Cohesity DataProtect Reviews

We use two versions — one version is deployed on the cloud, the other version is on-premise. 

We use Cohesity with Windows Servers, SQL, Microsoft SQL Servers as well as Hyper-V, AHV and VMware VMs.

I am the primary backup operator. There are two to three people that assist me.

The Cohesity views are valuable to us just because of the speed of the backup and recovery options — Cohesity VM backups are good for us. We have both VMware and Hyper-V.

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 as well.

We've certainly had our share of problems with it. Since March, I think we've opened about 150 tickets with Cohesity for support for various issues; we're averaging 4 tickets a week with them. We're working through the issues that we have, but it seems like, on many levels, we're rewriting their code to make it work in our environment.

We, as a city, a local government — we have a lot of old legacy hardware, old operating systems, and old applications.

Commvault was pretty good about supporting those legacy operating systems that we still have in our environment, which includes things like Windows 2000 and Windows 2003. I understand that Cohesity has to keep up with the times and everything, but our inability to back up some of those older platforms is a pain point for us.

I'd like to be able to pause a backup while it's running and have it resume when I tell it to resume. Unfortunately, I can't do that today. I have to basically kill or cancel a job — that's one of my biggest pain points. I'd like the ability to backup clustered file servers, which I can't do today. I have to back them up as NAS devices basically, as opposed to Windows Servers. Those are my two biggest pain points. 

I have been using Cohesity DataProtect for roughly nine months.

One of our Cohesity nodes apparently partitioned itself off from all the other nodes.
We have a five-node cluster, and that was preventing one of our SQL backups from running; it sat there for roughly two days in this partition state. Then, just as suddenly as it partitioned itself, two days later it unpartitioned itself, and the backup eventually completed. It took two days to back up what normally takes about 20 minutes.

Nobody's really been able to explain anything about that to me, other than that somehow a node partitioned itself away from the cluster. I don't know what that means, but yeah, it screwed us up for a few days.

We've had to add nodes — that was pretty simple. We did run into some problems with the IPMI Lights Out Interface, but I wasn't involved in that. As far as I know, once we worked through that issue, it just added itself to the cluster, and all of a sudden we had 20 terabytes of additional storage and a bunch of extra CPU and RAM. 

Sometimes, getting help from support can be difficult. On a scale from one to ten, I would give their support a rating of three.

Although we have full support with them, 24/7, it seems like we always fall into this email support model first, as opposed to just picking up the phone and calling me and telling me exactly what the problem is. When we speak over the phone, the issue is usually resolved within a few minutes.

But it takes four weeks to get to that point, after a couple of weeks of exchanging one email a day. They'll say, "Oh, we'll try this." Then I say, "Okay. I tried that." After a couple of weeks of that, I feel compelled to escalate matters through our account manager — "Why can't you just pick up the phone and call me? We can fix this right now."

We used to use Commvault but we switched to Cohesity DataProtect mainly for cost reasons.

We also switched to Cohesity for the ability to backup to the Cloud. The version of Commvault that we were using at the time was tape-only, and we didn't want to pay Commvault to upgrade.

It wasn't an easy install for us. 

Like I said of our legacy environment, we had an old VMware environment that the latest supported versions of DataProtect would not backup through vCenter. We had to build multiple legacy Cohesity environments to try to get those backups so that legacy VMware environments could work. It probably took five or six tries before we finally said, "Screw it, we'll upgrade the VMware environment". We were finally able to do it because we were able to get some licensing from another department that they were no longer using. Otherwise, we would still be stuck on legacy — with Cohesity backing up legacy VMware. 

As always, there was a learning curve that comes with learning a new product, and trying to get our DBA's involved in SQL backsups, etc. That's something that they've not really been involved with in the past with Commvault — we always managed that. There was some learning curve for them as well.

