Cohesity DataProtect Reviews

We use it for data corruption exaltation.

Software immutability is a valuable feature, and the varying deployment options.

In addition, from a data security perspective, zero trust access is a key function. Within Helios, we have role-based access control, single sign-on, multifactor authentication, and quorum for user approvals.

On-premises multi-tenant services need improvement.

I have been using Cohesity DataProtect since 2019.

Cohesity uses hyper-converged cluster architecture (min. 3 nodes) for on-premise deployments which provides erasure coding within the cluster and non-disruptive change control. Nodes range from 8 to 96 TB capacity and clusters are extensible with additional nodes of different sizes, provided they are certified platforms. Cohesity also offer a SaaS platform. The on-premises deployments are scalable provided a cluster has been deployed.

The initial setup is straightforward. We have somewhere in the region of thirty customers using Cohesity. 

Typically on-premises nodes/clusters are deployed for primary backup (to enable instant mass restore) so price will be dependent on chosen OEM and capacity required. MSPs like us utilise PPU licensing.

My recommendation would be that if you have an intent to use all of Cohesity's feature set, then you should probably consider using Cohesity cloud services, especially if you're a service provider, and you're going to be delivering Cohesity to more than one customer as a managed service.

I rate the solution an eight out of ten. 

We are using it to back up virtual machines, VMware level, SQL server, Oracle Domain Controllers, Linux.

We're currently using hundred percent of it to back up 80% of our data.

It has absolutely improved our ROI. We moved from Microsoft DPM to Cohesity. Now, our incident tickets for backup have dropped by around a thousand per month.

DPM is a load of crap. It's horrible, absolutely horrible.

Its most valuable feature is its ransomware protection, so it has immutable backups.

In terms of what could be improved, it just needs some maturity. But, it gets better with every release.

I have been using Cohesity DataProtect for about a year.

We are using version 6.5.1E. We're about to go to 6.6.

It is on-prem today and it'll go to Azure public cloud soon.

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The stability is good.

The scalability is very good.

We probably have about 20 people using it and we have backup administrators and database administrators.

Main deployment and maintenance requires three people.

Their technical support team program is good.

We previously used Microsoft DPM and it is a horrendous solution. It's horrible. From from one to 10, I would give it a minus 10. It is that bad.

The initial setup was straightforward. Initial deployment took two months.

Our deployment strategy was to do it quickly as we can.

We did an initial POC, then a full POC, and then migrated everything as quick as we could.

We used TGS and they were good.

We saw ROI was after about nine months.

I believe we pay yearly. Additionally, there is the cost of the hardware. 

I also evaluated Rubrik and Commvault. The main difference between Cohesity, Rubrik and Commvault is price. It came down to price. Cohesity is more affordable.

My advice to anyone using Cohesity is to use vSphere tags.

On a scale of one to ten, I would give Cohesity DataProtect an eight and it's still maturing.

It will get better.

Cohesity DataProtect is a reliable solution for performing backups within a suitable timeframe, and its forever incremental model is particularly effective for the customer's needs. Additionally, the solution handles instant recovery and file-level recovery from a VMware image backup seamlessly.

The platform has certain limitations, mostly stemming from the restrictions imposed by the VMware API and some other factors. One area where there is room for improvement is the tracking of replicated copies, especially in the context of remote archive duplication.

Although there are certain interfaces and reports within the solution that provide detailed information about features like duplication to archive, they are not well-documented. In my experience, I have used some of these interfaces and reports in the past to gain additional insight. However, it would be helpful if these interfaces were properly documented and made readily available, instead of relying on support calls and breaking down URLs to access them. This would make it easier for users to leverage the full functionality of the solution.

I have been using Cohesity DataProtect for two and a half years.

Our primary use of Cohesity DataProtect is for backing up VMware, with some Microsoft Windows workloads also included. At present, our usage is limited to Microsoft Windows and VMware only.

Generally, the solution is stable.

I have observed some stability issues when scaling the Pure Storage solution, and one of our customers who used it experienced some problems. However, I believe these issues were due to the solution being relatively new and possibly oversold in an environment without adequate hardware to support it. Overall, these issues were rare and isolated, and I have not seen similar problems with other customers.

The solution scales well up to a certain point. When dealing with larger environments, it's crucial to exercise caution while distributing IO and managing the number of nodes in use. However, for small to mid-sized environments, it is perfectly scalable. In scenarios involving massive enterprises, it may be worth considering the Pure Storage solution or Cohesity DataProtect with a peer back end, rather than Cohesity DataProtect with their standard nodes.

I have had a positive experience with the tech support provided by the vendor. Their ability to access the system remotely and provide insights or fix issues has been particularly helpful. It is beneficial to be involved in the support process and to observe how they resolve issues, so I can replicate the solution in the future. Fortunately, the support team is usually willing to share their expertise and help me learn, which is greatly appreciated.

