Commvault Cloud Reviews

It is a good solution in the enterprise market and serves as an enterprise solution. It is a leading solution. So, you have different kinds of workloads. My customers have a type of workload that the solution supports. Either you can have the solution on the cloud or on the on-premises version. Also, there are different kinds of workloads, like Oracle, SQL, MySQL, or MongoDB. Normally, you will not find all kinds of workloads in one product.

Auxiliary (aux) copy and DASH copy are the most valuable features of the solution.

In GUI, some of the features have been divided. So one is the browser-based command center, and then the old interface with CommCell browser. They have to add more features and functions that are the same as whatever is there in the command center. We prefer that because, otherwise, we have to do two different interfaces for different kinds of jobs. We cannot do some jobs in the old interface with CommCell browser since we have to go into the command center.

Whatever Commvault Complete Data Protection has, they need to improve. Sometimes, we have a performance issue with the backup speed. So, that has to be rectified and improved.

I have experience with Commvault Complete Data Protection for more than fifteen years. Also, I have used the solution within the last twelve months. Regularly, our company has been supporting our customers with the setup process. Lately, we have been involved in the implementation of HyperScale from Commvault. So we support our customers regularly. I think maybe a month or a month and a half ago, we implemented Commvault's HyperScale solution. We are using Commvault Version 11.28.

The solution is good sometimes in some environments. But sometimes, in some environments, it has to be improved. On the network backup, it has to be improved. If, almost across the networks, one has different VLAN backups, the performance backup is sometimes degraded due to the network configuration and because of the load on the network. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a six out of ten.

It is a scalable solution. Currently, one of my customers has an almost one-petabyte backup solution. So, it was increased from gigabytes to petabytes. It can be increased if you have a big setup in place. With HyperScale Appliance, it is easy to expand the server. It will just expand your capability and the storage capacity, and a few other capacities in the solution. Scalability-wise, I rate the solution an eight out of ten. I have around fifteen big customers. There are a lot of customers of the solution who use it, with other vendors supporting it. The solution has quite a big market for the solution.

If the support we receive is from India, then sometimes we have a problem since it takes time owing to the fact that initially, a few people handle the issue before forwarding it to the next level. Maybe some years back, the support was from Australia, the UK, Canada, or the USA, and sometimes from Germany or some European nation, which was very good since there were very qualified people in their team who could resolve our issues within an hour. After they shifted some backup support to India, they included people who operate at a basic or initial level. So, they start troubleshooting, but we think that it's just killing time so that they can get some other people to intervene. I rate the technical support a seven out of ten.

Neutral

We provide solutions depending on a customer's requirements and setup. We also provide solutions like Rubrik and Veeam. I did not work with Veeam, but Veeam is mainly for on-premises virtualization. Its workload is very limited. Also, the expandability and scalability have limitations. However, if you have VMware Hypervisor on your premises, then the solution is okay.

If one has some kind of initial knowledge of any kind of backup solution like Veritas NetBackup, then it will be a little bit easy to implement the solution and then understand the architecture. But if you don't have the knowledge of any other solutions, then it would prove to be a learning curve of tasks related to implementation and administration or designing.

On a scale of one to ten, where one is difficult and ten is easy, I rate the initial setup a five.

Depending upon the solution, sometimes the deployment can be done within one day or within half a day, especially if you have a small setup. But if you have a big and complicated setup, it will take days to implement. It also depends on how complicated the infrastructure the customers have in their environments.

We have to definitely follow steps before we implement the solution. Before we implement any other agents or media agents, we have to implement ComCell, the main backup server, then the media agent, and then the client. This sequence has to be thorough. For updating any page or anything like that, we have to follow the same sequence, which includes the backup server, the media agent, and the client.

Pricing is quite expensive, though I don't exactly know the prices. It is expensive compared to other products because it's for an enterprise setup and not for a small setup. On a scale of one to ten, where ten is the highest price, I rate the pricing an eight.

This software features a single interface that covers all essential functions, including core data management, backup, restore, copy, and DR. It eliminates the need to access the client side and simplifies the configuration process. The centralized configuration makes installation easy. Additionally, the software supports a wide range of platforms, including Linux, Oracle, SAP, and Microsoft versions, unlike some older products, such as Veritas NetBackup, which doesn't have the latest version support in their solution. Sometimes, even Microsoft products don't have the latest version support.

I like the product because of its simplicity and the fact that it provides one single interface for managing everything, including storage, data, and policies. Additionally, there is no need for any configuration on the client's end. Even with 500 clients, you don't have to individually configure the solution for each one. Instead, you just need to install a push agent, which is a small agent, and all tasks can be performed from a single interface. Moreover, the product offers comprehensive support for different software versions. Whether it's upgrading from Exchange Server 2016 or Exchange Server 2013 to Exchange Server 2019 or Exchange Server 2020, or using Oracle version, or other releases, they have immediate backup solutions available, ensuring compatibility during upgrades.

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

I recently deployed Metallic for backup storage on Azure for a customer who lost all their data. Metallic helped me to restore the data within an hour, which is much faster than restoring from Microsoft services with a ticket on support services, which took four to five days.

I have a customer who uses it, but I am not a direct user, and I work with customers who use Metallic.

The functional integration could be better. For example, the replication function is not there in the Metallic products and can be complex. We were licensing the functionality in a different tool but not in Metallic's key. So it should be enhanced.

In future releases, I would like to see better VM replication because it's not available today. But there should also be provisions to have more integration.

Metallic is perfect for a customer because it is very easy to use. However, I find it difficult to find some use cases on my own and need to contact Metallic support. Moreover, in a SaaS project, I cannot open or function agents alone and require the support of Metallic.

