Dell Avamar Reviews

My customer has a huge virtual environment — vCenter and VMware. They need images backed up, they have different workloads like Oracle, SAP, and NetWorker. They have a compliance policy that they have to tape out but Avamar, out of the box, cannot do the tape out. That's why I had to introduce NetWorker into the picture.

Graphically, it's very user interactive. It's got a very nice interface. Compared to NetWorker, although Avamar is more user-friendly, it lacks support for certain plugins, like SAP HANA, for example. In this particular project that I'm working on, they need to back up SAP HANA but Avamar does not support that. Also, regarding compliance, they need to tape out. Avamar does not support that out of the box. 

I have been using this solution for over six years. 

For the project that I am currently working on, I will be using Avamar to migrate their old historical data to the new environment because this new environment is attached to Data Domain. Scalability-wise and stability-wise, I don't see any issues.

I haven't had to contact support as of yet. 

The initial setup is pretty straightforward. It's good that Dell EMC provides the virtual additions of these appliances for people to practice beforehand. Otherwise, you might be familiar with a certain version but not understand the subsequent versions. You would never know unless you could get a production set up, which is not possible. You can't go and play with the client setup. For this reason, Dell EMC, like other good vendors, offers virtual additions. Data Domain, NetWorker, Avamar, everything you can practice.

The client has directly bought this solution from another partner. I've been subcontracted for this. I don't know anything about the pricing.

Regarding end-users, I would say stick with disk-based backup. Avamar does it very well with the VMware virtual environments, even Hyper-V for that reason.

Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give Dell EMC Avamar a rating of seven.

The reason I am giving it a rating of seven is because of the plugin issues and the inability to tape out. Frankly, there are still a lot of clients in this region who need to be in compliance — they need the tape out. It's really a nightmare if you want to tape out with Avamar. There's a way to work around this but you've got to install an ADME node, which is actually a small brother of NetWorker. Still, it's a really painful process.

The deduplication feature is the best aspect of the solution.

The solution is always coming up with new features year over year. They are consistently updating their offering to continuously offer better and broader functionality in their product.

By using a single software you can do a back up of all of your servers as their products have several virtual servers. That's the benefit of going with the Dell EMC set up.

The solution is very stable.

The scalability of the solution is very good.

Technical support has always been very helpful.

The solution is not very strong on the Cloud. They should work out how they can use this as a backup as a service.

I've been using the solution for seven years now.

The solution is quite reliable. The stability is good. We haven't had any issues with bugs or glitches. It doesn't seem to crash or freeze.

The solution is very scalable. It's not a problem to grow the solution out if you need to.

Multiple people in our firm are using it.

Technical support is excellent. We're very satisfied with the level of support we get. They're great at responding.

We previously used a variety of other solutions before landing on EMC.

The initial setup is not complex. It's very straightforward. I'd describe the process as simple. It doesn't take to long to set up.

We're partners with Dell EMC.

We are using the latest version of the solution, although I don't know what the version number is.

I would recommend the solution. The solution is great. There are very little improvements needed on the solution, aside from better cloud improvements. I'd rate it nine out of ten.

We use the solution to protect our virtual machine.

We love the instant recovery functionality. It's very useful. 

We found some difficulty around co-locating with restructuring. I think the co-location between Avamar and vCenter, in my opinion, is not the best.

We like the easy integration with VMware and vCenter, but we'd like to click a button for any kind of virtual machine and then click on backup and restore. It would make things easier if this could be done in a few clicks. Right now, it's a bit more in-depth.  

Technical support does a very good job. They are very reactive when we come to them with issues.

The initial setup was straightforward. It was very easy to deploy the solution.

The licensing model is not very flexible. Every time we upgrade our storage size, we need to upgrade the Avamar license.

We use the on-premises deployment model.

I think it is a powerful tool. We use it on both our production and disaster sites.

I would rate the solution nine out of ten.

When I was working for a company we used Dell EMC Avamar to backups of the system's data.

Dell EMC Avamar is easy to work with and is user-friendly.

We have had a lot of problems with the Dell EMC Avamar solution. The snapshots are not being erased after backup.

The solution could improve by having better reports about the errors in the software.

I have been using Dell EMC Avamar for approximately nine years.

The support from Dell EMC Avamar is good.

I have previously used Veritas NetBackup which I found to be a better solution. However, we were using Dell EMC Avamar because of the work circumstances.

The initial implementation was simple.

Dell EMC did the implementation of the solution for us.

I have evaluated Dell EMC Integrated Data Protection and it has Avamar, Data Domain, and DPA in one solution. It is impressive.

