Commvault Cloud Reviews

I've been here for 37 years and I've seen all the data challenges there are. The Centers for Disease Control consists of multiple centers that are all under one umbrella of CDC, but each center has its own budget, its own IT, and its own data collection. They were all disparate and they could not be put under one system where we could protect all of them. Everybody had their own protection. Everybody had their own little silos.

Around the time we brought in Commvault, our challenge was to bring those silos together where one larger team could diversify into specific areas. For example, disaster recovery was a whole team of people. That's all they did and they specialized in it. We could develop SMEs in each area of IT, such as disaster recovery, database, and hardware configuration. We had to attempt to bring all these silos together. There's resistance to that to this day, because everybody thinks that they're special and the other people don't matter. Our challenge was centralization at that point. Each area had its own way of backing up and several of them had Commvault already, but it was at that point that we settled on Commvault as our backup solution.

Before Commvault, virus infection was our big problem. If a virus got fished into a system, recovery was disastrous.

Currently, our use case is disaster recovery, pure and simple, including everything from a file restore to a complete system restore.

It is on-premises and also hosted in the cloud. 

We've had problems in the past where a storage person made an error and actually deleted a large chunk of storage, and we recovered it with Commvault. If we had lost that storage, it would have been a catastrophic loss of scientific data. The value of that is incalculable.

In addition, when we're applying for authority to operate, compliance requires that certain things just have to be backed up. That's a requirement of any system that we allow on our network. It has to be recovery-protected in some way, in the event of an error or a tragedy or an attack.

What is most valuable to me are the search features, where you can search through large backup data sets and find what you're looking for. Our data sets are so big that we're over the petabyte mark. To find a specific file for a specific user out of 10,000 users is a challenge. Sometimes the user doesn't know the file path. If we can glean from them a general description of where it might be, the search feature comes in very handy to actually locate it and restore it for them.

If you compare Commvault's user interface for managing on-prem, cloud, or multi-cloud environments in one place with some of the newer stuff that's coming out, it may seem to be a little too complex. But it's so powerful that I don't think the newer stuff competes with it that well.

And Command Center is helpful for reporting to upper management because they want to know the total figures, like how much we are protecting. They want to know the value of what we're doing compared to the cost of it. With Command Center we can tell them, "Look, we're doing this much and we've had this many restores." I have to do monthly reports to upper management on how successful we are at protection.

The solution also supports a broad coverage of workloads, absolutely. We use the VSA backups which means we don't have to have a client on each server. That, in itself, reduces a lot of the complexity. The broad coverage also means that we don't need as many personnel to administer things. It also helps with productivity. We're able to meet our SLAs for restores much better than we would otherwise.

The main area for improvement is that we sometimes experience negative effects from their updates. If they had a larger test area for their updates, that would help. I'm sure that they test, but our environment is probably 1,000 times bigger than their test environment. There are way more complexities in our environment, things that their updates overlook, and that causes a ripple effect of errors.

I've been using Commvault for about 15 years.

As long as everything functions in our environment, Commvault is very stable, but that's not the case. There are always ripples in the environment and sometimes those ripples can cause dramatic effects in Commvault, such as corrupting DDBs.

It's plenty scalable. That's one of the main reasons that we use Commvault. It gives us scalability and versatility across multiple storage platforms.

Their technical support is excellent. Any issues that we've had have been resolved.

At the time we chose Commvault, it was the best, according to our evaluation. There were three main options: NetApp, Commvault, and one other. There wasn't a lot of competition in that area for enterprise-level organizations.

The initial setup was a long time ago and I don't even know if I was involved in it. My lead engineer was involved in it. I was just an overseer at that point and just moving into that position. 

But I do know there have been a lot of complexities in upgrades from one version to the next. Sometimes we skip a version and go from nine to 11, for example, and there is complexity in that, or there has been in the past.

We had direct support from Commvault.

When it comes to ROI, Commvault is like the return on investment with insurance. When you need it, you see it. But if things are going smoothly you don't see it. However, it has to be there. My favorite saying is, "People really don't care about backups. They only care about restores."

One of the most interesting aspects is that the licensing model can be modified. We're paying for our licensing by the client, as opposed to the size of the footprint of the backup, which decreased our cost by about 20 percent.

There are multiple costs involved. We have the hardware, the tape drives, and the storage that our backup targets use. We use non-recommended storage, which is not as robust as what Commvault recommends, but we're able to make it work. That saves a lot of money on storage and its maintenance.

