Commvault Cloud Reviews

Our customers use all the Commvault modules related to data backup and protection.

From a real-life experience, I can say it cut down the time our customers spent on backup tasks by about 60 percent. 

We specialize in Commvault and IntelliSnap. Commvault covers all our customers' backup needs in one system, and they have complete control over their Snapshot backups. Snapshots are important to our customers because of the size of their data sets. Data has become so big in recent years that traditional backup methods are no longer helpful. Commvault's interface gets more user-friendly with each version. Our customers really like it.

Commvault offers a lot of visibility into the data, which is something that adds great value to the solution. Its ability to work across cloud and on-premises environments are essential for us because our customers have mixed environments, and they want a single interface for managing data protection. 

It also provides broad coverage by helping our customers identify unprotected workloads, which is helpful for customers with mixed and complex environments. Our enterprise customers often have systems from various manufacturers, or they've created silos that are connected through their protection system. I also know that Commvault has an excellent anti-ransomware feature, but I don't have any hands-on experience with it.

I've been using Commvault for seven years.

Commvault is very stable and mature.

Scalability was also not an issue. Every time we needed to scale the system for a customer, we could do it easily. On average, our clients are working with around 500 terabytes, and they're doing thousands of backup jobs on a daily basis.

I had no complaints, but I sometimes felt we needed more direct access to support instead of going through emails and an automated system. During emergencies, I would like to be able to pick up the phone and talk to somebody directly. Overall, I rate Commvault support eight out of 10. 

Setting up Commvault was somewhat complex for the implementations we did. A lot of preparation went into setting up the hardware that would support CommVault and also the network. In total, it took us about three working days.

I have a little experience with Veeam, and that's about it. I've also worked with a few legacy products that might not exist anymore. One was called NetVault, I believe, or something like that. So far, I feel like CommVault is more of an enterprise solution.

I rate Commvault 10 out of 10. It's full of features. Commvault is a rich system that might scare somebody the first time they see it because it feels so huge. There are thousands of options. On the other hand, if you understand the architecture and the logic behind it, it's the perfect way to do whatever you need. Because there are so many options, you will definitely find a way to address your needs. Everything is supported, and there is nothing it cannot do.

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.

Our customers mainly use it as a mixed backup solution of primarily virtual environments, whether it is Hyper-V or VMware, and also in some cases, physical machines. Some of our customers must have tape access, which is one of the reasons why we often propose and use Commvault.

We are a partner and service provider for Commvault. For some customers in Belgium, we are also implementing Metallic.

In Holland, we have some installations with cloud connectivity. However, in Belgium, we only use the cloud for archival purposes at this time.

Commvault helps to ensure broad coverage with the discovery of unprotected workloads. This is important. From the moment that we set it up, we mostly have customers telling us what they need to back up. Then, you can list the machines that are not yet protected. Sometimes, we can see that they are unaware of this, and say, "We didn't know that those servers were not protected yet," or "We did not back them up yet." 

Sometimes, if you have multiple admins working in environments, you will see a growth of machines and the backup people responsible are not always aware of this. Therefore, it is very important to explain to customers that they need to perform a check monthly. They should also check with their admins or application owners to see what is necessary, because sometimes application owners may need to pay for it or the customer will need newer licenses. It is important for them to know, especially these days. In the case where you have servers which are not yet protected, you have bigger issues.

We use Commvault's ransomware protection and detection on media agents. From the moment that we can configure media agents, we have already enabled that option. We will then address with customers the possibilities, a way forward, and regular checks with resources. As a service provider, if we configure a customer, then they will set up a monthly restore test. Also, if a customer demands it or finds it necessary, we can perform disaster recovery tests.

Commvault can do everything for every operating system and application. Whether it is cloud-based, like Office 365, or not, it is possible with Commvault. 

Sometimes for customers, it is difficult because you can see all the features. Sometimes, it is difficult for them to use or understand it. Once they have had some training from Commvault or us, they are really happy with the solution.

I would assess the Command Center as a very useful but sometimes difficult tool. It is multipurpose. It has all the features of logging and monitoring, especially for the actual setup. For us, it is easy because we work daily with it, but for customers who only use it once a week, they sometimes have some difficulties. Command Center is not user-friendly for beginners.

This is also the reason why we propose to customers to use the Web Console. I know that some older customers are not yet really aware of this tool. However, from the moment that they start using the tool and search possibilities, they will then go to that Web Console instead of the Command Center.