The initial setup of the solution is simple.

From my last assessment, the pricing for Cohesity DataProtect was reasonable. Compared to its closest competitor, Rubrik, I found Rubrik's pricing to be somewhat high-end. While Rubrik may have more advanced security features than Cohesity DataProtect currently, Cohesity DataProtect is releasing a new solution in the near future that will compete directly with Rubrik.

I have evaluated other solutions, such as Rubrik.

I have recommended the solution to multiple customers, and it has been well-received. While we do not currently use it internally, we have successfully recommended it to new customers who have implemented it based on our suggestion.

I would recommend that others give Cohesity DataProtect a try, provided that their environment can support it. It is important to note that like any other solution if it is deployed in a poorly designed environment, it may not perform well. However, in a well-architected environment, Cohesity DataProtect is a reliable and robust solution.

I rate Cohesity DataProtect an eight out of ten.

We basically have standard use cases such as backing up our virtual machines on VMware and restoring them if we need to.

The most valuable aspects of the solution include being able to select sources and set a schedule, set up a backup time, and be able to restore.

It's stable. 

I can't identify a specific area that needs improvement. 

They could always keep up with continuous interface refinements.

I've used the solution for almost a year.

The stability is good. I'd rate it nine out of ten. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable. 

It's very scalable as a solution. I'd rate it nine out of ten.

We have five users on the solution.

I personally haven't dealt with technical support in the past, however, one of my colleagues has. My understanding is the experience was positive. We were able to close the ticket.

I wasn't too involved with the initial setup. Some other team members were.

The deployment took a few months. We had a team of four people in place to deploy the solution. One was a network engineer. The other one was a systems analyst. There were also a couple of network analysts.

I don't have any details about the pricing.

We evaluated a couple of other products. Rubrik was one of them, and obviously, we selected Cohesity.

I'd advise potential new users to just compare it to something else, and maybe you'll arrive at the same conclusion that we did - that it's a good product.

It's a good product. It integrates pretty tightly with our VMware infrastructure.

I'd rate it nine out of ten.

Our primary use case is for backup and DR. We have two clusters. One is all-flash. The other is a DR cluster with spinning disks. We use the all-flash to host shared storage, as well as a number of other services. We also use a number of other features such as SmartFiles. SmartFiles allows us to host all of our shared storage on the all-flash nodes, while keeping a DR ready copy on the DR cluster. This frees us from the constant management of a traditional Windows SMB environment and allows us to maximize up-time. 

The seamless backup and restore functionality has made file recovery and patch Tuesdays inconsequential. VM and SQL cloning in the test and dev feature sets allow us to immediately bring up backups both to test or for immediate availability (if needed). The VM can stand up within the Cohesity cluster and live vMotioned to our production VMware cluster. 

While other solutions might take hours to recover a VM, we can instantly bring one up and have our users back to work. The file recovery is equally simple, with the ability to clone entire SMB shares with a click.

Cohesity DataProtect is just one suite of features. Obviously, instant recovery and a live VM environment to bring up backups in would be the top feature set, however, there is so much more. 

ShareFiles allow for SMB shares to be stood up in minutes. Currently, we store our surveillance, user shares, department shares, and a number of other internal shares on SmartFiles. We even have a witness share for our SQL clustering. 

With instant DR failover using SiteContinuity, we are able to keep our files available no matter the situation.

DataProtect is a full-featured backup suite. Better support for legacy platforms would be nice, but we should be moving off those anyway. 

The marketplace app stability is still an issue at times. The company is very quick and hotfixes are released regularly. Their support is really fantastic, and I’ve only had one notable outage relating to an update. Ultimately it boiled down to a configuration error on my part, so I suppose I can’t blame them too much for that. 

Now that we have added additional nodes stability has been much better. 

I've been using the solution for two years.

With only one (self-inflicted) outage, I would say it is very stable. 

Adding nodes is trivial and can be scaled out to petabytes easily. 

I’ve had many experiences with Cohesity support. They clearly keep support a primary concern and I’ve never had a bad experience. Recently, I had to submit a P1 case, and I had two top-tier engineers on the phone within 10 minutes. 

Previously we used CommVault. We needed a more agile and robust solution. 

The setup is simple. We simply had to assign the interfaces an IP, set up our port aggregation, and create the cluster. 

We had Cohesity support come on-site to assist, however, we were there every step of the way. The Cohesity PS teams are very knowledgeable. 

Unfortunately, I am not privy to the business side of this decision, however, we've recovered from ransomware successfully without paying any ransom. Considering the organization wouldn’t exist any longer without Cohesity, I would say it was worth it. 

I would advise others to invest in their backup infrastructure. It is literally the most important solution you will purchase for business continuity. As a ransomware survivor, I cannot stress enough how valuable this solution is. 

