I evaluated a few solutions in comparison with Dell Avamar such as Veeam and Commvault as software-based solutions, then Cohesity and Rubrik as hyper-converged solutions, including hardware. My recommendation would be based on what the customer needs. In terms of functionality and in comparison with other solutions, Dell Avamar is an old product and it needs to be refreshed, which was why I was recommending PowerProtect Data Manager.

It is a great fit for enterprise-level businesses that are operating with large volumes of data. Compared to other solutions, it provides the best value for the cost.

We evaluated NetBackup, Commvault, and Barracuda, but we can't compare Dell Avamar with those other three solutions because we use them for protecting different workloads. For example, we use Dell Avamar for endpoint protection, while NetBackup and Commvault are for server protection.

We evaluated Veritas and had previously used Veaam, but when we compared overall cost, integration, stability, and agility, we found Avamar was one of the best.

I have previously worked with Networker and Data Domain. I also worked with PPDM. When I logged calls with PPDM, there was always an issue and it would take a day or two for support to come. I don't know if it was a skill issue, but the guy would usually take the information and go and discuss it with guys at a higher level and then come back to me a day or two later.

Despite falling under Vodafone globally and dealing with VBC, the procurement company, there were instances where Dell offered superior deals in South Africa compared to what VBC could secure with other vendors. This was a key factor in our decision to stick with Dell rather than exploring alternatives like Huawei or HP.

We are proposing Avamar to our customers and looking for other solutions to compare it to build the case for it. Currently, customers are using Commvault, and we are pushing to Avamar.

We were looking for Veeam at the same time. It's good and has the same features, but we were buying all our solutions from Dell, like VxRail servers, Data Domain, etc. I think it's more complicated but otherwise fine. 

We looked at a variety of other products. One of the main reasons we selected Avamar was the fact that they have support for physical servers running Solaris, Linux, HP-UX, and AIX. We have a large enough physical environment that we needed the ability to protect them.

Currently, we are evaluating Veeam to see if it is possible to switch to Veeam. Veeam has an issue of deduplication failure. With Avamar, we use Data Domain, and the deduplication ratio is 26 or 25 times, whereas, with Veeam, the ratio is only half. We are thinking of using Avamar for archive backup and using Veeam for short retention.

I did not evaluate other solutions.

We did briefly look at another solution, however, we decided not to move forward with it.

Veeam, Commvault. We wanted to get away from managing backup hardware in traditional backup infrastructure/design.

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

No.

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. 

For enterprise level backup solution – No .