Ransomware is a major problem these days, and whatever improvements they can make to be more secure on this is always good. At this moment, they have a large install base and a very broad package for backup of applications, for OSs and Hyper-V, with a cloud integration. This will be a major part of their growth and change in the future. 

We would like the ability to restore to and from the cloud to on-prem. While they are already very big in this aspect, this could be an improvement over the next few years.

I have been using it for approximately three years. However, my company has been using it much longer.

It is a very stable product that has many features. 

Scalability is very good. It can go very far with the number of media agents and its database. 

You have hyperscale possibilities, which is not something that I work with a lot. However, if necessary, you can also use the appliances to scale. 

For normal environments with servers and media agents, it is rather easy to scale. We sometimes start with small media agents using a physical server. We always have the possibility to extend it with more disks. It is easy for Commvault to scale the disk capacity.

The technical support is very good. We have a general account with Commvault where we can open cases and get assistance. Up until now, it has always been very good.

Positive

Sometimes, they have already used Dell EMC NetWorker. When Dell EMC tries to sell them PowerProtect, we will suggest moving to Commvault because we know it is very good and has a stable environment.

The initial setup is straightforward because I know the product rather well. I can say that customers who see it or sometimes migrate from another product to Commvault find it difficult. For example, you need to have a CommServe server with a database. The database could be on another server or virtual machine. Then, you will need to have media agents.

By using our service provider solution, customers often have less work than before. They don't have to manage an environment themselves. They can get reports about whether backups fail or not. They can also ask us to perform restores, etc.

The main reason that customers often choose us is because we can use Commvault as a service provider. So, the customer does not need to install a CommServe server and database on-premises. Instead, we can simply use a media agent with clients and back up their data on a temporary media, then replicate the data to our data center and servers. So, they will have double security, e.g., on-prem for fast restores. Initially, after one weeks to two months, they will have longer copies and retention periods on our site, where they have the possibility to perform restores or replication to their on-prem environment.

Sometimes, for customers, the setup is difficult compared to Veeam, which we sometimes also sell to much smaller customers. However, for the bigger customers, we use Commvault.

If it is a bigger physical and/or virtual environment with a lot of applications, Commvault is the way to go. We have noticed with Veeam, especially if you have physical database servers, that it is sometimes a hassle to configure and back up. For smaller customers who only have a virtual environment of around 50 to 60 VMs, Commvault might be too big, painful, and difficult. In these cases, we might propose the Veeam solution.

Rubrik and Cohesity have large cloud solutions. However, in Belgium, it is mainly the virtual environment that we need to protect as well as physical servers for bigger customers, which is why Commvault is the best solution for us.

I primarily still use the Commvault Command Center. We teach a lot of customers to use the Commvault Web Console because it is easier for them to use. Also, for future upgrades, the newer versions are aware of the web and HTML5 interfaces, but not Command Center.

It is good to have an assessment of the environment beforehand to really look at the retention of the customer's backups. If they are already using a solution, it is important to determine if the configured retention times are up to date. It is also important to know if cloud integration is necessary or will be in the future.

I would rate this solution as eight out of 10. There is always room for improvement.

It is used as an enterprise backup solution.

We have a very good disaster recovery solution with Commvault. We have a standby CommServe where logs are being deployed every five minutes. If something goes wrong, we are immediately able to recover and enable services on the standby server. We are achieving 99.9 percent SLA with respect to the backups.

It also helps to ensure broad coverage through the discovery of unprotected workloads. We can easily identify them in the Web Console where we can see which of our servers is not protected. And if there is no backup for more than one day, we can get a report, and we have also enabled alerts. Those features are really helpful to us in identifying and addressing issues.

Commvault minimizes the time we spend on backup tasks. I only have to check the health of the CommCells, and the rest of the time I can work on the other tasks.

It's a very good enterprise backup solution with multiple features. We are able to take a backup of multiple databases. We don't need to use scripts to schedule any kind of local backups. We have a direct plugin for Commvault so that we are able to take backups of any of our databases or application systems, like SharePoint. Commvault is also enabling backup for PaaS services that are deployed on the cloud.

Commvault provides encryption mechanisms with the latest standards that our customers are looking for.

The CommCell console is very good and user-friendly. I have experience with NetBackup, HPE DP, and Backup Exec, but I'm really comfortable with Commvault. The console makes it easy to identify exactly what we need to see. For example, there are multiple categories. If a backup needs to be performed on multiple systems, we just configure one client or one group and we can push the agent straightaway. That's a very good feature that helps us to complete tasks on time.