I have been using this solution for two years. We are using the latest update of the Metallic SaaS solution.

It is a stable solution. I would rate it a nine out of ten. I have had no errors since the installation.

When I put it into the production model, it was very stable, and we had no time to do the next production review after a very simple test.

I would rate scalability a nine out of ten. It is very scalable.

The customer support team is responsive and very helpful. There were no problems, and their response time was very short.

Positive

The initial setup is very easy. It's quick and simple, and Metallic is already ready for use after two hours. It integrates well with Office 365 backup for Exchange roles, Teams, or SharePoint.

Our internal team deployed the solution.

The pricing depends on the functionality you require. For example, Office 365 is priced correctly because you have everything in one package, including the license for backup and storage. It is very attractive for the middle market, so I would rate it a seven out of ten, where one is the cheapest and ten is very expensive.

But for some projects, we may need to buy additional backup and storage for the retention period, making it more expensive. However, seven is good for me. Also, we could consider integrating with other cloud providers for secondary backup and storage to store backups. We only have Azure, OCI, or RWAIS, but exploring other options that offer better prices would be interesting.

I have experience using different products in the same category as Metallic, including CommVault and Rubrik. CommVault is the same product, but the trends are converted. It's an on-premise product. And Metallic is the first product of the merger of the company. It's the same product. I also saw Impacket, but I find it very old-school. We are missing old school.

I also see Hybrid. It's a very good product, but quite more known. There is still a lot to fix in Rubrik. I also find CommVault and Metallic with more experience and integrated with all our products. We have all products, like your old servers, the unique server. And it's quite more difficult with Rubrik. So, I prefer Metallic for this.

I would recommend using the product. Metallic is a very interesting product. My company also integrates Acronis and VM in some of our projects, but Metallic is one of the best products for cloud and SaaS. It has many functionalities and is simple to integrate.

For me, it's a ten. I haven't found any other product with so many functionalities that is also easy to integrate. It's not just good for my business, but it also gives me peace of mind and allows me to sleep soundly at night.

Complete Data Protection is a multi-platform solution that covers almost everything — Linux, Windows, SQL Server, Oracle, MYSQL Postgres — in a single platform. You can schedule backups and restore databases locally or remotely.

Complete Data Protection is convenient because you can manage various types of databases, and it's pretty easy to set it up.

When you deploy Complete Data Protection for past services, it's more complicated because you cannot directly back up from the previous service host. We have to build a proxy server, like a middleware, to directly access the past database server. It's complex and hard for beginners to figure out.

I have been using Complete Data Protection for about three years.

Complete Data Protection is pretty stable.

We have hundreds of database backups, and Commvault has handled that well. If anything fails, they will send an email notification to notify you of what has failed.

I rate Commvault support eight out of 10. Commvault support is typically good, but they're not all equal. Some of their technicians are more knowledgeable than others.

Positive

The initial setup is complex, and the step-by-step process isn't laid out in the documentation. It isn't very detailed. They don't show you how to set up a proxy server, so I spent a few weeks to figure it out. Once you set it up, it's easy to add another database and schedule a backup.

I think only large enterprises are willing to pay for it because they charge by data volume. And I think some other companies won't use this, maybe it costs more money.

I rate Commvault Complete Data Protection eight out of 10. It's easy to use once you set it up.

We provide backup services to our customers and we implement Commvault for most of our backups. This includes cloud with VMware, cloud with IBM, cloud with Azure, SAP applications like HANA or traditional SAP, for databases including Oracle and DB2, and across several operating systems including AIX, Solaris, Windows, and Linux.

We have a separate, private backup network. It has its own appliances from different vendors and the information on it is not visible to our main network. This is to help protect against ransomware and other threats.

Commvault provides us with a single platform to move, manage, and recover data across our on-premises and cloud locations, which is something that is very important for us. We have data centers in Mexico, Panama, Guatemala, and the Dominican Republic, and we need to administer all of the environments from a single location in Mexico.

The administrators connect to all of the environments on-premises. We have two flavors; the multitenant environment and the dedicated environment. We manage all of these from Mexico.

Commvault is very good in terms of coverage for applications and databases. This is important because we don't only administrate backups. We have managed services that include the database, application, operating system, and storage. We talk with the administrators for the database and operating system to create a policy that ensures all of the data that we need to recover the environment is complete.

The recovery process is consistent across platforms and this is important to us because clients give us the information, and we need to back it up and to ensure that we can recover it if they have a problem.

The recovery options are good because we offer our clients a complete recovery of their information, as well as an option for partial recovery, based on their needs. For example, we can offer the recovery of a single table in a database, depending on what the scenario is.

The most valuable feature is the compatibility with our entire environment.

The embedded deduplication engine is really good because we use a Near Line SAS disk as a repository for our backups, and we don't need to pay for another appliance such as a Data Domain or Quantum so that we can have hardware-based deduplication.

One of the benefits of using Commvault over the years has been that all of our administrators have the ability to perform admin functions. They haven't had any complaints about the interface.

Commvault has support for multiple storage platforms, which is helpful for us. We use block storage for some backups, and we use appliances that have duplication capabilities for other backups. The method in which Commvault fits in depends on how much money the client spends. For example, if they have a higher budget then we use PCI-compliant appliances, or snapshots in the backups to ensure that we don't have ransomware. Other clients pay only for the amount of storage that they use. In some cases, we use replication at the host level, whereas in other cases, it is at the hardware level. The console that we have with Commvault can manage all of the environments and hardware that we have.

