoring the data from Commvault.

Also, Commvault has an internal snapshot feature that we can use. That reduces the time involved by 10 times, compared to not using this feature.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature is Commvault's coverage. It has wide coverage to back up every data center environment. The product can back up OpenStack, OpenShift, and competitive solutions don't have this feature. Commvault can handle backing up any virtual workload or enterprise application.

The solution provides us with a single platform to move, manage, and recover data across on-premises, hybrid, and cloud locations. This is pretty important because our customers have unique architectures. Some only have an on-prem data center, and some only have things on the cloud, while in some cases our customers have both. In the latter case they have data on-premises, but they will also use the cloud for DR. Commvault makes it very simple, with its single management for backup of all environments. This is one of the things that makes it a very useful backup solution. We don't need to go with a different cloud backup solution. We can leverage one solution to back up all the environments.

Another strong feature of Commvault is that we can recover something to another platform. If we backup VMware, we can restore it to, say, Nutanix, or to AWS. This feature helps our customers to move a data center or from on-prem to the cloud. It is a very useful feature.

In addition, Commvault isn't locked in to one storage brand, like Hitachi or Pure Storage. This makes it a very good choice, allowing us to leverage any brand to be used as the backup storage.

What needs improvement?

The user interface is complicated for users, but for an engineer or backup operator, it is useful. Still, sometimes users feel that the management dashboard is complicated because they see all the features in the one dashboard. Sometimes users need a simple dashboard to manage the whole environment.

Commvault has two management dashboards. The first is the CommCell Console, which is Java-based, and the second is Command Center. We don't always find all the features we need in the Command Center and we need to go through the Java console, and sometimes features are only on the Java console. Sometimes we don't see what we need on both consoles. For example, we have to use Command Center to back up Oracle EBS, because it's not on the Java console. It would be useful if we had all the configuration features for setting things up in the Command Center, rather than having to go to the CommCell Console.

Also, sometimes, when restoring across platforms, we need more documentation from Commvault.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using the Commvault solution for between three and four years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The product is stable for backing up any kind of environment. But sometimes there's a problem with the deduplication. Sometimes the deduplication database is offline.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability is different between software and an appliance. If we use an appliance it is simple to scale because we just add more nodes to expand the storage, the compute, or the backup performance. If we use software, we may need to do some manual setup. Adding more media agents can be complex, involving more configuration. Also, you don't have high availability with a software environment. You only get that with an appliance.

How are customer service and support?

Technical support is very helpful. We just open the customer portal to open a case and the support is pretty good from Commvault.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

How was the initial setup?

It is very easy for us to follow the documentation to integrate Commvault and the storage network. Setting it up is very easy because the product runs on Windows. We just follow the documentation, making it pretty easy. We don't have to use the command line to set it up. It usually takes one and a half to two hours to deploy this product.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Some of our customers say that Commvault is a very expensive solution, but Commvault has many features that the competitors don't have. It is not a good choice for a small or medium business, but it is a good choice for enterprise businesses.

We have a backup storage sizer, so we know the amount of storage needed. If the backup storage is too large, we can resize the policy and size the backup volumes and adjust the licensing scheme.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

I have used other products like Veritas and Rubrik. Commvault is better than the others because it has fast research and development. There are features available with Commvault that the competitors don't have. But Rubrik is very simple when it comes to management, compared to Commvault.

What other advice do I have?

Overall, Commvault has a strong solution with strong features. The problem with it is the management consoles. We need both of them to operate the product. Also, sometimes the pricing is an issue as it can be very expensive compared to other solutions.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Distributor
PeerSpot user
Engineer at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
Real User
It helps us get to the point where we have a complete picture of the environment
Pros and Cons
  • "Commvault's Command Center is one of the best solutions out there. You can rely on Commvault solutions for the most complex and most demanding environments."
  • "Commvault is complex even if the product has comprehensive solutions and covers pretty much every technology out there. There's no unified way to manage all of the products on one single console."

What is our primary use case?

Most of our clients have an on-premise environment. They are traditional environments, but they are slowly starting to use the cloud for IT solutions and services. Lately, we've been shifting some workloads to the cloud and using the product there. It's been a slow transition, but we are doing it. We are partners in the Latin American region, so we are trying to find the best fit for every customer and recommend different backup solutions depending on the client. Some are easier to install but lack certain features. 

Commvault has a large customer base in the enterprise segment, so it provides a complete recovery solution for our largest clients. That's the way we use the product. We focus on enterprise solutions in large companies in Columbia and the South American and Latin American region. Commvault has a strong track record protecting the integrity of workloads, and it has many different features needed in the corporate environment. We have various technologies that need to be backed up and protected. In that sense, Commvault is a comprehensive solution.