We did evaluate other solutions and Rubrik was a major contender. Ultimately, Cohesity won out with a Cisco Hyperflex platform and superior support. 

We have two primary use cases. The first was a replacement for magnetic tape backups via Backup Exec. We were tired of continually handling physical tapes, the increasingly long backup windows, and the cost of all of the tape infrastructure. We are backing up about 20TB of data between VMware and legacy NAS appliances.

Our second use case was a replacement for a legacy IBM/NetApp device and a legacy NETGEAR NAS. Both devices were substantially older with no inline compression or dedupe. We were running out of space at a time when we knew that modern storage features such as compression and deduplication would give us substantial space savings.

The change has been night and day. Our backups have gotten MUCH faster and MUCH simpler. Our weekend full-backups were taking close to 48 hours to write to LTO8 tape. We are capturing a full backup nightly now in under three hours for all of our VMware and NAS data. We are able to replicate that data to our colocation facility seamlessly.

The storage features have been easy to use right out of the box. We have been able to provision "copies" of our legacy NAS devices into Cohesity for testing purposes in seconds. Speed is substantially faster than our legacy devices, even with Cohesity's lowest tier of storage.

The backup features have saved us enormous amounts of time and money already. We have been able to stop buying media, stop licensing BE, stop paying for service on the physical backup server, stop paying for service on tape library, and stop paying for another Windows Server license.

The restores are easy to do and have made it so that we can incorporate restores into our troubleshooting processes. The fact that we can provision copies of storage in a few seconds has been great for testing. Cohesity has a growing pool of third-party apps that can run on your Cohesity environment. Antivirus tools and tools to analyze file usage patterns are things we are looking to utilize in the near future.

There were a few things that required quick support calls in order to get to function correctly. We were told that the issues that impacted us were going to be corrected on the next release and would not impact other customers.

We would love to see direct compatibility with HPE Simplivity, which we also leverage.

Cohesity could do a little better job communicating features in new releases and helping customers to understand when features will be released. For example, I found literature indicating that version 6.3.1 would have support for Active Directory backups when installed. That feature appears to have been pushed to version 6.4, but is still available in 6.3.1 if you call support and have them toggle it on.

We have had Cohesity installed for about six months.

This solution is very stable. Upgrades are easy and do not require downtime. Set and forget.

We haven't had to scale and don't anticipate needing to do so in that we bought enough capacity to last us for some time. However, based on my other experiences with the software, I don't think this would be an issue.

We have had a few support tickets, which have been dealt with quickly and appropriately. We did have one ticket where we requested an escalation and this was also handled appropriately. Support did a good job of periodically checking with us to verify that the fix resolved our issue, which it did.

We previously used Backup Exec teamed with an IBM Tape Library for magnetic tape backups. Legacy IBM/NetApp and NETGEAR NAS devices were also replaced by Cohesity.

The initial setup was very straightforward. It took a couple of hours for each cluster at each of our sites.

Our Cohesity sales engineer along with an engineer from our VAR assisted in getting the solution in place. Each cluster in each location took a day to deploy.

We have not calculated a formal ROI, but we have already saved tons of time. I expect the system to probably pay off within the first two years.

We looked at Rubrik and StorageCraft.

Rubrik seemed like a solid product but was substantially more expensive then Cohesity. They also did not do anything outside of backups. StorageCraft offers good value but doesn't have the same expansive features as Cohesity.

We have been very happy with Cohesity and it has solved several major problems for us. At the same time, they are aggressively adding and further refining features.

We are now backing up our O365 email via Cohesity, which is something we didn't even know it could do when we purchased it.

They really are developing a great platform for unstructured data and backups.

We use the solution for backup.

The tool is faster and easier to use than others. The most critical feature for our data protection needs is the accuracy of backups and restores.

Cohesity DataProtect needs to improve its reporting capabilities. 

I have been using the product for two years. 

The solution has been stable, and we haven't had any significant challenges with stability.

The scalability works well for all our systems—we have various servers with two to three petabytes of data. Data recovery is pretty fast. We can bring up VMs instantly and haven't had any issues.

We earlier used Commvault and switched to Cohesity DataProtect since it was easier to use. 

While I didn't take part in the initial setup, I understand that the setup is relatively easy. Maintenance is also pretty easy.

I rate the overall solution an eight out of ten. 

We use the product as a primary backup. 

Cohesity DataProtect is easy to deploy and operate. 

You need to put the full name instead of a few letters while searching for backup. It should also improve customization. 

I have been using the product for more than a year. 

Cohesity DataProtect is very stable. 

The product is scalable. My company has eight users. 

The tool's deployment is easy. The deployment takes around 30 minutes to complete. 

Cohesity DataProtect supported us during the deployment. 

The tool's licensing costs are yearly. It is cheaper than other backup solutions. 

I rate Cohesity DataProtect an eight out of ten.