Overall, it's a good product when it works — don't hesitate to go with it, just make sure you get a good implementation engineer from Cohesity that can answer all your questions. Be sure to ask questions every step of the way. They also have a pretty decent training program; I've gone through a few of their training courses and those are useful. Definitely, I would recommend that anybody that's putting it in for the first time, definitely attend a couple of their all-day, six to eight-hour-long courses, and take some of their administrator-type courses.

Overall, once we worked through some of the problems we had, it's been pretty good. Not counting the tech support who I rate low, but the overall product, on a scale from one to ten, I would give Cohesity a rating of eight out of ten. 

Primarily, we back up our VMs on the solution. All kinds of VMs are backed up on it. Not all of them we back up, however, the major ones we do.

The most valuable aspect for me is that I don't have to deal with media in terms of tapes like our existing system does.

Pricing was one of the big features. We chose it largely based on this.

The solution scales well.

We've found the product to be stable.

It's my understanding that the initial setup is simple. 

In terms of the solution overall, it's so far so good. I'll have to check with my team, however, so far, from my perspective, it's working great. We aren't missing any features.

We just got the solution last May. We haven't used it for too long just yet.

The stability has been good. There aren't bugs or glitches and it doesn't crash or freeze. It's quite reliable. 

The scalability has been fine. It's used by us, the IT department. We back up the servers for our entire organization.

I haven't had to call tech support. I can't speak to how helpful or responsive they are. 

As far as I know, the initial setup was pretty straightforward. My team members dealt with all that. I did not directly participate. 

We have a team of five people that can handle maintenance duties such as updates, et cetera. Both users and sysadmins can get into it if they need to. 

Our team members handled the implementations. 

The pricing is pretty good overall. It's less expensive than some competitors, such as Rubrik.

I'd rate the solution at a five out of five. It's quite affordable. That said, I can't speak to the exact pricing. There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees. 

We were going against another option. It was between Cohesity and another vendor, a pretty big player, called Rubrik. The pricing was better with this solution.

We're a customer and an end-user.

We have an appliance and cloud. We have two deployment models. 

I would advise those considering the solution to watch the demo and compare it to Rubrik and make your own opinion.

I'd rate the solution at a nine out of ten. 

We primarily use the solution for backing up SQL Databases, Sybase Databases, SAP HANA, Kubernetes clusters, active directories, NAS services, some Azure services including virtual machines, Office 365 (Exchange mailboxes, Sharepoint Sites, Teams Data), VMware virtual machines, and much more

We're using Cohesity clusters in different locations which are replicating the backup data each to another location. Replication is working fine. 

We're using more and more NAS services for SMB Fileshshares, for example, for Citrix Profiles with FSLogix.

All backups are working flawlessly. The replication of backups has never been easier. Cohesity cluster replication is a great feature! 

There is no need to buy licenses for any new features or backing up new software products. If Cohesity is supporting it, you can just use it. Their list of supported backup sources is impressive!

You just have to license the amount of storage you are using. It does not matter how/for what you are using this storage. You can shift it from backup to NAS usage without any problem. 

The backup is radically simplified. Backup and replication have not been easier. It is simply working! Replication to the cloud? No problem! Backing up new software? No problem! Have to set up a new NAS service? No problem! 

Cohesity really is a Next-Gen Data Management Software.

By using their Helios Cloud service, you have all your clusters, no matter where they are located, in one web portal. You can view all errors and information in one place and you do not have to connect to each cluster itself. There is also a Helios App for your smartphone.

Quality testing of upgrades should be somewhat improved. There really are many upgrades for new features and I really like that. Nevertheless nearly every upgrade brings its own bugs. Cohesity support, however, is really good and they always know how to solve these problems. 

While support does ask the customer if they are allowed to restart service XXX or set parameter X to Y, they never explain if this affects your business or if there can be any further problems by settings the parameters. As a customer, you have to agree to something you cannot really estimate. 

I've used the solution for about a year.

We had been using Dell EMC Avamar, however, we switched to Cohesity due to their pricing and due to the fact that Avamar was a mess. 