No other vendor has such a wide range of solutions, including traditional on-premises workloads, cyber cloud members, and cloud links. All of those features are comprehensive enough to be considered for the largest client. 

How has it helped my organization?

The ability to manage and recover data across platforms and deployments is what we look for in a solution. Technologies are getting more complex all the time. We're seeing the emergence of different technology, including support for containers and various cloud services. These new technologies pose challenges for the backup environment. 

In the past, we only needed to back up specific databases and certain network tasks. The data is much more extended, and the interactions among different technologies and services are more complicated, so data protection is more complex. So, in this context, it's vital for a product to offer that kind of experience for us. I think that it's what the customers are looking for in this ever-growing and ever-complex environment.

One of the critical strategies to deal with risk is having an air-gapped copy of the data. In that context, tech solutions and object storage solutions help us to cope with that. So in that sense, Commvault is not different from any other solution that already offers those kinds of air-gapped copies. It helps manage a lot of different storage media and mix up all the storage media that we have so the cost of data matches the cost of the storage solution we are using. It makes no sense to store completely cold data in fast media. That is costly. Commvault has a wide range of support for storage solutions. It comes down to planning. You have to plan where you're going to put every inch of data. Then you're going to put it in the best layer possible depending on whether the information is cold or hot.

What is most valuable?

Commvault's Command Center is one of the best solutions out there. You can rely on Commvault solutions for the most complex and most demanding environments. It can meet the requirements of many Fortune 500 companies. It's great for companies that need a robust solution flexible enough to cope with all kinds of environments and technologies. 

Commvault offers broad coverage by helping us identify unprotected workloads. It helps us get to the point where we have a complete picture of the environment. I think that's a pretty good feature, and it allows us to have a good overview of our protection environment and what workloads are protected and which are not. It's one of the essentials out there for that. 

When it comes to recovery, Commvault is undeniably one of the best technologies out there. It's got all the different granularity levels that a business requires to get your information back to production. For example, we have their commission discovery, individual items recovery, mailbox recovery, databases, and different tables. Some databases can be recovered individually. This level of granularity enables us to get the most value out of the product.

What needs improvement?

Commvault is complex even if the product has comprehensive solutions and covers pretty much every technology out there. There's no unified way to manage all of the products on one single console. There are different things that you need to look for to have comprehensive management of the whole environment. I think that's not one of Commvault's strong suits. 

Also, even though I think the user interface might improve the manageability of the solution, it can be complex in some cases. You need a lot of experience and different touchpoints to get through environmental management, and it's not a comprehensive or unified solution for that. 

Commvault is also a solution that requires a lot of time. It demands a lot of time from administrators and requires an administrator to manage it almost full-time. But in this case, it's not a hindrance. While it isn't the easiest product to use, it's one of the most likable ones. It offers a lot of different options and the breadth of support that it has. I think it's just a compromise that you make. In this case, you get flexibility, great support, and a high-quality product, but you lose some in terms of administration. 

For how long have I used the solution?

We've been using Commvault for about five years now. When we started, we were just customers, but now we are Commvault managers and consultants. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It's a completely stable solution. We haven't had any problems with the software that make implementation a problem or prevent us from using the product effectively.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Commvault's scalability is unmatched. Very few competitors have the scalability that Commvault offers. IBM and Veritas might come close, but there are no other solutions that can grow to accommodate enormous environments. So we have to rethink or mix up different backup solutions and technologies. With Commvault, you can do it for either large environments or medium-sized environments as well.

How are customer service and support?

I rate Commvault support 10 out of 10. The members of the support team are knowledgeable. They know their product well and are eager to help. Overall, it's a great customer experience. It's a deciding factor that makes customers and clients renew their licenses in a few years. You can buy a product, but you're only going to stay with it because of its quality and customer support. The support is outstanding in this case.

We've mainly contacted support to get best practices, implementation recommendations, and suggestions about operating the product. But we haven't faced any challenging problems that we couldn't tackle. The documentation has been pretty solid, too. 

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

How was the initial setup?

Early in the process, it takes a long time to get things right and make things do what they are supposed to do based on best practices. Sometimes it takes a lot of time to do it, but it's ultimately worth it. If you put in a few more weeks to get the product implemented properly, it's going to pay off down the road. You'll see some cost savings and it will save you some effort in the future. So I think it's best to do an excellent job at first.

What was our ROI?

The savings we've realized from deploying Commvault could be around $100,000 to $300,000, including storage space, rack space, and energy charges. That's a total cost of ownership analysis.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Sometimes Commvault can be costly. On the other hand, you need to consider other use cases, verticals, and segments in the market, not just the price. But I think that those are the disadvantages of the factory features that have some room for improvement. The product is excellent.

