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reviewer1002471 - PeerSpot reviewer
Assistant Manager of IT at a consumer goods company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Enables us to monitor all users from a single place
Pros and Cons
  • "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."
  • "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."

What is our primary use case?

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.

How has it helped my organization?

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.

What is most valuable?

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.

For how long have I used the solution?

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.

Buyer's Guide
Commvault Cloud
September 2025
Learn what your peers think about Commvault Cloud. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: September 2025.
867,676 professionals have used our research since 2012.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

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.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

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.

How are customer service and support?

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. 

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

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

How was the initial setup?

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, 

What about the implementation team?

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.

What was our ROI?

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.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

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.

What other advice do I have?

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.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
Storage & Data Protection Transition Engineer at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Notably simplifies our disaster recovery testing, and reduces our backup costs
Pros and Cons
  • "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... 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."
  • "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 CommServe/Java console. The place to improve the product is on the management interface level."

What is our primary use case?

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.

How has it helped my organization?

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.

What is most valuable?

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.

What needs improvement?

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.

For how long have I used the solution?

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

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

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.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

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.

How are customer service and support?

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.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

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.

How was the initial setup?

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.

What was our ROI?

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.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

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.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

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.

What other advice do I have?

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.

Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Commvault Cloud
September 2025
Learn what your peers think about Commvault Cloud. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: September 2025.
867,676 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Karabo  Molema - PeerSpot reviewer
Founder and Director at BMBE SOLUTIONS
Real User
It's user-friendly and cost-effective
Pros and Cons
  • "Metallic is user-friendly, cost-effective, and the technical support is impressive."
  • "The reporting could be improved because the reports we get from our partner aren't sufficient. It isn't very detailed. I'm not sure if it's an issue with our partner or Metallic. They do a full backup on Monday and incremental backups throughout the week. However, we don't get detailed reports about the size of the incremental backups. The report just tells us whether a backup was successful."

What is our primary use case?

I use Metallic to back up a customer's environment. It's the solution offered by our partner, a South African company called Data Protection Management. I'm just the intermediary, providing data loss prevention to my client. I've never seen the interface or used the platform. My client uses Metallic to backup data from Microsoft solutions like SharePoint and OneDrive. 

What needs improvement?

The reporting could be improved because the reports we get from our partner aren't sufficient. It isn't very detailed. I'm not sure if it's an issue with our partner or Metallic. They do a full backup on Monday and incremental backups throughout the week. However, we don't get detailed reports about the size of the incremental backups. The report just tells us whether a backup was successful. 

In addition to the core backup features, I would also like to see Metallic add patch management. It's a crucial way to minimize threats against data sources. 

For how long have I used the solution?

I have used Metallic for six months.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I rate Metallic eight out of 10 for stability. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I rate Metallic 10 out of 10 for scalability. 

How are customer service and support?

I rate Metallic support 10 out of 10. They did the setup for us. Metallic support was exceptional, and they knew what they were doing. 

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

How was the initial setup?

I rate Metallic nine out of 10 for ease of setup. Metallic set up the solution for me, but they walked me through the process. It seemed easy and took a few hours. 

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

I rate Metallic 10 out of 10 for affordability. It's highly cost-effective compared to other products I've used. I pay a monthly fee of 57 rands per user as a reseller and sell it at a markup to my client. 

What other advice do I have?

I rate Metallic 10 out of 10. Metallic is user-friendly, cost-effective, and the technical support is impressive. 

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. reseller
PeerSpot user
Ingo Bader - PeerSpot reviewer
Pre-Sales Engineer at DMP
Real User
Reliable, easy to install, and has agents for most products
Pros and Cons
  • "Not everyone has agents for everything and Commvault has agents for most products. It's the most complete."
  • "Not everyone has agents for everything and Commvault has agents for most products. It's the most complete."

What is our primary use case?

We primarily use the solution as a backup for databases, VMs, or servers. 

What is most valuable?

Not everyone has agents for everything and Commvault has agents for most products. It's the most complete.

It's easy to install. 

It is stable and reliable.

The solution can scale. 

What needs improvement?

I don't have any notes for improvements. 

The price could always be lower. 

We'd like to have local support in Germany.

The POC is only 30 days, and it really should be 90 days. 

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using the solution for ten years. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The solution is stable and reliable. There are no bugs or glitches. I'd rate the reliability nine out of ten. It doesn't crash or freeze. Based on what is possible, it is okay.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The solution is very scalable. I'd rate it ten out of ten in terms of the ability to extend.

Everyone uses the solution. We have 20 to 30 people using the product. That includes consultants. 

How are customer service and support?

Technical support is currently based in India. I'd like to have more local support. 

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We did not previously use a different solution. 

How was the initial setup?

The solution is simple to set up. It is not complex. 