We can integrate our multiple CommCells in the single Web Console as well and that helps us easily identify how many servers are getting backed up and how many servers are not being backed up. We can see the SLA and the success rate. And even though our customer is huge, we can give them access and they can easily see the SLA and the success rate of the backups. Commvault also recently launched the Command Center. It is very good, enabling us to deploy server plans. It is very good and user-friendly.

For disaster recovery, there is a feature called Live Sync, and we are also able to export disaster recovery backups to the cloud. If something goes wrong, we are immediately able to recover and continue with business.

In addition, if something goes wrong and a backup fails, we can trace the issue using the log. Each service has a different log that clearly gives us information about the exact reason for the issue and what needs to be done.

We have multiple workloads, including SQL, Oracle, SAP HANA, especially Sybase, as well as file systems, VMs, and Exchange mailboxes. Commvault provides very good support for them. We perform 70 to 80 restores on a monthly basis. Over the past year, I have faced challenges with one or two restores. All the rest were completed successfully. And if we get stuck, we can easily use the logs to identify the issue and to make some changes to the configuration. So we are approaching a 100 percent success rate with respect to restoration.

Commvault has very good procedures for performing backups and restores of SAP HANA databases. As far as I know, no other technology provides an option to perform a restore directly from the backup tool itself. We log in to HANA Studio when we have to perform a restore and Commvault enables this by default. We are able to do the restoration from the Commvault GUI itself.

Commvault also provides workflows. If you want to decommission a client's systems, there is a workflow where we just have to add the client to it and we can easily complete the task. This is useful when we are informed that a customer is moving out. It would be a huge task for the backup team to retain the backups for such-and-such a period of time and to release the license. Running this workflow makes our work very simple and reduces our efforts as well. The multiple workflows really help us in completing tasks quickly.

Overall it has great features that fulfill our customers' expectations.

I have been using Commvault for the past seven years.

The stability is very good. If you don't follow the metrics and best practices recommended by Commvault, or if you mess up the setup, you may face challenges. If you follow the best practices, it's a very good, stable solution.

We can easily expand our licenses and deploy Commvault for our customers, which keeps our business going. From a scalability point of view, I haven't seen many challenges.

We get very good support from Commvault if we run into any kind of production issue. They maintain a very good SLA for critical and high-priority tickets. We are really satisfied with their support.

For example, let's say that something in production is down or multiple customers are impacted. SAP won't join a call and help us in resolving the issue. But if we have a critical CommServe-level issue, and multiple backups may fail, Commvault can easily jump on a call and can help us in addressing this issue. In reality, if something is wrong with a SAP system or if an OS is not functioning, a customer may not be able to do their work. Whereas, without a backup, they can continue their business, but they cannot recover things if something goes wrong. Still, if we raise a high-severity ticket, based on the criticality, Commvault support will definitely jump in. They can help us in one hour, at the most.

Positive

In one of my older projects, deployment of Commvault was simple, but the current one is complex. It's a very big environment. It depends on the environment of the client and the requirements. If you have a shared mechanism and the customer has multiple firewalls at their end, it will be very difficult to integrate multiple customers into one CommCell. But if you have a single project and a dedicated customer in a single domain, it will be very easy.

Compared with other backup technologies, Commvault is a bit more costly, but we are satisfied with the support, the services, and the features that we get with Commvault.

We are using the capacity-based license and have a total of 10 CommCells. In the license file, we can clearly see what kinds of workloads can be backed up.

Veeam is very useful for Windows-related platforms but we chose Commvault because it does not have any kind of platform dependency when it comes to backups. It has multiple features enabling us to backup Oracle RAC, or Exchange DAG, and IBM Lotus Notes, and any type of PaaS services.

Commvault has a clear-cut, three-tier architecture, whereas others follow a two-tier architecture, other than NetBackup, I believe. With Commvault, every backup load will be taken care of by the MediaAgent, and administrative tasks will be taken care of by the CS. Evn the CommServe size also not be huge when compared with other solutions.

With respect to security, in particular regarding ransomware, Commvault has built-in features that we enabled to protect our environment. As for storage targets, every storage array has its own built-in mechanism for encrypting or securing the data. It is very difficult for a third party to enter and to make any kind of use of the storage arrays.