I would like to have a manager-level dashboard to review the backups. This is not from an administrative perspective where you can see the details of the execution. Rather, it would only show the percentage of completeness for each one.

I have been working with Commvault for more than eight years.

We have not had any problems with stability. 

We have more than 10 implementations in all of our data centers.

Using Commvault helps to minimize the amount of time that we spend on backups. I am not exactly sure how long it would take otherwise, but we back up approximately four petabytes of information each day.

Scaling is not a problem for us. If we need to, we can install more servers and install a new console.

We use Commvault support on a daily basis. People from the database teams need help restoring data, so they contact Commault for assistance.

I would rate their support a nine out of ten.

Prior to Commvault, we used Veritas NetBackup for five years.

A lot of our environment is currently backed up using Commvault but we are planning to use Veeam and Commvault together. Veeam is priced better than Commvault and right now, we use Veeam to back up our virtual machines. As we split more of the information between the two different applications, we may use Veeam for cloud environments, and for traditional environments, Commvault.

There are some applications like SAP HANA that are not compatible with the Veeam software. In cases like this, we use Commvault.

This product is very easy to set up. The reason is that we do everything. We implement, we operate, and we migrate. One of the reasons that we continue with Commvault is that we have spent a lot of time training people. This means that the people in the company can do everything without the need for third-party persons.

It takes between two and three hours to install a new console.

Over the years that we have had this same software, people on the admin team have become certified by Commvault. This ensures that they are doing things properly and doing them well.

We charge our customers on a per-gigabyte basis.

Using Commvault has helped us to reduce storage costs because, in some cases, we changed to block storage. Using block storage and software-based deduplication is cheaper than the appliances that have deduplication embedded in them. In some cases, we have reduced our hardware cost by 50%, whereas in other cases, it has been reduced by more than 75%. It depends on the technology that we compare. For example, the Data Domain appliance is perhaps four times the cost of the Near Line SAS disk in traditional block storage.

Reducing the hardware that we have in the data center, also reduces our costs in terms of energy and space. I do not have an estimate as to how much we save.

Commvault is more expensive than Veeam, which is the reason that we are changing to Veeam for cloud environments.

We had been running Veritas NetBackup and did an RFP to change the backup software. We tested Veritas, Commvault, TSM from IBM, and Dell NetWorker. The finalists were Veritas and Commvault. We found that there were more advantages to using Commvault. For example, it has deduplication embedded into the software and if we wanted this with Veritas, we needed to pay an additional fee. This is why we changed and we have maintained it for several years.

In comparing solutions, I think that generally, today, all software solutions are the same. We have the same compatibility using Veritas, TSM, NetWorker, and Commvault. The main reason for us to maintain Commvault is the expertise that we have with the tool. All of them have deduplication capabilities and can use different repositories, so I don't have a problem with the other brands.

Commvault has the capability to discover unprotected workloads, although we don't use this because we only work with policies. Our clients tell us the policy that they want to apply to their environment, and we don't analyze their environment beyond the scope that they specify.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

We use Commvault to back up our employees' data. I work for a retail organization, so our users aren't in a single office. Before we were using a backup solution that could only take a backup in one office at a particular time. This was a disadvantage for us because the users kept shifting from one office to another. In some cases, we'd need a critical backup, but we couldn't do it. That's why we switched to a cloud-based solution.

Commvault can perform a backup no matter where you are, and it takes a backup every four hours. No matter when you come to the office, it'll take a backup if you're connected to the internet and check the system for online availability. Commvault has reduced the time administrators spend on admin tasks. I can monitor all users from a single place and see when they have performed the backup or when they've notified us of a lost backup. 

Before, I spent at least one or two hours each day monitoring the backup solution. With Commvault, I log in once in the morning or the evening for 10 to 15 minutes, and I can check everything on my laptop. Now it takes me, at most, half an hour to oversee the backups of the 300 users I monitor.

The interface is easy to use. I would rate the interface nine out of 10. It's a single console where you can create, modify, and delete users or you can transfer permissions to other users. Even if I remove the license, the laptop will still be there in Commvault for some time. If your laptop is dead, it's still a live location, so we can check it. If the laptop is connected to the internet, we can see exactly where it is, whether it's in India or the US. Restoration is super easy. From the admin console, we can restore a user's data no matter where they are. If a Commvault instance is installed on that laptop, we can restore it.

Ransomware protection is another special feature in Commvault. They have predefined some extensions. When Commvault identifies a ransomware attack, it will stop taking the backup on those extensions. We haven't had that happen yet, but Commvault can contain and control a ransomware attack.

We've been using Commvault for three years. We completed our two-year subscription and renewed it, so we're now in our third year.

Sometimes the web page doesn't work. I don't know if it's an outage or if there is maintenance going on in the background. From time to time, Commvault will suddenly stop taking backups for some intervals. We'll raise a ticket to the support team, and they'll get it sorted out. Still, I would say it's working 99 percent of the time. We can take the backup, restore data, and everything else. But sometimes it stops work. For example, today it went down for a minute.

There are no limitations for us. We are interested in indefinite backup for deleted files. Even if I delete the file, it'll be there permanently. I don't foresee any issue with that.

I rate Commvault support nine out of 10. When you raise a ticket, they immediately assign the engineer. If that person can't solve the problem, they will escalate to a higher engineer or management, who will get it fixed immediately. The size of the account doesn't matter either. If you have an issue, they will try to fix it quickly. They don't give special preference to their larger customers. 

Positive

We were previously using a homegrown solution called Retrospect. We switched to Commvault because it's cloud-based.

