Commvault Cloud Reviews

We use it in the most traditional way: for backup and restore. We don't use it for all the other things that are also possible with it because we are quite a big company. We have all the specific tools we need for specific purposes.

We tested Commvault in the past for archiving, but in those days it was not really stable yet. So we selected other solutions for that.

We use Commvault on everything. We are using it in our own data centers but also in the cloud. We use Azure for most things, but we also are working on testing some things on AWS.

The benefits to our company are the performance and scalability and the willingness of Commvault to connect to talk with us about any requests we have for changing the product, and to do understand what we're looking for. If possible they also implement these things in quite a short amount of time. If a new feature is needed, or it should be doing A instead of B, they're always willing to listen to requests and build them. That's great.

The fact that the solution is a single platform has enabled our company to accelerate growth and drive innovation. We're using it in a traditional way but our resources and services are moving to the cloud. It helps that the way the product works, what we are used to doing in the traditional way on-prem, can be done the same way in the cloud. That makes it easier overall and makes the transition easier.

There are ways the solution helps our admins to minimize the time they spend on backup tasks, but in some ways, the solution doesn't. But that's more related to our way of working and not related to Commvault. Using it saves us about 40 hours in a month, thanks to its automation features.

In terms of saving on infrastructure costs, in our environment that's not measurable because we have a dedicated platform and dedicated infrastructure for it. But we see the benefits of the deduplication. It's saving petabytes in our environment.

The backup and restore activities are valuable and being able to use it in a hybrid space. You can easily back up on-prem and restore to the cloud and vice-versa. The scalability is also good.

The solution's interface is easy to use. For manageability, it doesn't matter where the resource is coming from or going to. That's the great power of the Control Panel: It's easy to use and does not matter if you manage on-prem or cloud resources.

Commvault works quite well as it is. But we are an MSP, so for us it's fairly hard to customize it for branding it.

There is also room for improvement in the multi-tenancy and security. That's been a hard thing for us and for Commvault as a vendor. Sometimes it's hard to implement new features in multi-tenancy environments. The new features are great, and it's good that they are there, but they are not always usable in an MSP environment.

The solution's breadth and depth of cloud support are good but could be better. Some cloud features that are common-sense, especially on AWS, are not completely integrated yet in the product. They are a work-in-progress. Overall, cloud is moving and innovating also very fast. That also makes it very hard for Commvault to comply with all the new features. Sometimes a cloud provider like Microsoft changes something and a feature is broken in Commvault.

We have been working with Commvault as a backup product for about 12 years now. As an MSP, it's very hard to switch from vendor to vendor. But the solution also works great. We have no real reason to switch to another product at this moment. We are always looking at the competitors, but not all the competitors can comply with all the things that we need.

It is very stable. We have some little issues with it, but when we have issues they're always related to the application we want to back up, not to the product itself. We ask a lot of the product; we use it in a fairly hard way on several things. Sometimes we hit the boundaries of the product and we encounter issues. But in day-to-day business, we don't see any real issues related to the infrastructure or the load we can give it.

It scales very well. If we need more capacity or more power for performance, then we add additional nodes without needing to do a complete redesign of the product or the environment. We can easily add extra power.

We have about 10,000 clients running with approximately 2 petabytes of data being backed up. That will double in the upcoming year to two years. We also have about 1,000 end-users of the product and most of them are doing restore activities.

Their technical support is very good.

But a hard thing for them is understanding how to work with an MSP. They assume, sometimes, that as an MSP, we have access to everything. But that's not the truth and it's not possible. That makes troubleshooting hard for us and for them as well. But they are quite fast in responding and try to help as quickly as possible. Still, most of the cases that we have with customer support need to be escalated directly to development.

We previously used an IBM solution. The main reasons we switched to Commvault were cost and complexity.

The setup of Commvault was complex but that's related to our environment. As an MSP we have very high security guidelines, so that made it hard. But that's not related to Commvault, it's related to our security environment.