Storage cost completely depends on the retention the customer is looking for. If they have, say, a 1 TB system and they're looking for more than two months' retention, there will be a lot of storage utilization. But we do get a very good duplication ratio, close to 90 percent for file system backups, which helps us to minimize the cost.

Overall, if your infra is very good, once you configure Commvault there are no challenges. It will function well. If something is wrong with the network, obviously, any backup technology will end up with issues. But Commvault is very good.

We use Commvault to back up our NetApp environments to a file and data server. Commvault backs up everything, including our databases and the log files from these databases. We have a cloud, but we're not managing it with Commvault yet. We are also not using the isolation and segmentation features. We're only using Commvault internally, but it's still important for us to have those features. We've chosen Commvault for its full capabilities.  

Commvault is faster than NetApp's native Snapshot technology. Management and restoration are easier. We don't need to mount or unmount volumes from NetApp before restoration. With just a few clicks, we can immediately get to the data we need to restore, and the restoration is completed instantly. It's fast, accurate, and up to date.

We save a lot of time doing backups and restoration with Commvault. Our goal is to do everything within eight hours. We have several terabytes of data that need to be backed up daily, and we do it overnight during a period of eight hours maximum. We can usually get that done in three or four hours.

However, it hasn't cut back on our storage or infrastructure costs. Our NetApp environment is already a network cluster, meaning the data is saved in two locations. Then we installed Commvault on a third location, so we can restore from that if the other two fail. We were forced to invest in putting servers into that small data center, so there were no direct cost savings.

Backup is the reason why we bought Commvault. We need to ensure that all of our backups are done daily. This is very important because we use it for disaster recovery, and we need this data back. We're a production environment. If we cannot restore in the event of a failure within X number of hours, it has a considerable impact on our company. Five thousand people are working at the factory who depend on this data. If it's not available, they can't work. 

Consistent recovery is also essential. Every day, we have users who delete a file and need to restore it. Our backups must be up to date.

Commvault's interface has a lot of sub-menus, and sometimes it's hard to find the information you need. You have to click a few times before finding the right window. The overview could be better.

We've been using Commvault for almost three years now.

Commvault is stable. We've never had problems with it. It's always available, and it's doing the job without any issues. It never fails. Sometimes we miss a backup, but there's always a reason for it, and it's not the fault of Commvault. In the last three years, we've never had to open a ticket with Commvault. That shows how stable and well-performing it is.

We are looking into scalability because we're not yet using Commvault for the whole organization. The main limitation is the cost of implementing it at a lot of sites. Every year, we put it on our agenda to adopt it across Europe. We've selected some spots, but sometimes we've had to scrap a few because of the cost. However, soon we'll have the data we need for broader implementation. 

We have around 15 affiliates, including five big ones. Currently, it's running at two of those. Every national affiliate is responsible for its own budget, and it's up to them to decide if they want to spend the money on it. They have the built-in Snapshot technology from NetApp that they can use, with all its limitations, or they have the full-blown Commvault option, which needs investment first. Every year, we evaluate if we replace the NetApp Snapshot technology with Commvault. Quite often, there are other priorities.

But that hasn't stopped us because sometimes we use Turkey's Commvault to take backups from all those countries. So the scalability is excellent. It's easy because you just add the server, and it's up and running.

Installing Commvault is straightforward. It's a "next, next, finish" installer. For deployment, we had help from a third party who had experience with Commvault, so it was pretty easy to configure all those things.

Altogether, it took four or five days. We had to do some fine-tuning. It was a new product for us, so we had to learn how to use it too. The installation itself only took a day and a half. We spent the rest of the time learning tips and tricks and all that stuff. For management, we work with a third-party partner in India called Infosys. We also have a team of three people here in Europe supervising it.

When we installed everything in Turkey, we used a partner over there called Datacore. They were outstanding. We vetted them first using the same process we use for approving projects. I would rate them nine out of 10. 

For us, the return is that we can get our data back in the event of a disaster. That's the most important thing. We're not looking at it in terms of a return on investment in hardware. The data is what matters the most. If we lose that, it will cost us a fortune compared to the money we spend on installation. You cannot compare those two things.

Commvault's price is quite high. You have to pay for the licenses and the hardware you need for the Commvault environment. If you don't have all the hardware, you have to buy it, which can cost a few million. In the end, it's vital to protect our data, so the price isn't an issue. However, it can be a hard sell to your top management. They say, "Well, you have your NetApp snapshot technology. Why go for something else when that is doing the job? Why should you spend a few million to implement another backup solution?" 