I was at the company when we first deployed Commvault. The overall deployment takes time because it depends on the users' availability. We can't take all the backups together also because we also have time constraints. It depends upon the user availability we have completed this activity. Our IT team has five members responsible for maintaining Commvault, so all five know how to work with Commvault. We also have different offices with varying levels of access, but they can't perform configuration changes, 

Commvault worked with our team during the user acceptance testing. In the UAT phase, everyone was a little uncomfortable because we didn't know what all the options were. But Commvault has a team in India who helped us to check everything. We were satisfied with that. When we had issues, an engineer took the call and sorted everything out. After that, we didn't have any problems with the configuration.

I feel like we've gotten a lot of value relative to what we've spent. Employees no longer have to be in the same office to access the backup solution. If a user working from home wants to restore data, I can directly restore it to his laptop. There's no time delay for solving user issues. We've also cut down on storage costs because an in-house solution requires you to spend money to keep that much data.

We have evaluated three or four cloud-based backup solutions, but the other ones in the market didn't even come close to Commvault. We looked at solutions by Sophos and Veeam, but those didn't have even 50 percent of what Commvault offers.

I rate Commvault nine out of 10. It's a wonderful platform for IT professionals. I would suggest Commvault as the backup solution for any company. However, it still has some room for improvement.

It's being used as our main backup and recovery product. We use it to back up virtual machine infrastructure, using VMware and/or Nutanix. We use it to back up our SQL, Exchange, and File Systems, where is a mixture of Linux, Windows and Solaris. We also use it to backup NFS and CIFs Shares under NetApp. We also use Commvault for Oracle Backup and/or RMAN Clones.

We migrated everything we had from other vendors to Commvault. About 95 percent of everything in our environment, is being backup by Commvault.

On-Prem, Cloud, Data Centers.

The disaster recovery features of Commvault have improved the way we operate. In the past, we had a very complicated process for testing disaster recovery. That kind of testing is one of the nice features of Commvault. You are completely sure that your data resides in multiple locations at the same time and you can be sure Disaster recovery Data it's there in case you need it. 

HyperScale X also helps our admins to minimize the time they spend on backup tasks so that they can spend time on other projects. We are a big company and we have at least 80 locations using Commvault. We have admins for it in four or five regions on different continents. Overall, I would estimate HyperScale X has improved our productivity by 30  to 35 percent. We are more productive using Commvault than with other backup software.

It has also helped to reduce storage costs. We chose the solution because it decreases the backup costs for our end-users. We have been able to reduce backup costs by at least 50 percent.

There are a number of features we like HyperScale X:

• The deduplication is pretty good. 
• We also like the ability to generate reports using the Command Center feature. 
• We like how the software upgrade process works. 
• From the start, the disaster recovery for the CommServe has been very robust and flexible and works pretty well. 
• It also provides us with protection from ransomware, by default for Windows, and it can be enabled for Linux as well.
• Replication and Auxiliary Copy features, like dynamic throttling, are helpful.
• There is also the flexibility to create self-service capabilities for end-users and to give them access to restore their managed servers for data.

In addition, HyperScale X provides a single platform to move, manage, and recover data across all locations in our environment. The CommServe is the brain of Commvault. It's the server where the index and the cache are stored for the backups that are happening in the environment. All the management is centralized from that CommServe server. You can manage all the clients and all the infrastructure using one interface and one server. For redundancy, you have a disaster recovery CommServe server in standby mode. You can configure a disaster recovery backup to happen every 15 minutes.

Using the Commvault interface, you can customize and generate multiple reports to easily see what is protected and what is not protected in the environment. There is also a third-party feature called Commvault Activate. It's a separate product and you need another license to use it. That product specializes in discovering the environment, and the data in it, that you are not backing up.

You can manage everything from two interfaces. There is a Java console (CommCell), but in the near future that will be fully replaced by the Command Center, the HTML5 interface. The Java interface is not great. The Command Center interface is far better and it looks nicer, but it doesn't have all the powerful features available in the Java console. The place to improve the product is on the management interface level because that's the point where it's not perfect.

Today, to manage the product, you just have to use both interfaces. The Java interface is basically for the admin because it has all the powerful features in it. The HTML5 interface is mainly used by end-users, and by admins when they just need to generate a report or see something graphically to help with the management of Commvault.

One other note. I would rate the ransomware feature at about eight out of 10. There are different processes for enabling ransomware protection on Windows versus Linux systems. In the current version, there is no ransomware for HyperScale X. That feature has been released in CV SP 24.

We have been using Commvault HyperScale 1.5 and HyperScale X for the last three and a half years.

It's pretty stable. We haven't had a major issue in the three-plus years we have had Commvault. 

There were some issues in the first year, until we managed to acquire the skill sets and learned how the product should be used, including the best practices. But overall the environment is pretty stable. 

We perform a disaster recovery test twice a year and the product is robust and resilient.

The solution is pretty scalable. You can grow the environment. We have been using the same CommServe server for the solution for the three years that we have had Commvault, and we have just scaled and scaled the solution. We started with about 3,000 clients and now the number of clients has doubled or tripled.

HyperScale X, which was released one year ago, is more scalable than version 1.5. You can put more nodes in one cluster and, because of that, you can increase your overall storage.

We don't have the Commvault Activate solution. We are thinking about acquiring it in the near future to improve our environment. Our migration from other vendors to Commvault took between one and two years because our environment is so large. Right now we are fine-tuning the product and the processes around it. Perhaps we will use Commvault Activate starting next year. It will be in our scope.