Our deployment took almost a year. We had to make sure our design was good before we did anything. Most time of the implementation time was in the design phase. The actual building-up of the solution was quite fast. We were done in a month, starting from scratch.

For deployment and maintenance we need four to five people who are backup system admins.

We did it by ourselves.

We have seen ROI in several respects, but not as fast as we want.

We look at everything on the market. Every year to two years we do a new evaluation of the new techniques and products. We are always comparing it with Veeam, for example. We have Veeam running in several places. We test the two solutions and compare the results with each other.

Out-of-the-box, the manageability is one of the big differences. For end-users, sometimes Commvault is too complex and, while it's getting better and better with the latest versions, it is still not there. The most important thing is what my end-users say to me about using Veeam. It's very straightforward, easy-to-use, and does what it needs to do. Veeam and other competitors are point solutions. They are very good in specific situations and specific environments.

On the other hand, Commvault is a product that can manage a lot of things, and most competitors don't have the scalability and the large support-matrix for as many products, versions, and applications. Commvault allows us to use one product for almost everything. It's better than the competitors. We want to have everything in a single console, if possible, and that's what Commvault does for us.

The biggest lesson I have learned from using Commvault is to take your time. Especially in complex environments, the design stage takes a lot of time, but you need to do it well. Otherwise, you will have trouble in your implementation. We learned that the hard way. We wanted it built fast but, when the design was ready, we needed to rebuild several times.

Commvault is our primary solution for all backup and recovery; for index, for analytics, for everything.

When it comes to the storage that we use for backup and data aging, we were limited, at first, by the amount of storage that we could provide for onsite storage and archiving. Commvault's compression and deduplication within the application is allowing us to almost triple the amount of storage. For example, at one of our primary sites we're only able to store about 60 terabytes of capacity, but we actually back up 1.5 petabytes. We're able to squeeze that into the 66-terabyte license capacity. That is huge and saves us quite a bit of money in storage, and even more money on license capacity.

The solution also helps our admins to minimize the time they spend on backup tasks and to spend time on other projects. Throughout the corporation, we only have a handful of people who deal with the backup and recovery portion of our operations. With the number of requests that come in from time to time, it's nice to know that the single pane of glass, and the application as a whole, allow my engineers to quickly find an issue or resolve an issue that our users are having.

All its features are useful and beneficial, but if I had to pick two it would be the reporting and the support that they offer.

I'm a big fan of the reporting. You can build your own reports; it's very customizable. You can have individual reports going to groups of people or individuals. You can have them go out multiple times a day. It's basically a free-for-all as far as reporting goes. If anybody wants a specific job report every day, you can build it, schedule it, and have it go out and never touched it again. It's pretty nice.

Commvault also provides us with a single platform to move, manage, and recover our data across on-premise locations. I've done it multiple times. I've restored files, virtual machines, databases; everything from one location to another location within the United States. I've moved virtual machines, databases, and files between the two. An easier solution than the normal way of moving a server or application is to run a restore to another location. It runs faster and it's encrypted. It provides us with ease of use, instead of using a third-party tool. And I know that everything, all the permissions, all the user access, remains the same no matter where I restore to.

Their single pane of glass solution is daunting at first. It's not the easiest interface but, as with anything that you use, eventually you'll get better and better at it. I've worked closely with their user experience team to improve their web-based command tool. 

We try not to use the CommCell tool that is provided, because it's a little old and a little too powerful to give everyone access to it. So we've started using their Command Center tool. At first, it was hard to find things with that, but you end up finding them. Command Center definitely gives us a complete view of our data. But finding some of the granular, very small items that we sometimes have to find, such as auxiliary copies for tapes, I still find that it's easier to navigate and, sometimes, only possible to find them using the CommCell tool. Maybe that's just an area that hasn't been added to the Command Center yet.

Since I only use the backup and recovery, I'm not using Activate or Orchestrate. And I am strictly on-prem so I'm not using any of the Metallic or Hedvig solutions. I can only speak for backup and recovery. I would like to see a little bit more access into the CommCell areas via the Command Center. That would be my only small request.

