Cohesity DataProtect Reviews

We were using Backup Exec and IBM's TSM for our Intel and PowerPC systems, respectively at our data center. Add to that the monthly tapes from our two dozen remote locations, and you had a tape mess. We started having tape drive failures at the remote locations and were tired of playing the game of upgrading tape technologies and drives. Our SME for the TSM platform was leaving the company, and rather than spend time learning that system, we wanted a single solution that could protect all our data.

While we're still new in the implementation, we are excited that we now have a single point of view for all of our backups. As we begin to roll out the virtual nodes to our remote locations, we're looking forward to not having to hassle with tapes anymore as the data will be automatically replicated across multiple locations.

The search abilities are very impressive, and we hope to soon start to leverage immutable archiving off to the cloud to replace the tapes. All of this, from a single pane of glass.

The most valuable feature is ease of use. Even our manager can figure it out. It sounds like a joke, but really, it is that simple. Being able to tell Cohesity where to put the data and when, and let the system find out the logistics of how to best do it and still have your data protected.

We were also starting to feel the struggle with secondary data fragmentation, having multiple copies of a file across locations that were different versions. The users just accepted it as business as usual, but now we will be able to serve much of that via a large NFS share.

There is limited support for legacy systems, which is something that could be improved.

We have been using this solution for a PoC for several months.

Setup can be a little tricky, but support is there to walk you through it at every step.

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

Officially, we do plan to implement this solution one day.

We're new enough to the system, and we are excited about it enough that we are still in the 'Honeymoon' phase. With respect to legacy support, we don't have funds to stay up to date with a lot of leading things. There is also a mentality of 'if it is not broken, do not fix it' with systems that we are working to overcome. This almost made it a deal-breaker for us, but Cohesity came to rescue with support for our versions.

Secure backup solutions that can replicate off-site to a variety of secondary storage solutions, including other Cohesity clusters.

We have quick, reliable, verifiable backups that replicate off-site. The system is easy to administer and troubleshoot. Support is quick to respond and helpful. We used to have Avamar, and they were none of those things.

• Replication
• Easy SQL and VM restores
• Clones for the development environment
• I can do fewer full SQL backups because the retires will auto replay the log file backups for me.
• Full SQL backups essentials happen every hour, but they are a combo of full and log backups, and restore takes no longer because of auto log replays. 
• VM backups are quick as are restores.
• Google cloud archival was easy to set up.
• The Google project side was more difficult than setting up an archive. 
• Replication to other Cohesity clusters is a breeze.

Navigation is sometimes a challenge from the aspect of drilling down into details which isn’t normally needed.

We utilize Cohesity as our backup solution, it provides tiered backup layers of our VMware and physical environment as well as replaces tape storage for archival uses.

We no longer need to use tape storage, which saves us many hours of effort managing them. Additionally, we have a very responsive environment for recoveries and test/dev.

We love the near-instant recovery windows, as well as the ability to sync our latest backups to amazon web services for offsite DR.

We don't love the Exchange integration, it works fine but requires a third-party application called Kroll. We'd rather have a built-in solution to manage Exchange messages/DB level restores such as what Veeam provides.

It's relatively new, but it's growing rapidly, and their support team has been excellent when we've needed them.

Excellent scalability, just add more nodes.

Extremely fast response both to email and phone, very knowledgeable.

We've used multiple solutions in the past, most recently Veeam for VMware backup and doing long-term archiving to tape. We liked the built-in dedupe/compression features of Cohesity, the near-instant recovery, and the cloud archival options.

Fairly straightforward, especially with a VAR assistance.

VAR and a Cohesity rep.

It's not cheap, but you get what you pay for, and it is really an all-in-one solution.

ExaGrid and sticking with Veeam.

Cohesity DataProtect has numerous features, backup only being one of them. The solution's main product involves the data platform and consists of object storage, the file server and hyper convergence storage features. Their focus is right there. So, their backup software has been very helpful in respect of object storage and the file server. These depend on the data platform. 

For the customer, Cohesity DataProtect allows him to have a single solution, ranging from software backup to hardware, all contained within a single contact. 

The solution boasts good retention, as it is global in a single platform and, since they have their own appliance, it is scalable as well. This makes it easier to create a retention from the backup. 

The pricing of the solution could be better, as it is quite high when compared with the competition, Veeam, Veritas and Rubrik. 

The solution offers many features, so my one reservation involves the pricing. 

The solution has a more complex setup than Veritas and Veeam. 

The solution is stable. 

The solution is scalable. 

We do not have experience with technical support, so I am not in a position to guage it. 

We do not do implementation only as concerns the data protection, but must also implement the storage and then the appliance. I consider the implementation of Cohesity DataProtect to be more complex than those of Veritas and Veeam. 

A consultant was needed for the implementation. 

The solution's pricing is quite high, more so than that of its competitors, Veeam, Veritas and Rubrik. 

Veeam, Veritas and Rubrik offer more cost effective solutions than that of Cohesity DataProtect, whose pricing is quite high. 

Veritas and Veeam have easier setups than Cohesity DataProtect. 

Cohesity is still new to Indonesia. 

I rate Cohesity DataProtect as a seven out of ten. 

Backing up of our virtual environment (VMware) by replacing our current backup software that is more of an old fashion solution: not very scalable and not really well designed for multitenancy.

I was surprised to see how well the Cohesity appliances performed and how easy the setup was. After a couple of hours, the cluster was up, and we were able to take backup of our VMware infrastructure. After that, I tested a few backups and restores, and everything was running smoothly.

The product is easy to put in place, all backups are done very quickly, and it's easy to perform restores. What I prefer in the product is its simplicity. No useless settings to define, everything is ready just after the initial setup.

