We compared Dell Avamar and Zerto based on user reviews in five categories. We reviewed all of the data and you can find the conclusion below.
Features: Dell Avamar earns acclaim for its scalability, data compression capabilities, swift incremental backups, and seamless integration with Data Domain and VM stacks. Users say Zerto offers excellent data protection, and it’s easy to create VMs. Zerto users also like its real-time replication features. Dell Avamar could improve its tape connectivity and bare-metal restoration. Users also requested better Azure backups and a more user-friendly interface. Zerto could improve cloud environment configuration, PowerShell scripting, and multi-site replication.
Service and Support: Some customers express satisfaction with Dell support, but others said there is room for improvement. Customers have generally had positive experiences with Zerto's customer service, noting their quick response times and ability to resolve issues. Some customers have encountered slower response times and needed to go through multiple levels of support to get their issues resolved.
Ease of Deployment: 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. The setup process for Zerto can be either simple or complicated, depending on the individual's experience with backup solutions.
Pricing: Dell Avamar’s pricing is generally seen as reasonable, but some users think it is expensive. Zerto’s price tag is considered reasonable and in line with industry norms. Others said it was somewhat expensive but still worth the cost.
ROI: Dell Avamar provides cost savings through data reduction, deduplication, and compression. Zerto reduces risks while saving costs and time. It increases efficiency, ensures compliance, and helps businesses grow.
Comparison Results: 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. Zerto offers top-tier data protection, excellent customer service, and real-time replication, but some users say its cloud and multi-site functionality could be better.
"Quick incremental backups and product replication are the two highlights of the product. Once you capture a full backup, incrementals are pretty quick. It is fairly efficient from that perspective."
"The product is very powerful and offers very good performance."
"It is one of the best solutions for backing up Oracle and other servers."
"It was very simple to deploy the solution to the client that you wanted to backup."
"The installation of the solution is easy."
"Dell EMC Avamar is very good with endpoint backups."
"For the on-prem backup, it has all the necessary features that we require. They keep coming up with new scripts and new updates."
"The solution is very stable."
"It's one of the easiest products out there, as far as managing and using it go. The UI is pretty dead simple."
"This product is impressively easy to use. It's dummy-proof, once it's set up."
"The biggest benefit is the application-consistent disaster recovery functionality."
"The solution's most valuable aspect is allowing a failover from our remote sites to our data center. Our remote sites have failed several times, and on each occasion, we were able to bring a plant back online within 30 minutes, even though the hardware repair took many days."
"The continuous data protection is great. We love it because I can see exactly how many seconds behind real-time we are, which is usually under 10 seconds. It keeps things up to date. We love the product."
"When we need to failover or move workloads, Zerto significantly decreases both the time it takes and the number of people involved. It only takes a single person to activate a failover and we can pretty much automate everything else."
"The stability is great; there's very little downtime. I don't have to worry that there will be a surprise update to one of the ZVRAs or the host that I have to contend with. We're given plenty of notice to plan ahead for an update. As far as losing service and downtime, we haven't had that happen."
"One of the valuable features is the ability to re-IP on the fly, because it makes the migration a lot smoother on the system end."
"The solution should improve its tape-connectivity features."
"I think they could also move more towards cloud solutions. It already has some cloud tiering, but I think that could be more extensive. They should work with all cloud providers and I think in the future they will be on all cloud platforms."
"The support is very bad."
"It's not the best solution for big databases."
"Compared with Cohesity or Rubrik, which have some continuous data protection for backup and replication, this solution tends to lack in this area."
"The interface has room for improvement. It's not ideal right now."
"The recovery is a bit slow."
"EMC has discontinued their Avamar hardware version. They only advertise the Avamar virtual edition."
"I would like to see a couple of details regarding awareness of VM events coming outside of ZVR."
"They are not cheap. They are more expensive than others."
"It is crucial for Zerto to collaborate closely with VMware in order to promptly test updates."
"It would be nice if we were able to purchase single licenses for Zerto. As it is now, scaling requires that we purchase a multi-pack."
"Zerto should add the capability to replicate the same VM to multiple sites."
"It took me a little bit of time to get used to Zerto's terminology and to relate it back to how you do a backup traditionally. It was a little different. It took a little while to understand what a VPG is and what it does. That's an area that they could probably improve on a little, making the documentation easier to understand."
"They definitely have room for improvement in a couple of areas. One is role-based access control. Right now, they don't have an identity source so they use the identity of the vCenter or the VMM. If they connected to an identity source like Active Directory and allowed for granular roles and permissions, that would be an improvement."
"I think Zerto could do better with size planning because it would be nice to analyze a server for a week and give an estimate on sizing the Journal."
Dell Avamar is ranked 12th in Backup and Recovery with 81 reviews while Zerto is ranked 2nd in Backup and Recovery with 236 reviews. Dell Avamar is rated 7.6, while Zerto is rated 9.0. The top reviewer of Dell Avamar writes "Stable, integrates well with other solutions, and has a good price, but its UI needs a refresh". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Zerto writes "Gives us business continuity capabilities during hurricane season and in case of ransomware". Dell Avamar is most compared with Dell PowerProtect Data Manager, Veeam Backup & Replication, Dell NetWorker, Dell PowerProtect DP (IDPA) and Nutanix Mine Integrated Backup, whereas Zerto is most compared with Veeam Backup & Replication, VMware SRM, Rubrik, Commvault Cloud and Dell RecoverPoint for Virtual Machines. See our Dell Avamar vs. Zerto report.
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We monitor all Backup and Recovery reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