In 2019 there was a flaw with their Active Directory plan which didn't actually allow you to recover the full Active Directory properly. I brought that to their attention and they made the change and fixed it. That was the only area that needed to be fixed.

I have been using Commvault for five years.

It's very stable. To be completely frank, I beat the heck out of it, 24/7 and 365. We're a healthcare laboratory company that never closes. We're an around-the-clock operation in all of our locations. The backup jobs are running, and the reports are running, around the clock. Everything runs constantly but we have had zero downtime.

It scales out pretty easily. There's not much on the Commvault side that scales out; it's more the storage repository that's required. There's not much it can't do. 

One thing that I have been requesting is a Linux-based virtual server agent. You have to stick with Windows for the actual CommServe. We'd like to move to a Linux-based OS to release some licensing. I'm sure, eventually, that will come. We have a few Macs in our environment with Commvault on them. We don't often use the Edge client that they provide because the laptops and desktops we have use what is called DFS or file redirection. The files that they have saved are saved on the server instead of their laptop. Since we deal with PI and PHI, we can't have any of that stuff on a laptop. We have 10 Edge backup licenses and we have it on four or five of them, and one of them is a Mac.

Everybody in our company is affected by Commvault. We have about 7,500 employees and everybody uses a product or an application or a database or a server that is involved with Commvault.

For deployment and maintenance of Commvault we have just five people. That includes me as a data center manager and the other four are server engineers.

Commvault's support is a 10 out of 10. I've learned so much from the support. They're very fast and they're very flexible. If they can't figure out a solution right away, they offer a work-around pretty quickly and they always want you involved with the solution. They even offer custom solutions for things that their applications don't do. If you run into a service pack limitation or a limitation with the product itself, they'll actually add the solution they come up with as a feature in their application.

We needed to pick a global solution. I had been reading about Simpana, which is Commvault now, for a while and I had the opportunity to jump right into it and learn about it while deploying it. I had never used it. Everything, on paper, was exactly what we needed as far as it enabling a very granular setup goes, without it being a one-size-fits-all-application. That's what I liked about it: being able to customize and mold each location to use Commvault.

I had other requirements but they were requirements that I didn't know that I had until after I had found that I could do them in Commvault.

The setup is extremely easy. The first time I did it I was a little worried that I didn't do it properly because it was so easy. The overall configuration is a little bit more difficult, but that's roadmap-based configuration, so you have to think very far down the road when putting this together. You can't be thinking, "Oh, I only need this for a couple of months." It's a 10-year plan.

The setup itself took a couple of hours.

Since I had never used Commvault before, we had implementation support from Commvault. They walked me through it. They asked questions and I gave them answers and then they showed me what they were doing. What they showed me made sense. From there, the configuration started, which was mostly on my part. A lot of it was pretty straightforward. There are things that are difficult in a domain environment, things that take a little bit of configuration, such as setting up additional users and passwords for service accounts. But overall, it's a very streamlined process.

I think Commvault's model is now cost-efficient. When we first started with Commvault, I thought it was overpriced. I thought, "That's a lot of money for a piece of software." But as I used it, and developed a trust in and knowledge of the application, I definitely was made aware, very quickly, of how it was worth every penny. Over the years, it has actually become cheaper, due to the fact that I've become smarter about how to use it better. With that knowledge, you learn how to save money with the application.

I've used other solutions in the past, such as vRanger, Symantec Endpoint Protection, Metalogix for Exchange, as well as Data Domain. For data recovery, the others are definitely not as streamlined. I've had quite a few situations where I've had to recover large amounts of data but I don't have a comparison of the recovery times of Commvault versus the others because, in the last five years, all I've used is Commvault. All my large or business-critical restorations have been with Commvault. But judging by what I've done in the past, Commvault is far easier and far more consistent than any other application I've used.