I've looked at other solutions but to scale them requires multiple devices, dedicated appliances. In our environment, everything has to be security-scanned and remediated on a monthly basis. The more devices we have, the more complex it gets to do that.

If you're a smaller-sized entity, Commvault may be a little bit more than what you need. You get what you pay for. Commvault's scalability and granularity are excellent for a large enterprise, but for a smaller one, some of the alternatives are probably more cost-effective. In this context, a large enterprise is one with storage in the petabyte range. That's where Commvault shines.

Our Commvault partner is KELYN Technologies. They're a very professional support service, as an intermediary between us and Commvault, so that we get really professional and timely support. We even bring them in on our proofs of concept. As new technologies develop, we have to prove that we can back them up or support and protect them. Having their engineers available to help us work through those issues is very valuable. Anything that they can't solve, they escalate directly to Commvault for us. That way, we don't have to be in that exchange with Commvault. If we're doing a proof of concept and get to an area where we just don't know how to deal with it, they go off, find out, and come back and say, "Okay, now we know how to deal with it."

And while my staff was mostly pre-trained on Commvault, as new developments and new enhancements come out, KELYN is right on top of them.

The value, for us, of KELYN comes from the following:

1. We have a reduced licensing cost.
2. We have more granular access to engineers to assist with new technology, new concepts. 
3. And sometimes we'll change our methods due to a new enhancement and they're invaluable in getting those things set up and working correctly.

Back in July 2021, we migrated to Office 365. I am in the process of migrating users' mailboxes from on-prem to Office 365 in the cloud. In the initial design, there was no backup solution. Whereas, we back up all mailboxes twice a day onsite. I raised it with Senior Management that we need a backup solution for users' mailboxes. 

Via Metallic, we are backing up Exchange mailboxes in Office 365, OneDrive, SharePoint, and Teams. Our presence for OneDrive and SharePoint is very minimal because we are still in the project phase. We have already migrated 100 mailboxes out to the cloud and further migration of another 600 users. We are in the process of scheduling that. 

They gave us the option of where to store data. We chose UK data stores, which is called Storage U.K. South. It is really flexible. The best thing is that Metallic followed the model for Office 365. It is the same model, so we pay only for user mailboxes. We do not pay for shared mailboxes, which is really good. We don't have to buy four terabytes of space or anything. We are paying at a level of 750 users mailboxes to be back up and shared mailbox is free. More than 750 users and the price will reduce. 

The backup runs automatically every eight hours. Therefore, there are three backups in a day. So far, we have never seen where the backups have over run. As far I am concerned, it is very good product, simple to restore and I would highly recommend it. 

From the technical point of view, we have delta backups. Once a mailbox is migrated to Office 365, whatever the size is, it gets a backup fully once. After that, only delta changes get backed up. This is a really good solution because you don't use a lot of bandwidth since you are only changing deltas. There are no restore charges.

So far, for anything that gets backed up, it is good.

Restoring is very fast. In testing, I did a restore for a single item from a mailbox. Within a minute, I had the message back in my mailbox. So, it didn't take hours or days. Obviously, there will be a limit. If we suddenly go into DR and have to restore five terabytes of emails for people, then it will take a couple of days, which would be acceptable. For general usage, where we have to do the odd restore, we have never had issues. It happens within minutes.

It does back up Azure AD. This is a feature that we really haven't used. We have not had any issues with users or a group to run a restore. The option is there and if required the Azure AD Group object can be restored. I am sure if I tick on it, then it will restore that option back into Azure AD. This is an extra bonus that we got for free.

I am a consultant. Therefore, I have assessed the product, recommended it, and implemented it. I then hand it over to the BAU guys for the normal business day-to-day, as I work on projects. They do a Daily check. Unless in the last four weeks something has changed, we get four emails. One for each product: Exchange, OneDrive, SharePoint, and Teams. So, we are getting four backup reports. 

It would be nice to have just one email report come in, then we can filter out failures. If everything is backed up, we really don't need to see the report. If it is in a single report. A simpler customised report would be good.  

In the roadmap, they have something around reporting. They are aware that they need to improve it. It might already be there or we haven't set it up. However, in the last four weeks, which was the last time that we checked, we didn't see anything different.

We set up the solution in November 2021. So, by November 2021, we were fully up and running.

The stability is perfect. Whenever I log in, it logs in. When I click on something, it loads up. So, I haven't seen any issues.

Sometimes, some dashboards take a bit of time to load but they have to go back and do queries, which is normal. It is your bandwidth and your Internet. When 700 users are logged onto our site, then our Internet will be a bit slower. When compared with our other products or anything else that I have used, the solution is sleek, fast, and smooth with no issues.