If you can find a decent reason, then it's great. With the pandemic, it's becoming difficult to justify expenses like this. Everybody is afraid about the impact and wants to avoid extra costs as much as possible.

In the beginning, we were looking at around six or seven products, and then we made a shortlist that included Veeam and Cohesity. We looked at solutions from most of the big, traditional companies. We chose Commvault because it has all the features we want. It's also a good fit for us because it supports a wide range of platforms, including NetApp and Windows, and we use several different platforms. 

I rate Commvault nine out of 10. If you want a stable product that you can rely on, you should definitely go for the Commvault environment.

Most of our clients have an on-premise environment. They are traditional environments, but they are slowly starting to use the cloud for IT solutions and services. Lately, we've been shifting some workloads to the cloud and using the product there. It's been a slow transition, but we are doing it. We are partners in the Latin American region, so we are trying to find the best fit for every customer and recommend different backup solutions depending on the client. Some are easier to install but lack certain features. 

Commvault has a large customer base in the enterprise segment, so it provides a complete recovery solution for our largest clients. That's the way we use the product. We focus on enterprise solutions in large companies in Columbia and the South American and Latin American region. Commvault has a strong track record protecting the integrity of workloads, and it has many different features needed in the corporate environment. We have various technologies that need to be backed up and protected. In that sense, Commvault is a comprehensive solution.

No other vendor has such a wide range of solutions, including traditional on-premises workloads, cyber cloud members, and cloud links. All of those features are comprehensive enough to be considered for the largest client. 

The ability to manage and recover data across platforms and deployments is what we look for in a solution. Technologies are getting more complex all the time. We're seeing the emergence of different technology, including support for containers and various cloud services. These new technologies pose challenges for the backup environment. 

In the past, we only needed to back up specific databases and certain network tasks. The data is much more extended, and the interactions among different technologies and services are more complicated, so data protection is more complex. So, in this context, it's vital for a product to offer that kind of experience for us. I think that it's what the customers are looking for in this ever-growing and ever-complex environment.

One of the critical strategies to deal with risk is having an air-gapped copy of the data. In that context, tech solutions and object storage solutions help us to cope with that. So in that sense, Commvault is not different from any other solution that already offers those kinds of air-gapped copies. It helps manage a lot of different storage media and mix up all the storage media that we have so the cost of data matches the cost of the storage solution we are using. It makes no sense to store completely cold data in fast media. That is costly. Commvault has a wide range of support for storage solutions. It comes down to planning. You have to plan where you're going to put every inch of data. Then you're going to put it in the best layer possible depending on whether the information is cold or hot.

Commvault's Command Center is one of the best solutions out there. You can rely on Commvault solutions for the most complex and most demanding environments. It can meet the requirements of many Fortune 500 companies. It's great for companies that need a robust solution flexible enough to cope with all kinds of environments and technologies. 

Commvault offers broad coverage by helping us identify unprotected workloads. It helps us get to the point where we have a complete picture of the environment. I think that's a pretty good feature, and it allows us to have a good overview of our protection environment and what workloads are protected and which are not. It's one of the essentials out there for that. 

When it comes to recovery, Commvault is undeniably one of the best technologies out there. It's got all the different granularity levels that a business requires to get your information back to production. For example, we have their commission discovery, individual items recovery, mailbox recovery, databases, and different tables. Some databases can be recovered individually. This level of granularity enables us to get the most value out of the product.

Commvault is complex even if the product has comprehensive solutions and covers pretty much every technology out there. There's no unified way to manage all of the products on one single console. There are different things that you need to look for to have comprehensive management of the whole environment. I think that's not one of Commvault's strong suits. 

Also, even though I think the user interface might improve the manageability of the solution, it can be complex in some cases. You need a lot of experience and different touchpoints to get through environmental management, and it's not a comprehensive or unified solution for that. 

Commvault is also a solution that requires a lot of time. It demands a lot of time from administrators and requires an administrator to manage it almost full-time. But in this case, it's not a hindrance. While it isn't the easiest product to use, it's one of the most likable ones. It offers a lot of different options and the breadth of support that it has. I think it's just a compromise that you make. In this case, you get flexibility, great support, and a high-quality product, but you lose some in terms of administration. 

We've been using Commvault for about five years now. When we started, we were just customers, but now we are Commvault managers and consultants. 