In terms of advice, the biggest thing I would like to say is don't look at it as a dinosaur. A lot of people associate Commvault with being old and antiquated, and not having all the bells and whistles. If you look past that, you'll see that it's more far more capable than anything else that's on the market. You have to get through the complexity of the application and from there you have to trust that it will do what you want it to do.

The biggest lesson I have learned from using Commvault is don't be afraid to call support.

How we implement this solution in a government institution is a little tricky; it's more closed. One of our most important use cases is how we protect and back up documents and files from users outside of our building because we must follow security standards. We use only HTTPS protocols, a special proxy server, etc.

The solution helps our admins minimize the time they spend on backup tasks and to spend that time on other projects. It's not easy to calculate in minutes, but we have found that it's approximately 80 percent faster to do a backup and restore if we need to.

Using Commvault, we have saved on infrastructure costs. Before, we had a few other solutions for backup. Each of them asked for a data store for storage space. Now, with one solution, we have reduced the amount of hard disk storage in our platform. And with Commvault, the file compression is much more efficient than with other solutions. We currently have 50 to 60 TB in our data set, for the entire ministry with 350 users. Before Commvault, we used much more. I would estimate we are saving 60 to 70 percent of the storage we used to need.

I have also cut more than 50 percent of my daily tasks as a result of Commvault. I don't need to worry too much about backups because I know the system will do everything by itself. Every morning I get reports from Commvault and, if there is a problem, I will get a notification in my email. So it allows me to work on other things.

For now, we are very lucky that we have only needed the solution to restore some clients' data. Only once in the three full years that we have been using it did we need to restore our main mail server. There was a problem with the Windows update where the machine would not patch the Windows update and everything crashed. With two clicks we were able to restore the machine live, so we did not have to reinstall the machine. And a few times, Commvault has enabled us to restore a user's data set.

The most valuable feature is sharing data sets like they're in a private cloud. We call it our "private cloud" because we can share anything that is inside our backup set with our colleagues or with other people, and yet, everything is still in Belgrade, in Serbia. It's not somewhere else on cloud servers. Everything is in our environment. For example, our inspectors exchange data between themselves, so they put everything in one folder and anyone with rights can see it. That is a feature that we use very often.

Another important feature is the protection against ransomware. If an employee gets a virus on their computer we will not worry about it, or if their computer is hit by ransomware, their data will be protected in the backup. That feature is very nice.

In addition, there is a new feature for GDPR regulations and protecting personal data. We don't use it fully because it's new and we are still experimenting and trying to make things easier for all of us. But we could say, "Okay, this database has some personal data in it so please do extra tracking, ask for more credentials, etc., to be sure that nobody can reach that info unless they're supposed to. That is a very nice feature.

The Commvault Command Center is good. Even when I'm not in the office, I can track and see that everything is okay with my system. The Commvault team uses it for protecting our make system and to make it better. They see the health of the system, what features we use often, or not, to help with right-sizing the software.

Overall, we like the fact that it's a single platform for everything. We have one console that has everything that we need. We can add or remove users, retire a user, add a new server, or even start a backup by itself. We don't need to go to the client's site to fix something. We can do everything from the console, wherever we are. If we need to restore a client's computer, we don't need to go there. It can be done from a local PC. We have 22 locations in Serbia, so it's not possible to visit all of them in one day. We can do everything from our console. The only requirement is that that computer is on, and we can do everything from one place. And with one click we can start a backup procedure for any server we want.

As a government office, we think about protecting personal data. Serbia is part of an open government partnership, which is a global project. Commvault should think about protecting open data, especially if there is personal data involved. Perhaps they could divide the data and say, "In this database is personal data and you cannot use it in an open data format."

And they can always improve the interface design to make it easier. Sometimes, you need to click two or three times to do something. They should look at what tabs are used most and make them more accessible, to cut the time it takes to get to that information.

I have been using Commvault since 2015.