I also had the opportunity to deploy new nodes and upgrade the cluster; everything is well thought and is running very well. 

Currently, the product is lacking some features like BMR and backup for the cluster, but I think these are things that would be added in a few months.

So far so good, I've never had any major issue, and deployment of the cluster was really easy.

The solution is highly scalable.

So far so good, a few little issues, nothing dramatic but support was able to help.

Their support site already contains a lot of information where most of the answers you might have can be found.

The solution we had before was not very reliable, not scalable, and the security was poor.

Very easy to do, not much documentation to read, and really easy to work with. Everything is logical, and you can easily do what you want to do.

One Cohesity team came during the POC, but it was really easy. So as a test, I also reinstall the cluster myself very quickly when all requirements are met.

Pricing is fair for what the product does, compared to our previous solution, it's even cheaper.

We will also save a lot of money on the support as we had a lot of issues with the previous product.

We also checked Commvault and Rubrik.

Commvault was also a very complete solution but much more difficult to put in place. Also, the lack of hyperconvergence on the storage side was a blocking factor.

Rubrik was very similar to Cohesity, but we liked in Cohesity the NAS, TEST/DEV and WORM options that allow us to use it for our archives.

Cohesity offers the possibility to do a free POC, so if you have any doubt, try it, and I am sure you will see a lot of their advantages.

We primarily use it for data recovery and backups. We use VMware vSphere for our virtualization, and they fit together seamlessly.

It has mainly given us peace of mind knowing that our backups are going to work, and we will be able to easily restore our data, if needed.

The file/folder search feature is great. I also love the ability to clone a virtual server in only minutes.

I would like to see Cohesity have the ability to do a file level restore from a Windows server, which is storing data on dynamic disk.

No stability issues.

We have not needed to scale over one box.

Customer support is great.

We used EMC NetWorker with Data Domain.

The setup was fairly simple.

The vendor was there every step of the way to make sure the implementation was successful.

We are not sure yet.

Cohesity comes with the software and storage/hardware together.

We evaluated Veeam.

It is a great product. I recommend it.

We primarily use the solution for VMware Backup and SQL backups that are replicated and copied to the cloud.

They basically can do what Rubrik does. It's a backup device. There aren't necessarily any special features. 

What it does well, it does very well. It just works. 

The initial setup is easy.

It's stable.

The solution scales well.

It's not overly expensive.

Support needs improvement, but the product is fine when well deployed.

I've used the solution for a few months.

This is a solid product. It's quite stable. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable. 

I found the product to be scalable. You just add nodes if you need to. It's a hyper-converged solution, and scaling is easy.

I have not had a good experience with support.

Neutral

I am also familiar with Rubrik.

I've also worked with Commvault and find that you do have to do a lot of fine-tuning with it during implementation. This solution is easier. Commvault is also a lot more expensive. Cohesity has a simpler workflow and for people in operations, it's a blessing. 

The setup process is very straightforward and simple. It doesn't have huge requirements and it is not that complex. 

The pricing is okay. I'd rate it seven out of ten in terms of affordability. How expensive it is depends on how big the contract is. 

I'd advise potential new users to do their due diligence before, know what they want, and get some training.

I would rate the solution eight out of ten.

We use the Data Protector to back up all our VMware virtual machines, as well as a SQL Server and Microsoft Exchange. We're not that big of a company anymore. We have three people who know the product: two specialists and someone from second-line support who can handle the tickets. 

The most valuable thing about Cohesity is how it operates as a whole. We are very satisfied with the product as a whole—all the backup functions, the data protection functions. We are very satisfied with those, and the product is very simple to use. 

We have had our share of minor bugs over the past two years and a few bigger ones. But I think it's because the product has so many features, and they try to add new stuff reasonably quickly. For example, Cohesity adds certain functionality in what they call a "feature release." This doesn't mean a long-term release. They added new functionality very quickly, and it was things we needed that were not yet available in a long-term release. When I say "long-term release," I mean one that is more static and gets updated once every few months. We wanted the feature, but we had more issues than some of us might've liked.

On the other hand, they managed to fix all the bugs without significant issues like data loss or anything like that. So it was more an inconvenience than it was a real problem. But if I have to have any criticism of them, maybe it's that. There are some minor improvements on SQL Server backups that we are waiting on, five services. We had one problem that will be solved in one of the subsequent releases, but those are small things. We are not waiting on any major stuff. The product currently meets all our backup needs.

We have been using Cohesity for just two years.

Cohesity's stability is very good. We haven't had any major issues with that.

I would say Cohesity support is somewhere in between good and very good. But, of course, it depends on which region you get. We know that if we log a ticket before noon here in Belgium, we are not in the region where we want to be. It's something we told Cohesity about, as well. We asked them if they could arrange it so that our ticket will always get picked up by the people in Cork. For one thing, they're in our title. They're also much more capable compared to the other regions. But that's our experience. Generally, we are very satisfied with the support we are getting.

Setup is pretty simple, especially compared to the product we had before. It was an older legacy product that was much harder to implement. We deployed with the help of an integrator, but we do all the day-to-day maintenance on the product by ourselves.

We paid for the entire solution because we have done a few expansions already. I think it's between 400 to 600k. That is the price for the complete system, including the hardware, the support, the subscriptions for the software, I think for four to five years.

I rate Cohesity nine out of 10. So, I would recommend it because it's quite a simple product and can do a lot. With the last product we used, you had to be a specialist to navigate in it. It's a much more straightforward and modern interface—very intuitive to use. And the speed of the backups, we do much more backup than we ever did before. So, I would certainly recommend it, yes.