We haven't been involved in any scalability. We just have a simple backup for our four products, and that's it. I am sure it is scalable since I can see in their dashboard that they use Dynamics 365, Salesforce, and do endpoints. However, we do not use any of those products.

The project has been handed over to a BAU (business as usual), which is a team of two server engineers who work with it. One of the engineer's jobs is to check the backups daily. That involves checking the Metallic backups. We set up an daily email, which they receive and can confirm the backup has run. Rather than log into a dashboard, look at figures. or go around looking for information, it is on their fingertips in the morning. It takes one minute and their job is done.

We work through another partner for support. We work through them, and if they can't resolve anything, then it is escalated to Commvault directly.

Metallic support is direct. I have raised one ticket. One of my OneDrive folders was not backing up, so I raised a question. Before even half the day was gone, the problem was resolved.

I would rate them as a nine out of 10. I didn't get a very clear answer on exactly what they did to resolve the issue. I know they took the issue onboard and resolved it in a reasonable time, but it wasn't detailed technically enough for me about what was the actual issue. Why did it not back up those two folders in One Drive?

Positive

We reached out to our partners, COOLSPIRiT, who engaged with Metallic and we setup a Demo. We all liked it because the solution is just simple.

We have Commvault for onsite backups. Commvault is used for on-prem mailbox backups, whereas Metallic is used for cloud backups of Office 365. We moved to Metallic as a SaaS backup solution.

The initial setup was easy.

COOLSPIRiT is our partner, so they set up the session with Metallic.

We had a Metallic consultant. He went through it step by step. I wanted to keep the control, because if I gave him the control, I literally would have put my feet up on the desk. There was not a lot to do. There was just the connectivity with Azure AD. The consultant does this day in, day out, so he just whizzed through it.

We had less than an hour-long session. If I wasn't slow with the mouse, we would have been done in half an hour. He was letting me drive and understand as he was explaining. We didn't even do the full hour session.

The Metallic consultant was nice and friendly. He explained what and why he was doing something. He also explained what our prerequisites are.

The prerequisites are very simple. You just need a O365 global admin account. Later on, it was removed. It is just for the initial Metallic and Azure AD connectivity.

Metallic has reduced the amount of manual work that we require to manage our backup operations. It is set and forget. It is actually one of those things. Usually when you set up a backup system, you need to sometimes work on it, do your daily checks, etc. Now, this solution is just set and forget. You receive a report telling you, "You are backed up."

Every day, if you do a daily check of backups, that could take anywhere from half an hour to an hour. So, it is probably saving us at least five hours a week.

If needed, we have Commvault on-prem backup solution for Exchange. Now, that has gone to the cloud. The good thing is we don't have to pay for bandwidth and hardware. We don't pay for licensing, operating systems, updating those systems, and having a team for it. Comparatively, there is a cost savings. 

We like that there is no extra cost for SharePoint, Teams, or OneDrive. It is all mimicking Microsoft's model. Every user has one terabyte of space. When users start using OneDrive, everybody has one terabyte that will be backed up included in the price.

We didn't actually physically evaluate another solution. Our biggest concern was that if we selected something like Veeam, Veritas Backup, or another backup company out there, we would then have had to change our backup systems since we are running Commvault. We wanted something similar to the Commvault product, or something they would recommend in their solution, as we are not ready to change from Commvault and go to another backup vendor's solution.

Close your eyes and just go for it. it just works. I would highly recommend it.

I would rate the solution as 10 out of 10. I love criticising companies to find some fault or try to break the solution. That is what I was trying to do during testing. However, I couldn't pick up anything apart from reporting, where there is room for improvement. I am sure they can come up with something better for the reporting.

Our primary use case is for Office 365 Backup. We started out as an Exchange Online only company. Then we were looking for some sort of backup solution to augment the existing Microsoft Office 365 archiving features for a price that was more compatible with our company versus what Microsoft was offering for their archiving solution. We also needed the ability to do time and date stamp retrievals. We ended up settling on Commvault at that time. We've been with them, and we've seen it more from being in the Commvault virtualized infrastructure to being the Metallic.io SaaS solution.

We protect mostly Exchange Online, but really we do the whole breadth of Office 365 with them. We were looking at some other solutions, but with them, we're doing our entire Office 365 Microsoft Online platform.