Support for the product is pretty responsive and pretty good compared to the other vendors. Commvault's support is far better than Dell EMC's support.

If you hit an issue or a bug, Commvault support is there. And it's pretty easy to solve something that support cannot handle, if it's a bug that needs to go to the Commvault developers. We have initiated sessions with their developers to solve an issue that was affecting the environment. Because support is responsive, you can solve almost everything.

And if you need a feature that is not available, Commvault developers are responsive there too. They usually integrate such requests within a few months, and after that it's available for use.

Positive

In the past, we used Dell EMC NetWorker and Dell EMC Avamar. The main reasons we switched to Commvault were the storage and backup costs. We wanted to find a cheaper solution. In addition, we wanted a solution that we could manage using a single interface, versus the multiple interfaces that we had with Dell EMC. Third, we wanted something that was simpler to manage and that could perform disaster recovery much better, including disaster recovery testing. We also wanted the ability to upgrade agents and software in a centralized fashion. We have seen an improvement on all of these points with Commvault, as a replacement for Dell EMC.

The initial setup process is pretty complex. I was involved with the product from phase one. There are multiple points where you need to configure the product to have it functioning well in your environment. It's a complex product. There is a lot of stuff to set up from scratch to have things working as expected.

The time for deployment depends on how much infrastructure there is and on how many media agents and VSAs you need to deploy in the environment. For the first deployment we did in our environment, it took us two or three days to finish all the settings. But we were new to Commvault and we needed some time to understand it and to familiarize ourselves with all the options. Today, if we need to deploy a remote, on-prem site, where there is one media agent and one VSA, where the requirement is to back up a small or a medium site, the whole process can be done in a few hours. We work with Commvault's professional services to automate some of the deployment steps using Commvault's workflows.

Initially, we had about six petabytes of data that had to be migrated from one environment to another. It was pretty complicated because we had to disable the backup in one place and enable and configure the backup in another place. The process was also complicated because we had to look at the remaining space, how many workloads we needed to migrate, and how much had been migrated. We had to create procedures and train operations.

Commvault was new to everybody in our environment. Everybody had to become familiar with it and with the new processes and procedures. We had been using another technology for five years. Today, everybody in our operations, in our engineering, and our managers, is familiar with the product. Now, because we know the processes, everything moves much faster than it did in the past.

We have decreased the cost of our backup infrastructure using Commvault, by 30 to 35 percent.

Also, using Commvault HyperScale X has taken us to new ground where we can offer self-service recoveries to our customers and give them access to whatever server they manage. The other plus is the automation that we can create with Commvault's workflows to decrease the time it takes for a site deployment. That also translates into money saved because instead of having one admin resource occupied for a day to deploy a site, we can deploy a site in five minutes.

The pricing is far better than we had in the past. The license for Dell EMC was not too expensive, but the storage, given that Dell EMC is based on data domains, was pretty expensive.

We evaluated Veeam, as well as Dell EMC NetWorker and Avamar. Before we bought, we ran some try-and-buy and some PoCs in our environment, to see how the products handle things. We were convinced that Commvault is better and fits better than the old product, and we acquired Commvault.

The pros of Commvault are that you can manage everything from one console and the disaster recovery scenario functions much better than with Dell EMC NetWorker. Also, Dell EMC Avamar was specialized to back up VMware environments and NetWorker was specialized to do them all. We wanted a solution that could do all the backups that are required in our environment. Veeam was not able to handle all our backup scenarios. Veeam is very good on VMware backups, but you cannot do Oracle backups, SQL backups, or file system backups. We were looking for a solution that could fit all the backup requirements, operating systems, and appliances that we have in our environment. There are very few products that can cover all of them, few of them are: Dell EMC NetWorker and Commvault.

Involve Commvault support from the start, at the implementation level, to be sure that you implement the infrastructure with best practices. What can happen is that, a year after you implement the infrastructure, you notice that your clusters have not been properly set up and it's too late to change anything. Use their support during the implementation. Have some sessions with them to understand the whole infrastructure and the whole process of deploying HyperScale X.

We made a mistake in our first implementation, three years ago (Hyperscale 1.5). The recommended number of nodes per cluster was six, but for some reason we added nine. Because of that, we had some issues. Don't make the same mistake. However, HyperScale X, released in the last year, is a little bit more scalable and more flexible. Clusters can exceed nine nodes and can be extended further (current limitations per cluster are around 5 PB).

If someone is buying Commvault today, they should try to buy HyperScale X. It's the next generation and has some advantages. It can help avoid issues with clusters, moving forward.

Overall, we have been impressed by the features of the solution and by the responsiveness of Commvault's support. We like the product and we feel we made a good decision in acquiring Commvault and working with them. We are pretty happy.

Overall, Metallic has helped us out tremendously from a backup and restore situation. We just had a pretty major restore that we had to do from Metallic two weeks ago for a file that was basically deleted five days ago, and they needed a copy from seven days prior to that. My whole team walked through the restore in about two to three minutes. We basically figured out which buttons to push, then the restore was done 30 seconds later. That was an eye-opener at that point, because we understand what a great decision we made by going with Metallic.

If you ask me today whether Metallic was appropriate for an enterprise-level environment, then I would say, "Yes." If you asked me a year and a half ago, I would have said, "No." Normally, you would think that a cloud-only backup type solution probably wouldn't work for an enterprise environment. Then, here comes NDOT and we're about as enterprise as it gets when it comes to the state of Nevada. Right now, we are doing all kinds of neat stuff with this solution where normally you would need an on-premises solution. They have me convinced now. We are backing up stuff that I couldn't get MABS or Rapid Recovery to backup, and those are on-prem and cloud, e.g., hybrid solutions. If we wanted to, we could go to hybrid with Metallic, but their cloud solution is so stable right now.