The cost of implementing or supporting Commvault can be high. You need to pay attention to the licensing. It's imperative to do careful planning regarding the workflows you will support, and which kinds of solutions or vehicles you're going to deploy because there could be some surprises down the road. 

I think that's one of the main weaknesses of the product: it might be costlier than the competition. Of course, it's not always the case, but sometimes it could be pricier than the competition. That can sometimes be a barrier to implementing the product in certain regions and specific verticals or certain kinds of customers that are very cost-sensitive. Lowering the price is essential for Commvault to gain traction in other segments, and we have traditional companies reducing their prices. It would be good to see them more in an FNB environment, but the costs are too high for some customers.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We were looking for a solution with a breadth of support for heterogeneous workloads, so we considered solutions from different vendors, like IBM and Veritas. We also have a good relationship with IBM, but we thought their solution was somewhat archaic. It didn't have support for the latest technologies and platforms like Commvault.

Using the traditional client-server, those solutions couldn't match the amount of support Commvault offers. It was the perfect match for what we were looking for. One of the key features that led us to Commvault was its elasticity. It gives us the flexibility to run different workloads on the cloud or on-premise and to have them all protected within one technological stack. We're confident in the product because it's a comprehensive solution covering old-fashioned technologies and the newer ones. Every month there is new support for new features and new workloads. We're consistently surprised at the rate of innovation and the support that Commvault is putting into the product.

What other advice do I have?

I rate Commvault nine out of 10. One recommendation I have for people considering Commvault is to explore all of the features the product offers. It has many features that aren't explored because of a lack of time or knowledge. I would invite all prospective customers to evaluate the whole breadth of functionality and suggest that they seek the assistance of a qualified implementation team. Do careful planning before implementing the product.

Isolating and segmenting storage targets from public networks to mitigate lateral moving threats can be difficult with Commvault. It takes thorough and detailed planning. You need to have careful planning before taking on implementation efforts. It's crucial to carefully consider where you're going to deploy and how you're going to divide the various segments of the product into different solutions so that you can comply with your business requirements.

Commvault might be challenging to deploy sometimes, and you need knowledgeable people to operate it. That doesn't mean it's going to be a failure. When the people are prepared and have skilled implementers, the product is a success from every point of view. So you have to be careful.

On balance, it is the most comprehensive solution in the market, with the ability to handle all kinds of applications, databases, and virtual workloads. Commvault's portfolio has a great breadth and depth in terms of quantity and quality of supported solutions. For example, Commvault is now supported on the cloud. The ability to mail snapshots back is one of Commvault, which has protection for all those workloads. Some of the competitors have just started to gain traction in this area, but Commvault has been doing it for several years.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner & Reseller
PeerSpot user
Consultant at a integrator with 5,001-10,000 employees
Real User
A stable backup solution with an abundance of features
Pros and Cons
  • "Commvault's many features can be explored to get more value from more solutions."

    What is our primary use case?

    We prefer Commvault because they are backup agents who have a vision about what we can do with applicable backup solutions. I have one solution with five local backups and remote backups between the five. First-line core backup and synthetic full backup for applications. These are our policies and logic to access the files and take over or restore files.

    What is most valuable?

    The main differentiator here is that Commvault has many features. You'll have to explore these features to gain knowledge about them, or you wouldn't know it's there.

    Commvault's many features can be explored to get more value from more solutions.

    What needs improvement?

    The implementation is very difficult and should be improved and made easier. There are many features to explore to create more value from more solutions.

    We want to do a course and explore the possibility of obtaining certification. This will help us gain a more comprehensive understanding to create solutions more efficiently. The most important thing for me is to have more courses and more possibilities to receive online certifications.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    I have been using Commvault for a few weeks.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    Commvault is stable but more difficult to understand without the technical specifications.

    How was the initial setup?

    The initial setup is complex. I tested Commvault, investigated options, and checked that I had the right conditions to install. It took a lot of effort and two people to install it. It took us about two months to install Commvault.

    I used documentation provided by Commvault and visited some forms, but I mainly used documentation from Commvault.

    What about the implementation team?

    Another IT professional and I installed it in-house. We did it by following the documentation step by step, and some steps were more difficult than others.

    What other advice do I have?

    I would recommend Commvault to potential users. I'm satisfied with this solution.

    On a scale from one to ten, I would give Commvault a ten.

    Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

    On-premises
    Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
    PeerSpot user
    Buyer's Guide
    Download our free Commvault Cloud Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
    Updated: May 2024
    Buyer's Guide
    Download our free Commvault Cloud Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.