We started by testing the solution with a local company, one of Commvault's local partners, here in Serbia. We first wanted to test how it would really work in our environment. After that, we procured it at the beginning of 2016. So in the summer 2016, we officially used it with our license. Before that it was just testing, tendering, procurement, etc.

Every type of software, even Microsoft, has some problems. It's not possible to make something without some patches or little bugs. But until now, over the years we have been using it, we haven't had any big problem where we said, "Oh, this is not working." We have had some problems and opened tickets and support has helped us very fast. 

We can say we are generally happy with Commvault. It's not possible to expect to buy something and never have a problem with it. That's especially true when you add something new; it depends on your hardware environment. It also depends on your network and your users' backup behavior. It's not possible that something will be perfect.

For our use, it scales well. They have many solutions, both on-premise and now, with this Metallic software as a service, you can use it on the cloud. So it's scalable. You can choose what you need and deploy it. 

As a government institution, we are not allowed to use public clouds. Everything must be in our data center. We can mix in a hybrid solution of private clouds and on-premise, but for now, we only use on-premise.

If we need something, if we have any problems, we can open a ticket and their support will help us, and they do very well. We must send an email to our local partner describing our problem and that we need Commvault support. They send it on our behalf to Commvault. Then Commvault opens a ticket. It's not possible for us to open a ticket directly. We need to go through our local partner. That path works for us.

We're happy with the support we receive from our partner. If it's something smaller, they try to fix it by themselves. But we usually open a ticket, in case something has happened or just to have the possibility of tracking all changes.

Commvault also has a very good portal where users, before opening a ticket, can try to find solutions. If others have had a similar problem, we may learn how to solve it.

Before Commvault we had other brands. We use Acronis Backup among others. We wanted to have just one solution for all our needs: for servers, for SQL Server, for laptops, etc. Our partner suggested we try Commvault and we saw that it was a good solution. It really helped us in dealing with backups, so we chose to buy it. Especially when you have public procurement, you cannot say I want to buy this particular solution. So it is tricky to do public procurement and get what you really need.

Our requirements included having one console for all systems. Before, we had Acronis for servers and we had Backup Exec for clients and we had Windows Backup for Windows servers, etc. So the main requirement was to have one place, one console, from which to manage everything: laptops, PCs, servers, databases, and everything. That was the main reason we wanted Commvault.

The second requirement was because we have employees who are outside of Belgrade; they are not sitting in our building. We needed the possibility of backing up their computers, computers that are not in our primary network. With Commvault we managed that very easily.

We now back up more than 70 PCs from our inspectors all around Serbia. With one solution we back up all of them. That was most important because people lose their computers and some computers crash. It was very necessary to have the possibility of protecting their data with a backup solution.

There were other factors as well, like having a partner in Serbia. Also, if we wanted to add new functionality we didn't want to have to buy other software or to experiment. We wanted to be able to just buy a license for the additional things that we needed.

For me, the initial setup was not so complicated, because I'm an IT guy. I understand what is needed. But if I look at it from the point of view of someone else, it's still not too complicated. The documentation is very well written and tells you what you need to do next. Of course, you need to know some rules about backups, but the installation is usually done by guys and girls who are in that field. A regular user will likely never install Commvault by him or herself. And even though I am not a technician and I am not a backup engineer, the setup was okay for me. I was able to understand what the system was asking and what I needed to do.

In terms of how long the deployment took, we tested it just to see if we could back up a part of our database. We have two networks. One is the primary, official, and public network, and the other has secret information. So we tested backing up both of them. Including testing, the deployment took around two months from zero to putting everything on. That also included deploying it on our system, connecting it with our storage, our databases, and installing it on some clients to see how the clients work.

Our implementation strategy for Commvault was very simple: Do it fast and secure all the information we need. We needed to back up everything we had. We just wanted to do it correctly, by the book, and to protect everything.

We used a local Commvault partner, Fractal Dimension, to deploy everything. They also provided some courses on administrating it in our institution. They did everything from the beginning to the end.

I have known Fractal Dimension for a very long time. We have worked with them on other projects here in the ministry. When we were looking for a backup solution they said, "Let's try Commvault."