We are using this solution for the DataProtect feature in our VMware environment. It is also protecting SQL and Exchange 2013 servers.

We have two clusters that replicate to each other; this process is also very fast.

This solution has given us a three-fold performance increase.

The most valuable feature is the instant mass restore of VMs. I am able to restore VMs in a few minutes.

The other great thing is the Google search, as it helps a lot and accelerates the restore process.

Apps are very cool too!!

The Cloud Archives are very easy to configure. We are using AWS Glacier.

Fully hydrated Snapshots give you the ability to do incremental forever.

The GUI is simple and very responsive.

This solution is easy to manage. Just a quick look to the dashboard every morning and that's it. You will spend ten minutes, max, of your day on Cohesity.

Being able to take a backup of OneDrive and Sharepoint in Office 365 would be great. It is in the Roadmap, but we would like to see it in the next release of this solution.

This solution is only compatible with a limited number of storage arrays, including Pure and Cisco Hyperflex.

The cloud management solution needs a little more development.  Now it is really like the same dashboard than the one you are using locally.  They put some AI in the prediction  of when you will be out of space but I would appreciate more AI to discover malware (but is in the road map for version 6.4 I think)  .

This is a stable solution. It is running by itself.

The scalability of this solution is impressive.

Technical support for this solution is excellent.

Our previous solution which was Quest Rapid Recovery. We switched because of the performance, which is three times better with Cohesity.

The initial setup of this solution was very easy.

Implementation took only a few hours and backups begin the same day it has been physically racked.

We were assisted by the vendor team. The knew what they were doing!

In a few hours, the solution was in production.

Prior to choosing this solution, we evaluated Rubrik and Commvault.

The software is running by itself! It was a very great acquisition for us.

Most customers use the solution for file backups, particularly for NAS file sharing. They back up files from Microsoft Windows OS to ensure they can restore data when needed. They also perform periodic temporary restores to verify the functionality of their backups.

The platform is highly customizable and adapts well to changing conditions. The snapshot features are the most valuable because they allow rapid restoration and provide dedicated space for longer snapshot retention.

I would like security improvements, such as enhanced backup immutability and better tape storage connectivity. Reducing storage capacity requirements and improving security features are also areas that could be enhanced.

I have been working with Cohesity DataProtect for one year.

The solution is stable, with regular updates and patching. 

I rate the stability an eight. 

I rate the product's scalability as an eight.

The product's technical support is quite good. It is available 24/7 and has a high response rate, although it sometimes requires multiple communications to resolve issues fully.

Positive

The initial setup is relatively easy and involves configuration, integration with backup targets, and virtualization management. The deployment process usually takes about two weeks from the initial setup to installation, depending on the availability of hardware. It typically involves preparing the server, configuring it with either Linux or Windows, integrating it with the backup solution, connecting it to source storage, and managing the backup targets.

I rate the process a nine out of ten. 

Integrating the platform with the Acropolis Nutanix management solution is particularly valuable. It simplifies management by providing a unified interface for backup solutions.

Overall, I rate the solution a seven.

We are the largest organization in Europe and have 10,000 servers in-house being protected by Cohesity. We use several solutions including Archive, DR, SAP, Oracle, VMware, and others.

Our business thrives on Cohesity storage. Cohesity makes data management as simple as Sign Up, Connecting, and Protecting through new SaaS offerings for backup and disaster recovery.

We have been testing DataProtect delivered as a service for some time, and we are very pleased with its performance. The UI is simple to navigate, and data ingestion and retrieval have been a snap.

However, the solution shared and features released are pre-matured. It needs more testing and hardening.

Before Cohesity, we were mostly de-centralized in operations. After implementing it, our operations are now managed in a single pane of glass.

We have achieved a single source of operation and observation for backups. Every team has a stake in operations, and policy management helps to delegate the proper roles.

The storage costs and storage area occupied are now reduced dramatically.

We are using almost all of the features available in Cohesity today.