I ran the solution through my CISO. When it comes to server guys, I am probably the security-conscious systems guy on our team. I went to the same training that our CISO did. Between him and me, we love Metallic. We think their security is definitely acceptable at a high level.

The ease of use is the most valuable feature, which keeps the training down. Pretty much anybody in my group right now can do a whole bunch with Metallic compared to what we could do with our previous solution, on-prem Commvault. The ease of use is probably my number one priority. With the amount of systems that our systems team deals with, the ease of use is the most important thing. We were bouncing around all of the time from this system to that system to this system, trying to remember how things work. Whereas, Metallic keeps it simple.

It is just about as flexible as you can get; simple. You can put it anywhere you want. You can put it on-prem or in your cloud. I could see where a team that's looking for more of a follow the bouncy ball type of solution might get a little confused. "Oh, no. What do you mean I might have to do it this way or I can't do it that way?" Sometimes, people just want to be told what to do. For an enterprise environment, like we are at NDOT, everything we do is not standard. It is not industry standard; it is not normal. We have all kinds of one-offs. We do need flexibility in the solutions that we get. I will say that Metallic has been extremely flexible in that sense, where we are able to follow the bouncy ball if we wanted to. Obviously, we didn't. We did it our way and Metallic, as a whole solution, provided that to us with no issues.

Permissions can be tricky. There is granularity when trying to get people to write permissions to be able to view, backup, and restore. It is just hard to understand that granularity. I can't even 100% say that it is Commvault. I can say it is not super cut-and-dry right out of the gate. However, I would also say it is great because it is granular.

Getting my guys the right access has a learning curve. Sometimes, it is, "Oh, okay. I think I got it for you." Then, they say, "Oh, nope. I logged in but I can't see this." Then, it is, "Okay, hold on. Give me a second. Let me change that. Okay, it's this one." That learning curve has probably taken a little bit longer than some simpler things. So, Metallic has some granularity, and as a systems administrator, I appreciate that. At the same time, I also realize that I have to learn it.

Seven to eight months ago, the documentation needed improvement, but they have caught up on it now.

I have been using it for a year. My team has been using it for about seven to eight months.

It is a very stable platform.

Right now, we have seven guys on my team and two of us are setting up the backups. The other five of us are strictly doing restores mainly until we get all our backups entirely into the cloud and clean up the groups. I really just need two guys doing that, a junior admin and me. The junior admin has been setting this all up because he will be around for another 15 years. I might as well have him learn it now and be our guru.

For the most part, it does the updates for us. There is a piece that we own down on our network and there is a piece that they own on their network. For the most part, the piece that they own is definitely the bigger of the two. With that being said, our version that we are running on-premises needs an update, which basically means that it is waiting on a server restart. Our servers restart once a month, so I imagine it is scheduled to restart on Sunday. Then, we will get that up-to-date. Metallic pushes it out, then our server installs it. Metallic is mostly on the hook for updates and keeping things up-to-date.

It is 100% scalable.

We were on a hybrid system, which was on-prem and in the cloud as well as local. We had probably 10% of our servers that were backing up locally to themselves. We had about 40% of our big, large servers backing up on-premises. Then, the other percentage was backing up to the cloud.

Once we moved to Commvault, instead of about 80% of my servers backing up to the cloud, we will shortly have them all going to the cloud. Now, I'm not hybrid, but in a simple solution, which is a cloud backup solution. Adding to that is as simple as going to Azure, and saying, "Hey, I need this storage count to be a little bit bigger," as long as I have pre-planned the amount that I would buy from Metallic. In other words, Metallic gives us a price on 100 servers. I know that I have 50, and I am good to scale for another 50. All I have to do at that point is go into my Azure tenant, have it give me some more storage, and at that point now I am scaling.

Now, if I need to, I get a hold of Larry over there in Metallic, and I say, "Hey, buddy. I need to add another 50 servers." Then, he gives me a price quote, and we pay them again. The solution is simple, easy, and scalable. I don't need to buy hardware. I don't have a bunch of engineers down here reassessing our environment. I just got to add some more storage to the cloud, then I start sending more data out to the cloud. I would say, "Scalability is wow." They have done a great job there.

I had a conversation yesterday, between me and my manager, about when we will use Metallic's Office 365 Backup & Recovery. First, we need to get our backups. Between the Metallic solution, the file storage optimization, and now the 365, which are the three things that we have gotten from Commvault over the last year. File storage optimization is next, then 365 is after that. I am going to say sometime in October.

So far, I would give Commvault tech support 10 out of 10. We have dealt with some good and some bad tech supports. Between Microsoft, Dell, and Commvault, those three solutions are at the top of my list when it comes to support.

Anything that we find is usually something that we can fix ourselves. We can get ahold of support, then support takes care of it.

We were using Microsoft Azure Backup Server (MABS), but there were many problems with it. We turned around, started using Metallic about a year ago. I tested it out. We now have 80% of our servers being backed up to Metallic. We will probably have the rest in the next six to eight weeks. At that point, for the first time in two years, we will have all our servers completely backed up.

When we used to have the on-prem version of Commvault, it was nothing like Metallic. Metallic is a different solution, but it is Commvault. Back in those days, when we had Commvault, it was pretty complex. It was very granular. It had many features, but it was complex. You really only could have one or two guys working on it.