It takes approximately two weeks to deploy the solution.

You simply download the .EXE file and start the installation. 

We had one person that handled the setup. We had an engineer, myself, handle it. 

What about the implementation team?

We handle the initial setup ourselves. We did not need any outside assistance. 

What was our ROI?

I have not really noticed any ROI.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Inside the 30-day trial period, you do not need a license. After that, you need to pay yearly.

The prices are pretty high. It's quite expensive. 

What other advice do I have?

I'm an end-user.

We are using the latest version of the solution. 

I'd recommend potential new users talk to a proper consultant and do a proper POC. 

I would rate the solution nine out of ten. 

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
reviewer1055571 - PeerSpot reviewer
Head of the Company at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Reseller
Top 20Leaderboard
The best compatibility metrics with very good security, stability, and integrity
Pros and Cons
  • "The solution includes the best compatibility metrics for integration and they are managed by Google support."
  • "Support could improve and the initial configuration would be easier with assistance from a professional engineer."

What is our primary use case?

Our company uses the solution to implement cobots for customers. 

What is most valuable?

The global application provides a lot of storage for customers.

There are good security features for Google, videos, irregular encryption, and backups. 

The solution includes the best compatibility metrics for integration and they are managed by Google support. 

The Google reporting is very, very good. It lets us know our data or any losses so we don't need tickets to check our data. 

What needs improvement?

There is a lack of marketing in our region so there needs to be a focus on improving the solution's reputation. We believe in the solution but competitors like VIN have an edge in the market. 

The network and service need to cover more regions than just the Middle East. 

The solution should provide virtual updates on Linux OS via a host address or in utilities instead of via a secret database. 

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using the solution for seven years. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The solution is very stable so stability is rated a nine out of ten. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The solution is scalable so scalability is rated an eight out of ten. 

How are customer service and support?

Technical support is helpful but it can take one or two weeks to sort out issues. 

I rate technical support a seven out of ten. 

How would you rate customer service and support?

Neutral

How was the initial setup?

The initial configuration file can be a bit complex. A professional technician who is provided by the vendor should assist with setup. It would boost the solution's reputation to provide configuration, expansion, and upgrade services to customers. 

What about the implementation team?

We implemented the solution in-house and the initial configuration took about four hours. 

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The cost of an integrator license is moderate and its features cover most customers. Application features for government or compliance require a separate license. 

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Our company proposes solutions to customers depending on their use cases. We have multiple applications and multiple technologies. 

For example, we propose a particular solution to customers in the banking or government sectors. We propose another solution for small or medium companies in the general business sector. 

What other advice do I have?

For every security level, there is good stability and integrity. 

Support could improve and the initial configuration would be easier with assistance from a professional engineer. 

I rate the solution an eight out of ten. 

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Hybrid Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Other
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
ALbert Navarro - PeerSpot reviewer
Account Manager IT at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
Reseller
A solution with a great rate of duplication and easily scalable
Pros and Cons
  • "The rate of duplication is great."
  • "The interface could be improved because it has two different consoles."

What is our primary use case?

The rate of duplication is great because when you do the first full backup, it duplicates 20%, but when you do more increments, depending on the mode, the duplication is 99%. It is also great at detecting ransomware. It's not an antivirus, but when you copy files, the system can send you a message such as, "Mr. Albert, have you downloaded 10,000 files in two minutes? Why are you doing this?" Again, it's not an antivirus, but it notifies you if something is wrong with your system.

What needs improvement?

The interface could be improved because it has two different consoles. The first console is Java, and it is a little complex, but you can do 100% of the operation. But now, there is an alternative console of HTML 5. It is trendy and simple, but you can only do 70% of your operation. The HTML console is perfect for a client or a partner.

You have all the information centralized with the Java console, and I believe they plan to transition to the HTML console fully.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using it for three months, deploying both on-premises and cloud. The choice of on-premises or cloud depends on what the client wants.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I rate the stability an 8.5 out of ten, and there is a small room for improvement.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is easily scalable. We have about 300 users of Commvault Complete Data Protection in our company.

How are customer service and support?

We have used technical support, and you can contact them by opening a ticker and in a few minutes, they will action it. For example, we opened a ticket last week, and the issue was solved in 30 minutes.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Veeam, Veritas and Rubrik are three software comparable to Commvault Complete Data Protection. Veeam is competitive in price and demand. Their solution is not very good, but many people use it because it is not expensive. Commvault Complete Data Protection, however, is the best out of all of them.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is simple.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

I rate the pricing an eight out of ten, with ten being a good price and one a high price. Depending on the client, they have different types of licensing.

What other advice do I have?