It has helped my organization because we don't have to have tapes. We're not paying for tapes, storage tapes, or storage ourselves. It's definitely a bonus. We're more efficient in all of our backups for Office 365 because it is in a single pane of glass. If we were to integrate Commvault on-premise, we'd be able to use the same pane of glass to manage both on-prem and cloud solutions. It's taken our backup from being a full-time job to being when you need it, set it up. Our users could be empowered to access their own data backups. Which means we can alleviate a lot of the administration from the backup administrator.

It has significantly reduced the amount of manual work required to manage our backup operations. We're going from an on-prem to a non-on-prem, we're all doing nonsolutions. So we really can't compare it against anything else.

The way we look at it is that before, we used to manage a separate backup solution for our on-prem environment. We had to make sure that our logs are flushed after the backup was complete. If the logs weren't flushed then it caused our on-prem Exchange to offline. There's a lot more management involved from that point of view. The other thing is that we would have to purchase the tapes. We have a tape rotation, we would have to ship tapes to an offsite location. If we need to restore, we had to go back to the offsite location, and get the restore. In some cases, exchanging restore on-premise could be a lot harder because it doesn't give you some of the brick level functionality.

My impressions of the backup and granular recovery of features are that they're constantly evolving and we've had such great contact with the engineering and development teams at Commvault while they were building out this product. We've seen the evolution of the product, and it has gone from being a platform as a service to a complete service option. The number of upgrades, updates, and ease-of-use features that they continue to build into it, has dramatically reduced the amount of time we spend looking for objects in the backup repositories.

In terms of the speed of both backup and recovery of Office 365 data, for backup, we have a very large Office 365 footprint. We have over almost 15,000 unique mailboxes, according to their metrics. The backup is at least thrice daily. I find it to be very fast compared to other options in the market right now. Especially that it can back up 15,000 users with no problem.

In terms of the ease of use, the original learning curve was a bit steep, but now I would say the overall ease of use, now that they've started with the latest releases of it is fairly intuitive. If I need to go look at my Exchange, so I go click on Exchange. If I need to look at my One Drive backups, I click on One Drive. It's fairly intuitive and it does a great job of guiding me when I'm not sure of where to go.

I haven't gone down the security road too much. However, I've never had a security concern with the product. The scalability and availability of it are outstanding. It's scaled with us. But as far as security goes, I've never had an issue or a concern, or if I did have a concern they were able to address it immediately.

We also haven't really gone too much into the flexibility in terms of where the data is stored but it's a great feature. We're only using a head-end and we're a complete SaaS offering, but we did explore the local active copies, et cetera. We decided that there was no need for us to keep the data on-premise if they're going to maintain it in Azure or AWS. So for us, it was a very easy decision to keep it in the cloud and not on-premise.

The navigation of it needs improvement in terms of the UX. The product itself, it works as expected. It's all user experience and user interface improvements that could be made and it could be made a little more consumer-friendly. Instead of having one person or a few people that know the system intimately, it gives us the ability for other people that don't have to know the system intimately be able to navigate it.

I have been using this solution for two years. 

It's a SaaS offering. It's deployed in our infrastructure and we have a single VM in our infrastructure that we use for pulling any backups down to our infrastructure that we need.

It's appropriate for an enterprise-level environment. It's scaled with us from 900 mailboxes to 12,000 mailboxes, plus our scale of the Office 365 platform.

Before the COVID pandemic, we had six users using this solution. They're system administrators, they manage infrastructure and systems.

It has a 100% adoption rate. The product is being used every day. The backups are automated four times a day and we restore them on a need basis. We use the product every day.

Their support is awesome. On a scale from one to ten, I would rate them a fifteen. The entire Commvault team always goes above and beyond every time, for everything.

We were on-prem before with an old version of Exchange, and we used old backup software to back it up.

For us, the initial setup was complex because we were one of the first customers on this solution. However, we've reset it up a couple of times just as a demo for some of our subsidiaries, and the way the set works now is very straightforward, and very clean compared to what it was when we first got to it to 18 months to two years ago.

The configuration interface was fairly straightforward. Aside from the initial, "This is a product that we are building. You are a beta customer. You're one of our first few customers on the platform.", it was fairly straightforward. Now it's very point and click. It's very straightforward, very intuitive, and well automated.

The deployment took one week.

Our implementation strategy was to get it absorbing our email while we're still migrating users to Office 365 from our on-prem solutions. For us, it was a shotgun approach. I was adding more users to our office tenants than anybody had expected. When we were rolling out Commvault we were rolling out Office 365 at the same time, and it was overwhelming Microsoft at the same time. The implementation strategy was to try to run a slow controlled burn and cut people over as needed, but we managed to get Commvault set up. Then every day, myself and the team at Commvault, were checking to make sure that all the users we had just imported into Office 365 were imported into Commvault.