I hope we have seen a return on our investment but it's not easy to measure in money, because we haven't had any big problems or lost any very important data. But generally, the ROI comes from not having to worry about these things. That may be the best return on our investment. I know that if there is a problem, I'll be able to restore without problems.

It's not cheap but it's not too expensive. We have a yearly contract for support from Commvault. Of course, even for that, we need to go through a public procurement process, because there are a few Commvault partners in our country. Our yearly cost is around €20,000.

There are no additional costs to the standard licensing fees. If we want to add a new feature or to buy new licenses for new clients, of course we have to pay more. The cost is based on the number of users and the amount of data. They sell it per terabyte.

We have a contract with Commvault through our local partner so that every year we enter into a new contract for the coming year for updating, upgrading, and support. That enables us to download and deploy every new version, service pack, and hotfix. The latest one is service pack 18 so that is what we are using. That was part of our requirements for a solution: to have the possibility of continuing with it, rather than buy it once and then stop updating. Our goal was to always have the newest version and to have support for tickets.

Whether the licensing model is cost-efficient depends. Government has needs that are different from the private sector. Banks and financial institutions, for example, have other needs. It depends on how they work with backups. Do they need a backup restored in five minutes or in five hours? For my system, if a computer doesn't work one day, it's not a big deal. But in a bank, if you cannot get your money in five minutes you get mad. But overall, the pricing is okay. For what you get, it's a good price compared to the market.

We only tested Commvault because our partner explained to us that it would probably do everything we needed. We spoke with them, had three or four meetings to explain what we really need and what our system looks like. After some weeks they came to us and said, "Okay, we think we have a solution for you." We only tested that solution because we didn't have much time to test others. It was almost the end of 2015 and we needed to budget for the next year.

The biggest lesson I have learned from using Commvault is that if I set everything right, everything by book, I can solve any kind of problem that I may potentially get. I know some people using other backup solutions didn't set everything up very well or by the book. But that is why companies make documentation and say that if follow the book you will not have problems. If you try to escape that and to take some shortcuts, if problems come up, nobody will be able to help you. A good lesson is to just follow the rules, according to the vendor.

We not only use this solution to restore data, but when clients get a new computer we don't need to spend time transferring their data from the old computer to the new computer, because that data is already part of the backup set. First, we decide what we will back up.  We separate their private data from official work documents and we back up only what they need for work. So when they get a new computer, we don't transfer data. If they want to transfer their private data, they do that themselves. We just install the Commvault agent on the new computer and say, "Okay, this is that person's new computer. Copy their backup set to their computer. In a few minutes, depending on how much data they have, their data set will be in their computer. That is another good way for using the backup set in our system. Doing it this way, we save almost a whole day it would take to transfer the old data.

The time it takes to restore data, comparing Commvault and other solutions, is approximately the same. What does make it faster, in general, is that we don't need to install another application. We just install the agent and each user can log in to their account and can choose what they want to restore. If they don't want to restore everything, they can just select what folders they want to have on that computer. In that way, it's faster. Because the solution is user-friendly and we have created a user manual for our users with print-screen illustrations, even people who are not so familiar with IT can follow the manual. It's easy. We don't need to go there physically or explain on the phone to the person how to do it. They have the manual and they just click this and that and everything they want is restored as it was.

In our organization there are only two IT guys, me and another colleague, who work with Commvault daily, to see if that it's okay. Other people, once in a while, need to restore a file, if they deleted it by mistake. 

Clients only need to check things if they get an email notification that their computer didn't back up in a given period of time. We put that in place in case there is some problem. After 10 days they will get email notification that in the last 10 days their computer didn't back up and to check if their computer is turned on. When people go on vacation for more than 10 days, they will get that notification but they know it's because they are away that their computer is off. But if they are at work and get that notification, they call us so that we can track what's happened. But in general, nobody else uses it daily.