Our favorite feature is DataProtect but there are many good features that are part of the DataPlatform. 

We use Cohesity to eliminate mass data fragmentation by consolidating our silos onto a single, easy-to-manage software-defined platform that is managed using a single pane of glass.

The dashboard is very rich and provides the details needed for a moderator.

Cohesity needs more hardening, in terms of stability. From our experience, we noticed gaps in the product function and the solution guides and documents. Better documentation is needed because the lack of information has necessitated having our team depend more heavily on Cohesity support. We need to have a more self-sufficient system.

More automation is needed for easier management.

We have been using Cohesity DataProtect for the past five years.

Stability-wise, Cohesity is moderate and needs more hardening.

We found scaling Cohesity to be very challenging.

The product team and Cohesity representatives are always reachable and fill the gaps that are not available in the documentation.

Prior to using Cohesity, we were using Agility Data Backup and Recovery.

We are moving to Cohesity by migrating existing backup/storage solutions. We switched because were not confident in delivering backup solutions and managing SLAs.

The pricing model is impressive and very effective.

Prior to implementing Cohesity, we evaluated solutions by IBM, NetApp, Commvalut, and Rubrik.

We have a customer that is looking to consume cloud-based workloads in AWS. This is why we are looking to Cohesity to be able to protect those workloads in the public cloud. Additionally, they have Commvault on-premise, which they may want to switch out with Cohesity in the future.

The most valuable features of Cohesity DataProtect are SpanFS and the handling of hybrid workloads.

Cohesity DataProtect can improve in the area of databases. We have had some challenges with both Cohesity and Rubrik being able to effectively back up in a timely manner the SQL Oracle workloads.

In an upcoming release, they should add more migration capabilities across public clouds.

I have been using Cohesity DataProtect for approximately four years.

I have not heard of any stability issues, such as bugs and glitches. My impression of the Cohesity DataProtect is that it is fairly stable.

The file system is able to be scaled.

The founders came from Google and their Google file system is very good.

The technical support is good.

We previously used Veeam and it is not as function in the cloud as Cohesity DataProtect is and this is why I prefer Cohesity DataProtect.

The solution has a good interface making the installation straightforward.

I would recommend those wanting to implement Cohesity DataProtect to do a proof of concept and have a list of success criteria that they are trying to meet and go on from there.

I rate Cohesity DataProtect a nine out of ten.

We use the cluster for local backup and restore as well as for sending backups offsite. We make use of the file server capabilities as well. We can spin up test and dev workloads as needed without impacting our production storage. This solution replaced Veeam and ExaGrid.

Backups and restores are much faster and we were able to increase our backup frequency where it made sense to do so in order to have lower RPO. We were also able to move our backup solution off of the fiber channel, which will help with our eventual decommissioning of that portion of our infrastructure.

Instant volume mount and the SpanFS filesystem itself, which has great dedupe and compression across all of our backups. Our admins have been able to run restore jobs with little training, as well. The dashboard makes it easy to see if you have any issues with your backup jobs.

Reporting is one area that isn't as robust as it could be. The next release supposedly improves upon that but I have not seen it yet.

We had real issues with restores on our older Red Hat 5.x systems, but we have upgraded those and no longer need support for that OS. 

We previously used Veeam and ExaGrid. We liked Veeam, but we did not see any innovation out of ExaGrid and they were becoming progressively more expensive. I was wary of vendor lock-in if we continued to invest in that platform. The speed of their solution was just not good enough for us.

I advise others to spin up a Cohesity virtual edition on their infrastructure. We ran backups in parallel for a month to test all features before even bringing in test hardware. Spinning up the virtual edition was quick and painless.

We evaluated Veeam with other back end storage as well as Rubrik. Rubrik looked nice but was more expensive and we felt it was lacking features. It would have been a step up from our tired ExaGrid solution.

I would say that Cohesity seems like they are a very forward looking company. They are adding features with each release and seem to be investing heavily in extending their product. I feel like we will get good value out of our investment.