It wouldn't have been possible without the support team and the development team. The implementation that works now is very clean compared to what I went through. They made themselves so available to us when we were doing our implementation that the reason it took so long to implement was because they were waiting for me for the next step.

Metallic provides us with more predictable costs for our backup requirements. They charge us on a model that we understand. We understand the pricing model a little bit differently. 

We investigated Backup Exec and Backupify. Backupify and Commvault were the top two. They were the two that we had narrowed in on, based on our needs analysis. We chose Commvault simply because of the scalability and expertise in enterprise.

Backupify was a SaaS solution and they had many similar features. But at the time they wanted us to add more service than we were expecting. They were fantastic competitor and they did everything we wanted them to do, just like Commvault. But we went with Commvault specifically because of their enterprise heritage.

We started with a free trial of Commvault. It might've been a POC then we just went from there.

They do a fantastic job with their documentation, so you can follow their documentation and implement it.

I would rate it an eight out of ten. We can't compare it against another staff solution that we're using. So for now it works for us, we're not seeing any issues, and it's better than what we used on-prem. 

We use the solution for auto backup and tape library.

The product is used for backup purposes. Data backup is important for us. The product helps us secure our data.

The product is user-friendly. We can restore it very quickly. The browse option is also good for browsing files. We can also index files.

The product is expensive.

I have been working with the solution for the last two to three years. I am using the latest version of the solution.

The tool’s stability is good. I rate the stability an eight or nine out of ten.

The tool is perfect. I rate the scalability an eight and a half out of ten. It is scalable according to our needs. We have more than 100 users in our organization. We use the solution 24/7. We use it to its maximum potential.

The technical support is good. We have a team on site 24/7.

Positive

I rate the ease of setup a seven out of ten. New users may find the initial setup difficult.

We have a dedicated user for maintaining the solution.

I rate the pricing an eight out of ten.

We are still exploring the features since we are new users. We were using a different solution before Commvault. I joined the organization after we started using Commvault. Overall, I rate the product a nine out of ten.

We use it for data protection.

We have two consoles: one on the West Coast and another on the East Coast. Our database copy and auxiliary are sent to an outside location for DR, just in case we need to do a system recovery.

Initially, it was on-prem, but we moved it to the public cloud since everything is on the cloud.

Several years ago, we encountered some ransomware. We just had to recover the file with Commvault, which was great.

Commvault provides data protection. Their engine is ransomware-agnostic so ransomware doesn't compromise our backup data. Therefore, we can rely on their data protection to recover and back up our production system.

The virtual server agent (VSA) backup for vCenter is useful and also saves some money. If you use the front-end, which is the agent, then it is a front-end terabyte model, which is very expensive.

Everything is in a single place. I love it. I use the Java GUI console.

Commvault provides us with a single platform to move, manage, and recover our data across on-premises, hybrid, and cloud locations. This is important to us. 

There are a vast number of supported storage vendors out there who can support the Commvault connection, whether you are using public or private cloud. This is something that I really like.

Initially, I spent quite some time understanding the product and how it functions.

While there are newer features on the Command Center, there are still some missing things. I don't use it at all.

For Office 365, they have limited functions and features. 

Commvault could make the product more cost-effective on the public cloud side. We are using this solution to back up whatever is still on-prem. We are not using it to back up what is on the public cloud because we have a native backup solution for that, which is provided by the vendor. As our footprint gets bigger, we will continue to evaluate this, but the last time that we did a cost analysis, the cost was not comparable to the solution that public clouds are offering.

I have been using this solution for seven years, since I joined the company.

The stability is great. The product is very good.

It is very scalable. You can scale out as much as you want to the data platform as well as expand to other network platforms. We have seen some resellers or other vendors who are using Commvault as part of their service provider to back up their clients. In terms of scaling, they can use it to back up private data, public data, etc.

The technical support is great. They are very responsive and right on top of things. Sometimes they go above and beyond to get your answer and solve the problem.

Our 24/7 SLA has never been missed. When you call support, whatever time frame is promised based on the SLA, they deliver on that.

I would rate the technical support as eight or nine out of 10.

Positive

It is a little complex at first when you need to choose the product design, features, and functions. Once you understand those, it is not difficult.

Early on, we were using Commvault Professional Services. Now, I handle the deployment and maintenance myself. I support this solution for our entire company, which is about 2000 users.