It's a completely stable solution. We haven't had any problems with the software that make implementation a problem or prevent us from using the product effectively.

Commvault's scalability is unmatched. Very few competitors have the scalability that Commvault offers. IBM and Veritas might come close, but there are no other solutions that can grow to accommodate enormous environments. So we have to rethink or mix up different backup solutions and technologies. With Commvault, you can do it for either large environments or medium-sized environments as well.

I rate Commvault support 10 out of 10. The members of the support team are knowledgeable. They know their product well and are eager to help. Overall, it's a great customer experience. It's a deciding factor that makes customers and clients renew their licenses in a few years. You can buy a product, but you're only going to stay with it because of its quality and customer support. The support is outstanding in this case.

We've mainly contacted support to get best practices, implementation recommendations, and suggestions about operating the product. But we haven't faced any challenging problems that we couldn't tackle. The documentation has been pretty solid, too. 

Positive

Early in the process, it takes a long time to get things right and make things do what they are supposed to do based on best practices. Sometimes it takes a lot of time to do it, but it's ultimately worth it. If you put in a few more weeks to get the product implemented properly, it's going to pay off down the road. You'll see some cost savings and it will save you some effort in the future. So I think it's best to do an excellent job at first.

The savings we've realized from deploying Commvault could be around $100,000 to $300,000, including storage space, rack space, and energy charges. That's a total cost of ownership analysis.

Sometimes Commvault can be costly. On the other hand, you need to consider other use cases, verticals, and segments in the market, not just the price. But I think that those are the disadvantages of the factory features that have some room for improvement. The product is excellent.

The cost of implementing or supporting Commvault can be high. You need to pay attention to the licensing. It's imperative to do careful planning regarding the workflows you will support, and which kinds of solutions or vehicles you're going to deploy because there could be some surprises down the road. 

I think that's one of the main weaknesses of the product: it might be costlier than the competition. Of course, it's not always the case, but sometimes it could be pricier than the competition. That can sometimes be a barrier to implementing the product in certain regions and specific verticals or certain kinds of customers that are very cost-sensitive. Lowering the price is essential for Commvault to gain traction in other segments, and we have traditional companies reducing their prices. It would be good to see them more in an FNB environment, but the costs are too high for some customers.

We were looking for a solution with a breadth of support for heterogeneous workloads, so we considered solutions from different vendors, like IBM and Veritas. We also have a good relationship with IBM, but we thought their solution was somewhat archaic. It didn't have support for the latest technologies and platforms like Commvault.

Using the traditional client-server, those solutions couldn't match the amount of support Commvault offers. It was the perfect match for what we were looking for. One of the key features that led us to Commvault was its elasticity. It gives us the flexibility to run different workloads on the cloud or on-premise and to have them all protected within one technological stack. We're confident in the product because it's a comprehensive solution covering old-fashioned technologies and the newer ones. Every month there is new support for new features and new workloads. We're consistently surprised at the rate of innovation and the support that Commvault is putting into the product.

I rate Commvault nine out of 10. One recommendation I have for people considering Commvault is to explore all of the features the product offers. It has many features that aren't explored because of a lack of time or knowledge. I would invite all prospective customers to evaluate the whole breadth of functionality and suggest that they seek the assistance of a qualified implementation team. Do careful planning before implementing the product.

Isolating and segmenting storage targets from public networks to mitigate lateral moving threats can be difficult with Commvault. It takes thorough and detailed planning. You need to have careful planning before taking on implementation efforts. It's crucial to carefully consider where you're going to deploy and how you're going to divide the various segments of the product into different solutions so that you can comply with your business requirements.

Commvault might be challenging to deploy sometimes, and you need knowledgeable people to operate it. That doesn't mean it's going to be a failure. When the people are prepared and have skilled implementers, the product is a success from every point of view. So you have to be careful.

On balance, it is the most comprehensive solution in the market, with the ability to handle all kinds of applications, databases, and virtual workloads. Commvault's portfolio has a great breadth and depth in terms of quantity and quality of supported solutions. For example, Commvault is now supported on the cloud. The ability to mail snapshots back is one of Commvault, which has protection for all those workloads. Some of the competitors have just started to gain traction in this area, but Commvault has been doing it for several years.

We are using it for taking backup of our virtual servers and some physical servers.

We were searching for a tool to backup our virtual machines when we bought Commvault. I was already using Avamar to backup our desktops and laptops on a daily basis. We are using Commvault to take backup of servers. Both are good, but if I compare Avamar and Commvault, Avamar is better than Commvault. Avamar has hardware, but Commvault is a software-based solution.