I rate Dell EMC Avamar a seven out of ten.

The solution offers good storage.

The product is very stable.

I have found the product to be scalable. 

The pricing of the solution is pretty good and not too expensive. 

The interface is great.

The documentation on offer is very helpful and thorough. 

Overall, the solution is good right now. I can't think of where I have seen any missing features. 

The solution, in the future, should offer support for mobile. 

I've been using the solution for more than 10 years.

The stability, in general, has been great. There are no bugs or glitches. It does not crash or freeze. It's reliable and the performance is good. 

The scalability of the product is good. If a company needs to expand it, it can do so. 

I don't directly use the support services on offer. If I have questions, I tend to direct that to the developers, and not Dell.

I'm also familiar with Dell DataDomian, which I also work with. 

As long as you follow the implementation directions, it's not too bad. 

While I didn't directly purchase it myself and was not involved in the licensing process, it's my understanding that the cost is reasonable and the pricing is good.

I'm a freelancer and an EMC instructor.

I'm not an expert in the solution, however, for me, it's been a very positive experience. 

I'd advise potential new users to pay attention to the details and to follow the implementation instructions. If you do that, you'll be fine.

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten.

We primarily use the solution as a backup.

The backup is the solution's most valuable feature. It's very reliable.

The configuration and expansion aspects of the solution need improvement. They're complicated and don't really integrate well.

The solution requires a remote site application in a future release. I believe they are currently working on this. 

The solution is very stable. It's really reliable.

Technical support is very good.

The initial setup is very complex.

We handled the implementation ourselves.

We were lucky to receive the solution as part of a bundle. It was actually a relatively good price, but there are better solutions, like Veem. However, they can be expensive.

We are using the on-premises deployment model of the solution.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

Source based deduplication is the most attractive feature as it drastically reduces the backup window.

I've helped several organizations reduce the backup window and they could spend time on optimizing other bits of IT infra.

Desktop-laptop backups and backup over the WAN needs lot of improvisation. For DTLT there must be a provision to push agents from the management console. Users must be able to browse data set of what to backup behind a WAN IP / firewall.

3 years.

With older OS versions like Microsoft 2003, there were a few issues. However, they have clearly mentioned that it is not supported.

Adding new nodes is an extremely difficult task. Took me nearly 28 hours for node addition and data rebalance.

Eight out of 10, when I used to work. However, after Dell acquisition, I have no clue.

Ability to manage both DTLT and server backup using the same console, and reduced backup window and data footprint, were the major reasons for my customers to change.

Initialization and management is very simple. Its a GUI based installation with clearly defined steps.

It is very expensive. It's a trust based licensing. So that's an ethical challenge.

No.

Have your inventory ready and priorities set. Make sure initial backup is taken during off-production hours as the solution works only on LAN.

The solution can be used for the backing up of all environments, including those which are virtual and involve databases and applications. 

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. It should be on desk and desks solution, which comes with Power Protect and is called data domain. It offers a very small footprint for long term, backup retention, in the realm of 55 times a single duplication ratio. This means that if a person backs up something on one, he will have one petabyte of storage, which can store up to five petabyte of backup copies. This combination makes Dell EMC one of the most perfect solutions available. 

Avamar does not offer the tape-out, meaning that what a person backs up can only be kept on a disc based appliance, one which is supplied by Avamar. The tape lacks connectivity, which means that if a customer wishes to take tape-out, Avamar is not a fit. He must look for a networker which offers up to tape. The solution should improve its tape-connectivity features. 

As we have been serving as the Dell EMC legacy partners since before Dell took over, our company has been dealing with Avamar since the get go, back in 2014. 

The solution is certainly stable and comprises 70 percent of the market share. 

The solution is highly scalable. Both the licensing and hardware capabilities are without limit. The storage box can be scaled in petabytes. 

As, generally speaking, Dell EMC is an enterprise solution company, its technical support is always good. 

The initial setup used to be complex, but has since become much easier, more user friendly and faster. 

The solution is not expensive for the value one gets. The most expensive thing involves one's data. Should a person's data be compromised, he would be willing to pay a million dollars to retrieve it. This makes the payment of an additional premium for its protection worthwhile. 

The licensing capabilities are limitless. 

The main difference between Avamar and Networker involves the tape-out. Generally speaking, our customers have compliance policies to keep the tapes out, which is why we mostly recommend Networker. As such, most of my installations are on Networker, not Avamar. 

I consider the solution to be most comprehensive in all respects. It has an understanding of most of the vendor's applications. 

I rate Dell EMC Avamar as an eight out of ten.