In terms of maintenance of the solution, I learned on my own what I need to know, for now. If I have a question, I call our local partner, or I will read through the Commvault forum to see if anybody has said something about the issue, to know in which direction I should look.

We use it on-premise because we are a government institution. In Serbia, by law, we cannot use public cloud for government institutions. We have servers and storage in our data center. For this year, we plan to expand it to create a disaster recovery location in another public institution. We will make a disaster location on their site and they will make their disaster location in our data center. We will buy Commvault HyperScale and, with our local partner, we will set it up so that in case our data center is offline, we will have another location where our data is available.

There is no reason for me to rate them other than a 10 out of 10. When you have support online, you really see what they do. They are fast. If you open a support ticket, they will call you within 24 hours to check and to organize a session. You share your screen and work together to solve the problem. They have good partners and they have good marketing. So Commvault is a 10, without any doubt.

Customers who can’t afford storage on their on-premise servers can easily use the product to move to the cloud.

I like the Metallic Endpoint feature. Whoever has an Endpoint license can store unlimited data on the cloud. Commvault provides unlimited restoration for free. Other products have a limit on restoration. When we cross the limit, we must pay for restoration.

The product does not provide an option to save a copy of data on-premises.

I have been using the solution for three to five months.

I rate the tool’s stability a nine out of ten.

The solution is scalable. We have three to five customers using the tool.

Whenever we raise a ticket, the support personnel connects with us at the exact time that they committed to. I can rate the support team a ten out of ten without a doubt.

Positive

The on-premise solution is a lengthy one to configure. We can deploy the solution in three to four clicks, though. The product is purely cloud-based.

To deploy the tool, we must authenticate our email ID on Commvault. Then, we will get a link from which we need to generate a username and password. Once we enter that username and password, we'll get a region of the cloud where we need to configure the storage tool.

The solution is worth the money. Depending on the customer’s feasibility, they pay for the license every year or every three years. The evaluation is given for 30 to 90 days, which has to be paid.

A sales manager, a technical manager, a COO, one of my colleagues, and I handle Commvault in our company. Overall, I rate the tool a nine out of ten.

Commvault is an enterprise-level backup solution that can use multiple agents at various sites. We have many customers, including banks and hospitals.

Commvault is a stable solution for Red Hat Linux. 

It takes a lot of steps to implement backups. We have to do a lot of planning to make the solution work properly. It takes some time to create every policy. It's an easy task, but there are many steps. It's not as easy as using Veeam. 

I have used Commvault for nine months as a supporting engineer.

I rate Commvault eight out of 10 for stability. 

Setting up Commvault is complex and it involves many steps. After you configure the storage, you need to set your client's policies and add a proxy server if necessary. 

I prefer selling Commvault to enterprises. It's appropriate for a company that has a headquarters plus four or five offices. It isn't ideal for a small business. The price is okay if you have the budget of a large enterprise. Aside from the license, the only additional cost is cloud fees if you are using cloud infrastructure. 

I rate Commvault Backup and Recovery 10 out of 10. I would recommend Commvault if a company has huge backup needs and a sufficient budget. If the price isn't an issue, you shouldn't compromise. 

We use the Commvault HyperScale X to manage complex infrastructure, so deployments are fast.

Commvault HyperScale X is also a good choice for regulations that require the backup system to be isolated from the rest of the infrastructure. If there is an issue with the software, we open a support ticket with the software vendor. We then escalate the case to the hardware support team.

Commvault HyperScale X is more expensive for hybrid environments than traditional solutions.

I have been using Commvault HyperScale X as a reseller for five years.

I rate the product’s stability an eight out of ten.

The scalability is very good, but there is a limitation on expanding the cluster to scale to a higher level. We have smaller and enterprise-level clients. I rate its scalability a nine out of ten.

We have a team of four to manage support. We have many paid credits for networking and application support.

Positive

The initial setup is moderately easy. I rate the process a seven on a scale of ten. The deployment time depends on the environment. It takes around four to eight hours to complete.