Prior to implementation of Commvault, we were doing backups manually; shut down the virtual machines, do backups of entire machines, and then restart the machines. The administrative time has been drastically reduced now.

We used do manual backups of every virtual machine. A machine of 50GB would take around two hours to backup. This is the downtime. We had to shut down the machines and take the backup. But with Commvault, the major benefit is that we never shut down the machines. Every server is online and the backup is also online. So we reduce the downtime and administrative overhead.

The setup is complex. It's not simple to install the machine and start a backup. 

Commvault is software based, unlike hardware-type devices.

We have used Commvault the last three to four years.

It is stable. We don't have any problem regarding the core part of Commvault.

The solution is scalable. It's a software-based solution so we just need a license to expand it.

I have Avamar servers that we have recently updated storage-wise and capacity-wise. So we don't have any immediate requirement to increase the licenses of Commvault.

We have the technical support of Commvault, but in cases where little support is required, we call F1 to help us.

The initial setup was complex. The setup was implemented in one day, but the fine-tuning took longer to work through.

It has three to four parts. The server is one, storage is another, and the agent is another. It's not just a simple thing you have installed in a machine and start to do backups. It is a very new product for us, so we needed installation support from a partner. We are not the IT guys. We are a manufacturing industry, and we have a little knowledge of everything but are not really part of each type of hardware and software. It required an expert who had already implemented elsewhere to help us.

We hired a third party, F1 Technologies, a local support partner who implemented the total solution with us.

Commvault's license fee is per server-based for physical machines. For virtual machines, it's a 10 VM one-pack solution. Avamar is just a license for storage capacity-wise, around 8TB to 16TB. It's not based on how many servers you backup. In a price comparison, definitely Avamar is the winner.

I'd rate Commvault a seven out of ten.

If your organization does not have many hosts, I would recommend using Commvault. But if you have more than 50 to 100 hosts, Avamar is the better solution as it's more stable than Commvault. When you buy Commvault, you need to buy hardware separately; servers and storages are a different part. With Avamar, you have a complete solution with hardware and software, so it's better.

We are using it as a backup and recovery solution. 

We have a server on-premises. Our hardware is running on HP devices. We are only using the on-premises solution. In the future, we will use the hybrid or cloud solution. Our management is trying to go for hybrid solutions.

As a company, we faced ransomware attacks twice, and both times, we recovered because of Commvault's backup and recovery solution. 

It helps in protecting our customers' data very easily. Compared to other vendors, Commvault has a lot of features. If something happens, we end up spending a lot of money to recover data, but Commvault protects the data. Considering that, its cost is very low. It has reduced the cost of recovering data. 

It is very easy to isolate and segment storage targets from public networks to mitigate lateral moving threats. 

It helps our admins to minimize the time they spend on backup tasks. They can spend time on other projects. Previously, we had to manually check every weekend whether the backup is okay or not. Now, things are running automatically. Commvault has a good notification system. Altogether, these features reduce a lot of manhours. They have saved 48 hours weekly.

The recovery features are useful. It is easy to recover data. If something happens, we can easily recover data. We have faced ransomware issues twice, and we recovered because of Commvault. 

It provides consistent recovery processes across platforms. In terms of recovery options for our data and workloads, I would give it a 10 out of 10. We can easily recover files and data in case of any issues.

It is user-friendly and easy to use. If you have a technical background, you can easily identify the features and use them. There is nothing complex. 

They can improve the security level for Windows. When mapping to the Windows, Commvault can take full control over data volumes so that the attacker can't delete the volume data, but the Windows admin can access the volumes. It would be great to block access at that level. 

We have been using the Commvault product for more than three years.

We have been using this solution for more than three years, and there have been no major failures. It has been running day-to-day backups without any issues. We have backup scheduled over the weekends, and we also have daily backups. We are running full backups over the weekends and incremental backups on weekdays. 

Their support team is very friendly, and they can easily understand our situation. They are very fast to respond and knowledgeable. They can understand the issues that we are facing, and it is very easy to work with them. They provide good support. I would rate them a 10 out of 10.

We got good training notes from Commvault's side. There are a lot of documents, and if we want to find something, we refer to their documentation, which makes it very easy to use. There are no major issues.