We left Commvault five years ago because the grass is always greener on the other side and cheaper: bigger, better, and stronger. Of course, we came to find out: none of the above. Nothing was true. Basically, we were talked into it by Dell EMC. My old manager, the person whose position I now have, was talked into using Quest Rapid Recovery product by Dell EMC, saying, "Hey, you don't need Commvault. They are one of the biggest backup solutions in the world, and we are an up-and-coming, starting company. We're going to make it cheaper for you. We are just as good. We will show you some cool demos." Those demos looked great. Of course, we went with it. To make a long story short, in the four and a half years that we had Quest Rapid Recovery, we were never compliant on our backups, not once. We were duped.

We are finally back with Commvault, and we now have a 100% compliance backup solution. 

We switched to Metallic because of money. Right now, we are paying less for Metallic than we ever were for Rapid Recovery. I have reclaimed man-hours back for my team. I had one guy for five to six hours a day managing those two other systems, Microsoft Azure Backup and Quest. I lost four to six hours a day for one of my top-level guys by having him troubleshooting that all day long. By going to Metallic, we have freed up man-hours, infrastructure costs, and the time to manage.

I did the first initial setup all by myself. I had it set up in about an hour and a half, then I was backing up a server in about an hour and 45 minutes. It was pretty easy. That was our proof of concept testing. I did that for about three or four months, then I blew it up, broke it, and reimplemented it. 

When we started using this solution, it was seven months into its infancy. By the time we bought it, they had just hit their first year. It has definitely changed around making things a little easier, instead of having to go: here, here, here, here, and there. They have simplified things. They have created nice new little shortcuts. 

The interface now is super easy. You can fumble around in there, then after awhile, you are like, "Okay. That is how this works."

The process of switching to Metallic was really easy. We actually ran Metallic backups during the MABS backup. In other words, we were actually backing up with those solutions as we migrated to Metallic. Of course, we had to age-off. The fact that we did not have to turn off the other backups so Metallic could do its backups made the implementation extremely easy. The cut over was easy. 

We were able to run it in parallel with the other system. It didn't cause any issues. It tells me right there that it's not the same design. Because if it was the same design, then we would've had to turn off the other one which means that we would not get backups for two or three weeks while Metallic catches up. That is not always a good thing to do when you are talking about important systems. Because of Metallic's different way that it backs up, we were able to run it in parallel. The implementation was very simple. It wasn't like we had to go and pull the tablecloth out from underneath the glasses while they were still sitting on the table. It was extremely seamless because of the fact that their backups are done differently than the not-so-good solution we were going with.

I had a couple phone calls with engineers and broke it really good a few times, to the point where it even broke up their stuff there. Once we decided we were going to buy the product and implement it into our environment, they set up a couple of calls with their top level engineers and had us set it up even better than I did in my test environments. They were really good about helping us. So, their assistance and the ease of setup were great.

After it was approved through our infrastructure technical committee, I needed to get a call set up with their engineers for an initial setup of the plans. The first plan to get going the way they recommend. Because when I was testing, I tested from every angle. I broke the heck out of it to know its limitations. We created an initial phone call with their engineers, who helped us set up the first 20 VMs to get backed up under their idea of how they set the system up to work. This was good because I didn't understand this when I was doing my testing. I just did the things I thought that were supposed to be done.

We had a second follow-up call with them. That second follow-up call was for any questions that we had for the month in-between what we were doing with our backups, e.g., checking things out and playing around. They answered a whole bunch of questions for us and helped us set up single sign-on. It was a smooth process. They were willing to help us out, which helped us out tremendously. We basically used their support to help us implement the solution.

Once you set up a bunch of these backups, you will get notified in an email if they are wrong. If you're not adding anything the next day or another server, there is no reason for you to even be in there, unless there is a restore. 

At the moment, we are trying to add 400-plus servers. Therefore, we are going to have a guy in there for half an hour to an hour a day adding a few more servers. When adding a few more servers, you need to be careful. You don't want to rock the boat too much, then all of a sudden you have a big problem. So, it is just a little bit at a time. Right now, we are talking about an hour once or twice a week. Once our servers are sitting up there and this stuff is going, there should be no maintenance. 

I have made this very clear to my team. I don't need a guy in there, like we did with Rapid Recovery, chasing down errors. There are no errors. It is backing up. It will tell you when it is not. Then, when it's not backing up, we will tackle that. 

I just don't see a lot of maintenance on this solution. Management of it really has nothing to do with anything unless you are fixing or reimplementing something. For the most part, once you set it, then it is a set-and-forget SaaS solution.

We have a seven-man team. I am the supervisor with six guys underneath me, who are all veteran IT professionals. One of those gentlemen, a $100,000 a year guy, was on Rapid Recovery for four to six hours a day, every day for the four years that we had it. He was just maintaining it, fixing problems and backup errors. When we went to MABS, it was the same problem. He was now managing both of these things, because we were dual-headed at that point. Once we got into Metallic, I had one of our junior-level admins, at that point, take this project on. He moved 80% of our servers into the cloud and basically checks an email once or twice a week, looking at the backups for about 20 minutes a day.

The labor has gone down exponentially. It is insane. We are talking about a $100,000 solution that we paid for Rapid Recovery a year, plus the $100,000 a year salary for having one of my guys managing it every day. Whereas, we are paying Metallic an X amount of dollars right now and spend about five or 10 minutes every other day just to verify that the backups are good. We don't have to fix anything.

We are basically getting rid of hardware that we were paying for Rapid Recovery. We are actually leveraging some of Rapid Recovery's hardware for MABS, so we cut down on MABS and Rapid Recovery. Now, the hardware that we would need to renew warranties and get support for is no longer necessary.