If you architect and design it right, then it will save you a lot of time. Right now, I don't need to spend much time on it. I am spending an hour on it per week. It is saving our admin teams around 50% of their time.

Commvault is saving us a lot with its dedupe and compression. This reduces our footprint by 75% to 80%.

Based on the customer's needs, their pricing and model is very confusing sometimes. You need to check with their sales to make sure you are getting the right pricing on whatever you are using. I know that they have simplified a lot regarding the licensing model nowadays, but it is good to always double check and make sure it has everything that you really need.

We pay for the license every year. Initially, it was around $100,000. Now, it is down to $30,000 to $40,000.

There are no costs in addition to the standard licensing fees.

Commvault has the capability to go to the tape library directly. I know that there are some solutions out there not capable of doing that. 

Look at your business needs, potential growth, and the vendor from a technical, support, and the cost standpoint. You also need to look at the cost, looking at the license very closely, which is a bit confusing.

Go to their classes and try to attend their training, at least for the fundamentals of building a foundation. Take a few classes to get up to speed. That is probably the best learning path to understanding Commvault.

Commvault has good scalability and functionality that support what is needed.

The product is pretty strong. You just need to know how to use it and implement it correctly.

I would rate this solution as eight out of 10.

Commvault's primary use case centers around comprehensive data management and protection, particularly in cloud environments. Organizations leverage Commvault for its robust capabilities in backup and recovery, safeguarding data across both on-premises and cloud-based infrastructures. 

The solution excels in facilitating the efficient management of data in hybrid and multi-cloud setups, enabling seamless movement, copying, and overall control of information stored on platforms like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud. Commvault plays a pivotal role in disaster recovery planning, ensuring swift data retrieval and business continuity in the face of unexpected events. 

Additionally, the platform often extends its functionality to include archiving solutions, aiding organizations in meeting compliance requirements and optimizing long-term data storage. With a focus on security and compliance, Commvault provides features to protect data and align with regulatory standards. 

Moreover, it may contribute to cloud cost optimization by offering insights into data usage and implementing strategies for cost-effective storage. It's essential to consult the latest documentation or contact Commvault directly for the most current information on their cloud solutions as of 2024.

Commvault Cloud has proven instrumental in enhancing organizational operations through its robust data management and protection features. By providing efficient backup and recovery solutions, it ensures the safeguarding of critical data, reducing the risk of data loss due to various unforeseen events. 

The platform's adept handling of hybrid and multi-cloud environments enables organizations to streamline data management across diverse infrastructures, optimizing resources and harnessing the benefits of various cloud platforms seamlessly. 

Commvault Cloud's disaster recovery capabilities contribute significantly to minimizing downtime, facilitating quick system and data restoration in the face of disruptions. Moreover, the solution aids in implementing effective data archiving strategies, ensuring compliance with regulatory requirements and reducing the likelihood of compliance-related issues. 

The integration of enhanced security measures further fortifies data protection, mitigating risks associated with unauthorized access or breaches. Commvault Cloud's potential to optimize cloud costs by providing insights into data usage and recommending cost-effective storage strategies contributes to overall operational efficiency. 

While the success of implementation hinges on factors such as planning and training, ongoing assessments and communication with Commvault support are crucial for addressing any challenges and ensuring continued alignment with organizational needs.

Commvault Cloud offers a suite of features, each contributing distinct value to organizations based on their unique needs. 

The backbone of its utility lies in robust backup and recovery capabilities, ensuring data resilience and swift recovery in the face of unforeseen events. The ability to seamlessly manage data across hybrid and multi-cloud environments stands out as a pivotal feature, allowing for flexibility, resource optimization, and scalability as organizations navigate diverse cloud infrastructures. 

Disaster Recovery features further enhance business continuity by minimizing downtime and facilitating rapid system and data restoration. The effectiveness of Commvault Cloud extends to archiving and compliance functionalities, crucial for industries with stringent regulatory requirements, mitigating the risk of compliance-related issues. 

Security measures, including encryption and threat detection, contribute significantly to data protection, safeguarding against unauthorized access and cyber threats. Additionally, the platform's Cloud Cost Optimization features provide insights into data usage, aiding in the implementation of cost-effective storage strategies and contributing to overall operational efficiency. 

The value of these features ultimately depends on an organization's specific goals, industry context, and IT infrastructure, emphasizing the need for regular assessments to ensure ongoing alignment with evolving business requirements.