I rate the solution a nine out of ten. We would like to see a single console for everything in the future.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. Reseller
PeerSpot user
reviewer1874277 - PeerSpot reviewer
Director of Information Technology at a construction company with 501-1,000 employees
Real User
Makes backup of O365 mailboxes more efficient, and reduces our backup management workload
Pros and Cons
  • "The granularity of the Office 365 Backup & Recovery feature is very good. We've used all of it, recovering data from each of the four systems that we back up with it, and it works very well."
  • "The speed of the Office 365 Backup & Recovery feature is adequate. Microsoft controls the amount of bandwidth that people have when they're using Azure and the O365 environment... If they could work out something with Microsoft to improve the speed, that would help."

What is our primary use case?

We use it to back up everything in Office 365: our Exchange mailboxes, SharePoint, OneDrive for Business, and Microsoft Teams. And we use it for Azure Active Directory. The thing we use it the most for is recovering email messages or mailboxes.

How has it helped my organization?

We moved our email to Office 365 and, when we did that, we were using an on-premises Commvault solution but that was not an efficient way to back up the O365 mailboxes. Metallic has definitely improved our ability to back up and restore email, as well as the other online systems.

Also, we spend very little time with the Metallic solution because it just runs, so it has reduced the amount of manual work required to manage our backup operations. With our former solution, I was spending two hours a week on that, so it's saving me that much time. The other benefit is that I now have three or four other people on my team who can do the backups and the restores, as necessary. With the on-premises solution it was very complicated and I was the only one who could do it. Not only have we reduced the time from two hours a week to almost zero, but we now have multiple people with the ability to use the tool.

And when it comes to infrastructure costs, it's saving us about $25,000 a year.

What is most valuable?

It is very easy to use and that's been good for my team because I can have multiple people use the solution. It's very intuitive.

In addition, the granularity of the Office 365 Backup & Recovery feature is very good. We've used all of it, recovering data from each of the four systems that we back up with it, and it works very well.

It has also been very reliable.

What needs improvement?

The speed of the Office 365 Backup & Recovery feature is adequate. Microsoft controls the amount of bandwidth that people have when they're using Azure and the O365 environment. It's not really a Metallic issue, it's more of a Microsoft limitation. If they could work out something with Microsoft to improve the speed, that would help. But, generally speaking, it's been fine. I don't know of anything else that I'd want to see improved.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using Commvault for about 18 months.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We're very satisfied with the stability.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability is excellent. Any plans to increase our usage of it in the future will come naturally with time.

How are customer service and support?

I've contacted their technical support a couple of times and they were very good.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We switched to Metallic from Commvault's enterprise backup because that solution is not in the cloud. Given that it was on-premises, trying to back up the resources in the cloud was inefficient. Metallic is in the cloud and it can talk directly to those other cloud resources. It was designed better for what we need to do.

How was the initial setup?

We used Commvault Metallic's implementation services. There was an engineer on the phone with us and he walked us through the steps and everything worked as it should. It was very simple. The configuration is all done through a web browser; just point and click. The deployment took about an hour. All I had to do was get it up and running and show my team how to use it.

Our experience with the Commvault engineer was excellent.

There are four of us who use the solution, including me. The others are all system administrators. We haven't had to designate anyone for maintenance.

What was our ROI?

It's hard to measure the ROI of a backup solution. It's like car insurance. You have to have it but it only pays for itself if you have a catastrophe.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The solution is licensed based on the number of objects that we're going to back up, and that's a known quantity. As a result, we get predictable costs for our backup requirements. The actual storage on the back end of the system is included and that means we don't have to plan for any storage growth or changes there. We just have to plan for the number of employees that we have. That makes it very predictable.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We researched Veeam Backup & Replication. The main factor in deciding to go with Metallic, at the time, was to stay with one backup vendor so that we did not have two different solutions in place.

The evaluation was to compare what Metallic was capable of doing with what Veeam was capable of doing for what we needed. We thought that Metallic was adequate so we stayed with that.

What other advice do I have?

Use their professional services for the implementation. That was very helpful because whenever you're configuring anything that works in Azure, or AWS for that matter, there are complexities. The professional services walk you right through that so you don't stumble. After that, it's very simple to use.

The solution is definitely appropriate for an enterprise-level environment. The performance for both backup and recovery, in an enterprise, is very good.

When we signed up for it, it was a Microsoft Azure-based storage solution and Commvault has its relationship with Microsoft. We're just leveraging what Commvault offers, so there's not really any flexibility, but that's okay with us. We just subscribe to the service and it does what we need it to do. We didn't need storage flexibility or anything like that. We just needed what the solution had to offer.

What I've learned from using Metallic is "keep it simple." We use a very simple approach to back up everything and it works just fine.

Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
Ali Yazıcı - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Service Manager at Kuveyt Turk Participation Bank
Real User
Backing up doesn't require much effort and the workflow and reporting features are helpful
Pros and Cons
  • "It runs all the tests and emails us the reports. We take daily, weekly, and monthly snapshots, and I integrate the storage snapshot scripts with the Commvault workflow. The Commvault workflow runs all the scripts and sends us the reports. It also features cloud-side reports and workflows. Commvault has many tools for backing up, restoring, and archiving things, but we use another service for our archives."
  • "Our main pain point is that some of our hardware is old. For example, the SSD disks for our application database are slow. It's hard to avoid a slowdown in our environment because the size of our backups is growing every year. If you're growing and don't upgrade the environment, you will see slower backups and restores. You must enhance the environment if you are growing."

What is our primary use case?

We use Commvault to back up all our enterprise solutions, like MS SQL, Exchange, file servers, and MongoDB, but we don't use Commvault for multi-environment management. There is a primary site and a disaster recovery site that we control offsite with one console.

I know Commvault has another interface for the multi-site, but I've never used it before, so I don't have any experience with that. However, we have a passive primary server at the disaster recovery site, and if we have trouble at the main site, we can use the disaster recovery server. 

How has it helped my organization?

Commvault makes it easier to back up new additions to our environment. For example, when we added MongoDB, we found it in Commvault and could start backing it up. 

Right now, we are trying to integrate Kubernetes platforms into our environment, and I'm sure that Commvault can back up those. Commvault keeps up with new technologies, and if you upgrade to the latest stable version, you can find everything you need.

What is most valuable?

Backing up with Commvault doesn't require much effort. Commvault's reporting features are also excellent and user-friendly. It's easy to find anything we want. The workflow feature is handy, too. For example, we schedule an automated monthly backup and restoration test that we used to do manually. That has been integrated with Commvault's workflows and running automatically every month for four years. 

It runs all the tests and emails us the reports. We take daily, weekly, and monthly snapshots, and I integrate the storage snapshot scripts with the Commvault workflow. The Commvault workflow runs all the scripts and sends us the reports. It also features cloud-side reports and workflows. Commvault has many tools for backing up, restoring, and archiving, but we use another service for our archives. 

Commvault can show us unprotected workloads, servers, and SQL databases. It's a good feature, and I periodically get reports on this. However, it's a low priority because we are waiting for our inside customers to tell us whether they want something backed up or not. They must follow that, but we are using terabyte-based backups. We don't separate the agent— MS SQL or others—and we are only looking at the terabyte trends, so it's predictable for us. 

What needs improvement?

Our main pain point is that some of our hardware is old. For example, the SSD disks for our application database are slow. It's hard to avoid a slowdown in our environment because the size of our backups is growing every year. If you're growing and don't upgrade the environment, you will see slower backups and restores. You must enhance the environment if you are growing.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've used Commvault for about 10 years, and we used it at my last company for around six years. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Commvault's stability is good.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We have no problems scaling Commvault. I don't remember the numbers, but we have a terabyte license size. It's about 400 terabytes, but the backend is in the petabyte range. 

How are customer service and support?

Troubleshooting is easy because Commvault support responds and finds the root cause quickly. When I've contacted support for other solutions, some of them ask you to recreate the scenario. They ask you to increase the debugging level and reproduce the scenario to get the error again. As a result, we waste a lot of time troubleshooting those solutions. With Commvault, we don't need to devote much time to the operational and troubleshooting aspects. 

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I've used NetBackup before, and I think it's a good solution. It required more effort than Commvault, but I prefer it over EMC NetWorker. NetWorker was labor-intensive, buggy, and hard to use. We spent a lot of time dealing with EMC support. They have a large, competent support team, but we spent too much time with them. 

NetBackup is better than NetWorker, but it has fewer features than Commvault. NetBackup also has an old-fashioned interface that is harder to use than Commvault's. It's not user-friendly. Commvault is the best of the three.

How was the initial setup?

Setting up Commvault was straightforward. You set up the primary server first, then the media agents, disks, and agents for clients. Each of those steps is easy. It's like a "next, next, finish" Windows installer. You can deploy it in half a day in a smaller environment, and it's maybe one or two days for a large one. 

Of course, it depends on the size of the agents and how many you need for your physical environment. If you have a rigid environment, it's effortless because you only define the vCenters or the Hyper-V management console, and that's it. You can take backups. 

On the other hand, you must install all the agents if you have too many physical environments. Still, Commvault makes it easy because you can install everything from the user interface on the primary server. In total, we have five people, including me, managing Commvault and all our other storage solutions. 

What other advice do I have?

I rate Commvault 10 out of 10. If you're planning on implementing Commvault, I suggest doing a PoC first to try out all the features and to compare them to other products. We did a PoC for backup solutions to test some new features for our enterprise solutions, and some of the products didn't make the cut, so I would recommend a PoC.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Commvault Cloud Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
Updated: September 2025
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Commvault Cloud Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.