I rate the product’s pricing a seven out of ten.

If the customer needs to protect five terabytes of data, they will need five licenses if they need to upgrade to make devices flexible or create this model. Many small customers can start with a 10TB appliance, and enterprises can scale up to 50 TB. The appliance is compatible with various hardware platforms, including LG, Lenovo, IBM, Dell, etc.

I recommend the Commvault HyperScale X for its enhanced quality, performance focus, and data isolation. I recommend looking for support for various solutions from a single vendor. Overall, I rate it a seven out of ten.

We use Commvault Complete Data Protection backup and recovery.

Commvault is easy for auto-upload, auto-download, and push install and update capability. Also, It saves a lot of time by allowing us to restart the agent. We can do it all from a single console. The documentation on the portal is also beneficial. As we type in a search, hundreds of documents pop up without having a Google search.

The product's migration process and stability need improvement.

I have been using Commvault Complete Data Protection for a year since June last year.

The product's stability could be better.

Commvault Complete Data Protection is scalable. We are using a socket-based license.

We communicate with our support partner regarding product-related issues.

Compared to Dell,  the push installations are much easier with Commvault. I used to have to log on to every server to install and deploy new clients, but with Commvault, I can do it all remotely. It saves me a lot of time and hassle.

The initial setup is easy. The implementation took a few weeks for the distribution center. The agent installation is easy for clients and takes about 15 minutes. It requires one engineer and one architect to execute the process.

It is an easy-to-maintain product. From a backup failure perspective, backups are almost always almost successful. We have an issue with one of our distribution centers. For example, we have a command center and a Java console. When we perform a task on one of these consoles, it does not always reflect on the command center. It should be synchronized at all times. Our engineer has logged a ticket with this concern. It could be because we are using an older software version, but that shouldn't be the case. If I switch from plan A to plan B on one console, it should reflect on both consoles.

Commvault only needs one person who travels to different sites to provide support services. Each site has 14-15 services. So, the web push screen is assigned to one person per site.

The tool is cost-effective.

The tool has the most difficult migration process compared to other products. The migration from our previous network to Commvault was a challenge.

Once the tool is set up, it works well. For example, recovering data from Oracle is much easier with Commvault. I don't have to manually search through every backup file to find the file I need. I can search for the file name or other information, and Commvault will find it. I rate it an eight out of ten.

My customers are not satisfied with the tool because there is a little trouble with the throughput of Metallic. If you go very large, you run into some problems, especially when moving things into the cloud and out of the cloud. This is not a problem of Metallic but a cloud provider problem. However, that's a normal thing we have with the cloud providers.

I wouldn't want any more features since, at the moment, it's very simple to do a SaaS backup and so on while doing more complex things since it is on-premises.

I am a reseller of backup products, not only Metallic but also for Veritas, CommVault, and so on. I am trying to resell the solutions. I like to resell it in combination with our hardware. I am not interested in selling the solution for the cloud because that's not with our hardware. I am a partner of CommVault, so I resell Metallic. My company also has a partnership with Veritas and Veeam.

I have been dealing with Metallic for my customers.

The product's stability is good enough. But, you have to compare it with other products. For example, I am using Veritas, and I am using it for CommVault, perhaps at home for myself. For the rest, I am selling. I am not doing the implementation. I'm only selling it.

Technical support is fine if you speak English. So, it is good enough if you speak English. If you prefer your native language, then it becomes a little bit more difficult.

Speaking of Metallic's competitors, they have an advantage in terms of pricing and buying deals or doing some more things in a smarter way. For example, Veritas provides better tools than Metallic. 

You need something in the cloud to do the backup. For example, I use CommVault on my laptop from work, and we use Commvault in the cloud, which is very easy and very good to use. Not Metallic, but with only Commvault, we are backing up to the cloud and our desktop. So, we can use it everywhere. If you have some problem, then you can restore it at home, which is very nice. It works very fine.

My suggestion to others is to size it correctly. I do recommend the products.

Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.