I used the free trial to test it. That was our proof of concept. I had the servers up and running by the middle of the day. I think I started it some time around breakfast. It took a couple of hours. It was really simple.

Hands down, Metallic provides us with more predictable costs for our backup requirements. You are getting what you pay for. If they are charging you X amount of dollars at that point, that is what you are going to pay. So far, I have not seen any hidden costs or any kind of gotchas. It is pretty cut-and-dry. They will let you know, "Hey, you are going to use our storage and it will cost you this much. You are going to use your storage, then we are going to charge you this much to backup." What they told us they were going to charge us is exactly what they are charging us now for the next two and a half years.

We also evaluated NEC, which is another big solution out there, like Nike or Converse. NEC has their own data centers. The government uses them. They are big and their solution is robust. We tested it, and it worked well too. However, the bottom line was a huge sticker price shock. We went with Metallic because of cost. 

Since I have been in this NDOT environment for eight years, we have used Commvault, Rapid Recovery, MABS, and now we are back to Commvault Metallic. Of those four products, with Commvault being the first and now the last, those have been the two more stable products. The first one that we used was Commvault on-premises, with MediaAgent and physical servers on-prem, which was extremely stable. Then, we went to Rapid Recovery and that wasn't stable. Neither was MABS. Now, we are back to Metallic and it is stable again. Most solutions I have used from Metallic, from the on-prem now to the cloud, have been extremely stable when it comes to backup.

Definitely take advantage of the support team in your initial rollout because Commvault is not a follow the bouncy ball type of solution. It is definitely granular, configurable, and scalable. With the initial deployment, it is important to get that right because everything is going to start working off of that initial deployment. It is a good idea to take advantage of their support tier in that initial deployment and not try to set it up 100% on your own. I did, and It worked. However, once we got a hold of the engineers for the production rollout, they started answering some of my questions. If I would have known the answers that they gave me back when I rolled it out, the rollout would have been much easier and not as hard as it was. It could have been even better. 

Get a little knowledge from these guys. Have them help you roll it out. It takes half an hour. That is all it took us. We had the engineer on the phone for half an hour. He had us setup and backups going, with the vision that Metallic was built for, not the vision that I had thought it was for. My biggest recommendation is to take advantage of their support during the initial deployment. From there, you can be as creative as you want. It is always good to get that help in the beginning.

There have been discussions about doing the solution’s Endpoint Backup & Recovery. It really just comes down to the fact that we would need more push from the business. Right now, the business understands that most of their data is stored in the cloud as-is. So, backing up into a computer is not necessary, as the data that they are putting on that computer is in the cloud. I don't see us using it any time soon.

Right now, Metallic is used a lot. For the most part, it is now the entire backup of our 400-plus servers. It will be used even more with the 365 implementation, Active Directory backup implementation, and disaster recovery. One of the good things about going to Metallic in this cloud solution, where all of my servers now live in the cloud, is I have a DR solution now, as opposed to having to move it down to another place or building in Las Vegas. Now that we are central with our backups to the cloud, we can focus on a DR solution. It definitely is very important to our infrastructure. As a server team, backups are number one. Metallic has now become one of our fallbacks on solutions for all kinds of stuff.

Spend it if you got it. The biggest lesson that I learned from using Metallic is sometimes going with cheaper isn't always better. That is why we left Commvault. While Metallic might be a little more expensive than Quest or MABS, with that extra dollar you are paying, you are going to get your money's worth.

I would rate them as 10 out of 10. I can't really complain. Right now, they look like a knight in shining armor. What do you normally do with a knight in shining armor? You put a medal on him.

We had a requirement to store our database and virtual machine backups in the cloud instead of having local backups. To fulfill that requirement, we use a Metallic solution. The reason that we are moving to Commvault Metallic is that, at that moment, we are using a Commvault backup solution. While using the Commvault backup solution we got positive feedback. So, we didn't hesitate to move to their own cloud solution, Metallic. While using this product, we've also received the same positive feedback.

We had a backup solution. We were trying to find a better backup solution than the old one. We were searching for backup solutions based on the below criteria:

• Backup-taking method
• Backup retention and the ability to change retention
• WORM feature availability
• Security tools
• 24/7 Availability
• Portability of Backup and VM
• Deduplication ratios
• Encryption mechanism

While we were looking out at the market, we found this solution perfectly matched so we decided to try it.

The most valuable feature is the deduplication ratio. It saves most of our space and reduces the network traffic. Space is a very important factor. Thanks to this deduplication ratio, we are able to maintain our backup retention time for a variety of reasons. It also reduces network traffic and saves us from network-related issues. When the backup gets smaller, we can easily transfer between locations very quickly and accurately. It provides good cost savings as well.

We are using a production environment with customer-sensitive data on it. As per our central bank rules and regulations, we can't keep our customer's sensitive data in the cloud. So we are looking forward to having a good solution that can work with us. The Metallic team is working on this and will come up with a better solution in the future. If we can figure out this issue, we won't have future issues relating to our government authorities, and we can also fulfill our company's requirements easily.

I've been using this product for the last year.

It is maintaining our backup without failing.

The scalability is very good.

The support team wants to improve its SLA.

Neutral

We did use a different solution; this is the better solution for us.

The initial setup is straightforward.

We implemented with a vendor team and I would rate their services eight out of ten.  

We have noticed an ROI related to good space and network utilization savings.

In this product, the cost-benefit is very high.

We also evaluated EMC NetWorker, Veeam, et cetera.

This is one of the best solutions I've come across.