We compared Cohesity DataProtect and Dell Avamar based on user reviews in five categories. We reviewed all of the data and you can find the conclusion below.
Features: Cohesity DataProtect offers instant recovery and built-in integration with Office 365 and Active Directory. Dell Avamar earns acclaim for its scalability, data compression capabilities, swift incremental backups, and seamless integration with Data Domain and VM stacks. Cohesity DataProtect users have suggested enhancements to its user interface, rollback methodology, and cloud data recovery. Other pain points include file server capacity and legacy platform support. Dell Avamar could improve its tape connectivity and bare-metal restoration. Users also requested better Azure backups and a more user-friendly interface.
Service and Support: The customer service experiences for Cohesity DataProtect have been mostly positive, but some say the quality of Cohesity's support may differ depending on the region. Opinions on Dell Avamar’s setup were mixed. Some users found it to be straightforward, while others considered it complex and difficult. Deployment time ranged from a few hours to a week, and assistance from Dell engineers might be necessary.
Ease of Deployment: Most users consider the setup process for Cohesity DataProtect to be easy, although a few found it more complex than other products. Opinions on Dell Avamar’s setup were mixed. Some users found it to be straightforward, while others considered it complex and difficult. Deployment time ranged from a few hours to a week, and assistance from Dell engineers might be necessary.
Pricing: Cohesity's pricing is higher than its competitors, although some customers consider it affordable. Dell Avamar’s pricing is generally seen as reasonable, but some users think it is expensive.
ROI: Cohesity DataProtect provides security against ransomware and efficient file retrieval. Dell Avamar provides cost savings through data reduction, deduplication, and compression.
Comparison Results: Cohesity is regarded as an affordable solution that offers instant recovery and superior ransomware protection. However, users say its customer service is inconsistent across regions, and its rollback methodology has room for improvement. Dell Avamar is a scalable solution that offers excellent data compression and fast compression. However, Avamar earned mixed reviews for support, deployment, and pricing. Users also requested better Azure and bare-metal backups and restoration capabilities.
"This solution is easy to manage."
"Several features enable us to perform fast recovery, such as instant fast recovery. All our virtual machines protected with the product can be quickly restored to another healthy environment with minimal downtime for our main customers. These features have significantly improved our recovery time objectives."
"It is also very easy to determine which VMs are being backed up and which ones aren't. This is helpful to make sure nothing is being missed."
"The ability to essentially instantly recover a VM and have it run on the Cohesity Platform while all those bits are technically being recovered in the background is useful to us."
"One of the most valuable features is the restore functionality that they offer."
"Cohesity has simplified backups and has cut our costs tremendously."
"Cohesity DataProtect is more of a unified solution, which is also trying to expand for ransomware protection."
"We are saving valuable datacenter rack space, which is critical as we evaluate co-location options."
"It works quickly and is very stable."
"The performance of Dell EMC Avamar is good."
"So far, Avamar covers everything we want. We are replicating to other sites for disaster recovery, so it's working well for us."
"The installation of the solution is easy."
"What I found valuable in Dell Avamar is the deduplication feature. I also like that the solution can be integrated with Data Domain."
"We are talking about a complete end-to-end solution which comes with its own hardware storage to back up the data on tape-less."
"Dell EMC Avamar is easy to work with and is user-friendly."
"Dell Avamar has helped our organization by allowing us to do backups."
"Physical RDMs on virtual machines could be a bit easier to configure and plan out."
"We are waiting on the AIX agent to be released."
"The support team could do a better job. Sometimes finding the correct person is cumbersome and time consuming."
"Reporting is one area that isn't as robust as it could be."
"The one area where we would like to see additional improvements is with reporting. There are very granular reports from each grid. There are also some built-in reports within Helios (SAS Management Console) that offers basic reporting. However, for complex, large-enterprise environments, a more robust reporting engine that supports detailed audit reporting and enhanced ad hoc reports would be welcome."
"We would like it to have more capabilities for different kinds of PaaS or SaaS services in the Azure cloud, such as Azure SQL or Azure Cosmos DB."
"In terms of the product itself, there have been a handful of patches that have had to be applied outside of the GUI via the command line. It's very straightforward and easy and in the same redundant fashion, but not quite as simple as one or two clicks. I'm hoping that will decrease going forward."
"The support team sometimes takes a long time to resolve issues, although, in our experience, these have been specific things like SQL blobs."
"Dell EMC Avamar is a very complex product. It took a lot of time for the IT admins to get trained on how to use it. It is not very user-friendly, and we won't be using Avamar anymore. It needs a lot of improvement in terms of how the backups have been configured, and the reporting is too complex."
"Dell hasn't done a good job at handling these upgrades, or the way EMC used to handle them."
"The client caches and deduplication system have a few problems."
"Interfaces need to be improved."
"Some customers need to back up to tape, but Avamar lacks support, so it costs a lot."
"It is very scalable, and that's its claim to fame, but that also makes it hard to make changes. Anytime there is a large piece of software, changing that piece of software is harder. You've got a larger install base, so you can't just rapidly change. We also use another product called Veeam, and it has this new feature called Continuous Data Protection, which basically lets you get very close to the way the system was in time. We have a system or two up there on which we have set 10 minutes Continuous Data Protection. So, we can roll it back to whatever it was 10 minutes ago, 20 minutes ago, or 30 minutes ago. This feature doesn't exist in Avamar Data Domain. That's the one feature I'd like to see first."
"We don't trust the product 100 percent. Kaspersky has many features Dell Avamar doesn't support, such as granular backup and history."
"Its ability to back up very large objects can be improved. In terms of new features, they can include the ability to use cloud services, like S3, more natively."
Cohesity DataProtect is ranked 9th in Backup and Recovery with 67 reviews while Dell Avamar is ranked 12th in Backup and Recovery with 81 reviews. Cohesity DataProtect is rated 9.0, while Dell Avamar is rated 7.6. The top reviewer of Cohesity DataProtect writes "Easy to use, offers good scalability and responsive support ". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Dell Avamar writes "Stable, integrates well with other solutions, and has a good price, but its UI needs a refresh". Cohesity DataProtect is most compared with Rubrik, Veeam Backup & Replication, Commvault Cloud, Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) and Druva inSync, whereas Dell Avamar is most compared with Dell PowerProtect Data Manager, Veeam Backup & Replication, Dell NetWorker, Dell PowerProtect DP (IDPA) and Azure Backup. See our Cohesity DataProtect vs. Dell Avamar report.
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