Commvault Cloud, while offering a robust suite of features, could potentially benefit from improvements in certain areas. One area for consideration is user interface and user experience enhancements, aiming to streamline navigation and make the platform more intuitive for users with varying levels of technical expertise. 

Improved documentation and user training resources could also contribute to a smoother onboarding process and more effective utilization of the platform's capabilities. Additionally, ongoing efforts to optimize resource utilization and minimize any potential impact on system performance would be valuable. As for potential features in the next release, integration with emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence for more intelligent data management and analytics could provide valuable insights for organizations. 

Enhanced automation capabilities, including more sophisticated policy-driven automation for data workflows, could further streamline processes and reduce manual intervention. Integration with additional cloud services and platforms, keeping pace with the evolving cloud landscape, would broaden the platform's compatibility and usefulness. 

Lastly, advanced security features, including continuous monitoring, threat intelligence integration, and proactive threat response capabilities, would fortify the product's defense against evolving cyber threats. 

Regular feedback mechanisms from users and staying attuned to industry trends would help guide the development of features that align closely with the evolving needs of organizations in the dynamic landscape of data management and cloud services.

I've been using this solution for two years. 

I recently deployed Metallic for backup storage on Azure for a customer who lost all their data. Metallic helped me to restore the data within an hour, which is much faster than restoring from Microsoft services with a ticket on support services, which took four to five days.

I have a customer who uses it, but I am not a direct user, and I work with customers who use Metallic.

The functional integration could be better. For example, the replication function is not there in the Metallic products and can be complex. We were licensing the functionality in a different tool but not in Metallic's key. So it should be enhanced.

In future releases, I would like to see better VM replication because it's not available today. But there should also be provisions to have more integration.

Metallic is perfect for a customer because it is very easy to use. However, I find it difficult to find some use cases on my own and need to contact Metallic support. Moreover, in a SaaS project, I cannot open or function agents alone and require the support of Metallic.

I have been using this solution for two years. We are using the latest update of the Metallic SaaS solution.

It is a stable solution. I would rate it a nine out of ten. I have had no errors since the installation.

When I put it into the production model, it was very stable, and we had no time to do the next production review after a very simple test.

I would rate scalability a nine out of ten. It is very scalable.

The customer support team is responsive and very helpful. There were no problems, and their response time was very short.

Positive

The initial setup is very easy. It's quick and simple, and Metallic is already ready for use after two hours. It integrates well with Office 365 backup for Exchange roles, Teams, or SharePoint.

Our internal team deployed the solution.

The pricing depends on the functionality you require. For example, Office 365 is priced correctly because you have everything in one package, including the license for backup and storage. It is very attractive for the middle market, so I would rate it a seven out of ten, where one is the cheapest and ten is very expensive.

But for some projects, we may need to buy additional backup and storage for the retention period, making it more expensive. However, seven is good for me. Also, we could consider integrating with other cloud providers for secondary backup and storage to store backups. We only have Azure, OCI, or RWAIS, but exploring other options that offer better prices would be interesting.

I have experience using different products in the same category as Metallic, including CommVault and Rubrik. CommVault is the same product, but the trends are converted. It's an on-premise product. And Metallic is the first product of the merger of the company. It's the same product. I also saw Impacket, but I find it very old-school. We are missing old school.

I also see Hybrid. It's a very good product, but quite more known. There is still a lot to fix in Rubrik. I also find CommVault and Metallic with more experience and integrated with all our products. We have all products, like your old servers, the unique server. And it's quite more difficult with Rubrik. So, I prefer Metallic for this.

I would recommend using the product. Metallic is a very interesting product. My company also integrates Acronis and VM in some of our projects, but Metallic is one of the best products for cloud and SaaS. It has many functionalities and is simple to integrate.

For me, it's a ten. I haven't found any other product with so many functionalities that is also easy to integrate. It's not just good for my business, but it also gives me peace of mind and allows me to sleep soundly at night.

We provide backup services to our customers and we implement Commvault for most of our backups. This includes cloud with VMware, cloud with IBM, cloud with Azure, SAP applications like HANA or traditional SAP, for databases including Oracle and DB2, and across several operating systems including AIX, Solaris, Windows, and Linux.

We have a separate, private backup network. It has its own appliances from different vendors and the information on it is not visible to our main network. This is to help protect against ransomware and other threats.

Commvault provides us with a single platform to move, manage, and recover data across our on-premises and cloud locations, which is something that is very important for us. We have data centers in Mexico, Panama, Guatemala, and the Dominican Republic, and we need to administer all of the environments from a single location in Mexico.

The administrators connect to all of the environments on-premises. We have two flavors; the multitenant environment and the dedicated environment. We manage all of these from Mexico.

Commvault is very good in terms of coverage for applications and databases. This is important because we don't only administrate backups. We have managed services that include the database, application, operating system, and storage. We talk with the administrators for the database and operating system to create a policy that ensures all of the data that we need to recover the environment is complete.

The recovery process is consistent across platforms and this is important to us because clients give us the information, and we need to back it up and to ensure that we can recover it if they have a problem.

The recovery options are good because we offer our clients a complete recovery of their information, as well as an option for partial recovery, based on their needs. For example, we can offer the recovery of a single table in a database, depending on what the scenario is.

The most valuable feature is the compatibility with our entire environment.

The embedded deduplication engine is really good because we use a Near Line SAS disk as a repository for our backups, and we don't need to pay for another appliance such as a Data Domain or Quantum so that we can have hardware-based deduplication.

One of the benefits of using Commvault over the years has been that all of our administrators have the ability to perform admin functions. They haven't had any complaints about the interface.

Commvault has support for multiple storage platforms, which is helpful for us. We use block storage for some backups, and we use appliances that have duplication capabilities for other backups. The method in which Commvault fits in depends on how much money the client spends. For example, if they have a higher budget then we use PCI-compliant appliances, or snapshots in the backups to ensure that we don't have ransomware. Other clients pay only for the amount of storage that they use. In some cases, we use replication at the host level, whereas in other cases, it is at the hardware level. The console that we have with Commvault can manage all of the environments and hardware that we have.

I would like to have a manager-level dashboard to review the backups. This is not from an administrative perspective where you can see the details of the execution. Rather, it would only show the percentage of completeness for each one.

I have been working with Commvault for more than eight years.

We have not had any problems with stability. 

We have more than 10 implementations in all of our data centers.

Using Commvault helps to minimize the amount of time that we spend on backups. I am not exactly sure how long it would take otherwise, but we back up approximately four petabytes of information each day.

Scaling is not a problem for us. If we need to, we can install more servers and install a new console.

We use Commvault support on a daily basis. People from the database teams need help restoring data, so they contact Commault for assistance.

I would rate their support a nine out of ten.

Prior to Commvault, we used Veritas NetBackup for five years.

A lot of our environment is currently backed up using Commvault but we are planning to use Veeam and Commvault together. Veeam is priced better than Commvault and right now, we use Veeam to back up our virtual machines. As we split more of the information between the two different applications, we may use Veeam for cloud environments, and for traditional environments, Commvault.

There are some applications like SAP HANA that are not compatible with the Veeam software. In cases like this, we use Commvault.

This product is very easy to set up. The reason is that we do everything. We implement, we operate, and we migrate. One of the reasons that we continue with Commvault is that we have spent a lot of time training people. This means that the people in the company can do everything without the need for third-party persons.

It takes between two and three hours to install a new console.

Over the years that we have had this same software, people on the admin team have become certified by Commvault. This ensures that they are doing things properly and doing them well.

We charge our customers on a per-gigabyte basis.

Using Commvault has helped us to reduce storage costs because, in some cases, we changed to block storage. Using block storage and software-based deduplication is cheaper than the appliances that have deduplication embedded in them. In some cases, we have reduced our hardware cost by 50%, whereas in other cases, it has been reduced by more than 75%. It depends on the technology that we compare. For example, the Data Domain appliance is perhaps four times the cost of the Near Line SAS disk in traditional block storage.

Reducing the hardware that we have in the data center, also reduces our costs in terms of energy and space. I do not have an estimate as to how much we save.

Commvault is more expensive than Veeam, which is the reason that we are changing to Veeam for cloud environments.

We had been running Veritas NetBackup and did an RFP to change the backup software. We tested Veritas, Commvault, TSM from IBM, and Dell NetWorker. The finalists were Veritas and Commvault. We found that there were more advantages to using Commvault. For example, it has deduplication embedded into the software and if we wanted this with Veritas, we needed to pay an additional fee. This is why we changed and we have maintained it for several years.

In comparing solutions, I think that generally, today, all software solutions are the same. We have the same compatibility using Veritas, TSM, NetWorker, and Commvault. The main reason for us to maintain Commvault is the expertise that we have with the tool. All of them have deduplication capabilities and can use different repositories, so I don't have a problem with the other brands.

Commvault has the capability to discover unprotected workloads, although we don't use this because we only work with policies. Our clients tell us the policy that they want to apply to their environment, and we don't analyze their environment beyond the scope that they specify.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.