We earlier used Veeam as a backup solution. We were using Veeam's Community Edition. We also used HP data protector previously. We finally tried the Commvault solution.

Commvault people came and gave a presentation to us, and as compared to Veeam, Commvault had many features. It was user-friendly and easy to use, and it also had a lot of features. It had ransomware protection and data recovery. Veeam didn't have protection features. Our management agreed to use Commvault, and they gave their permission.

Initially, it was complex for us to understand things. They gave us training, and since then, we have been using it easily. Now, it is very easy to understand.

We work with a reseller in Sri Lanka.

We have seen an ROI. It is saving a lot of money, but I don't have the number. It is a good solution to recover our data if something happens. We don't need to spend a lot of money. 

It is a bit more than other products, but when you consider the time savings, it is saving money.

We looked at a few other solutions such as Veritas.

Commvault is a good solution, and we would recommend it to others. There are no major issues with Commvault. We have full trust in it when it comes to protection. They have built a good customer reputation when it comes to protection. Our management is also very satisfied with it.

I would rate it a 10 out of 10 in terms of protection and features.

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.

Our primary use case is for Office 365 Backup. We started out as an Exchange Online only company. Then we were looking for some sort of backup solution to augment the existing Microsoft Office 365 archiving features for a price that was more compatible with our company versus what Microsoft was offering for their archiving solution. We also needed the ability to do time and date stamp retrievals. We ended up settling on Commvault at that time. We've been with them, and we've seen it more from being in the Commvault virtualized infrastructure to being the Metallic.io SaaS solution.

We protect mostly Exchange Online, but really we do the whole breadth of Office 365 with them. We were looking at some other solutions, but with them, we're doing our entire Office 365 Microsoft Online platform.

It has helped my organization because we don't have to have tapes. We're not paying for tapes, storage tapes, or storage ourselves. It's definitely a bonus. We're more efficient in all of our backups for Office 365 because it is in a single pane of glass. If we were to integrate Commvault on-premise, we'd be able to use the same pane of glass to manage both on-prem and cloud solutions. It's taken our backup from being a full-time job to being when you need it, set it up. Our users could be empowered to access their own data backups. Which means we can alleviate a lot of the administration from the backup administrator.

It has significantly reduced the amount of manual work required to manage our backup operations. We're going from an on-prem to a non-on-prem, we're all doing nonsolutions. So we really can't compare it against anything else.

The way we look at it is that before, we used to manage a separate backup solution for our on-prem environment. We had to make sure that our logs are flushed after the backup was complete. If the logs weren't flushed then it caused our on-prem Exchange to offline. There's a lot more management involved from that point of view. The other thing is that we would have to purchase the tapes. We have a tape rotation, we would have to ship tapes to an offsite location. If we need to restore, we had to go back to the offsite location, and get the restore. In some cases, exchanging restore on-premise could be a lot harder because it doesn't give you some of the brick level functionality.

My impressions of the backup and granular recovery of features are that they're constantly evolving and we've had such great contact with the engineering and development teams at Commvault while they were building out this product. We've seen the evolution of the product, and it has gone from being a platform as a service to a complete service option. The number of upgrades, updates, and ease-of-use features that they continue to build into it, has dramatically reduced the amount of time we spend looking for objects in the backup repositories.

In terms of the speed of both backup and recovery of Office 365 data, for backup, we have a very large Office 365 footprint. We have over almost 15,000 unique mailboxes, according to their metrics. The backup is at least thrice daily. I find it to be very fast compared to other options in the market right now. Especially that it can back up 15,000 users with no problem.

In terms of the ease of use, the original learning curve was a bit steep, but now I would say the overall ease of use, now that they've started with the latest releases of it is fairly intuitive. If I need to go look at my Exchange, so I go click on Exchange. If I need to look at my One Drive backups, I click on One Drive. It's fairly intuitive and it does a great job of guiding me when I'm not sure of where to go.

I haven't gone down the security road too much. However, I've never had a security concern with the product. The scalability and availability of it are outstanding. It's scaled with us. But as far as security goes, I've never had an issue or a concern, or if I did have a concern they were able to address it immediately.

We also haven't really gone too much into the flexibility in terms of where the data is stored but it's a great feature. We're only using a head-end and we're a complete SaaS offering, but we did explore the local active copies, et cetera. We decided that there was no need for us to keep the data on-premise if they're going to maintain it in Azure or AWS. So for us, it was a very easy decision to keep it in the cloud and not on-premise.

The navigation of it needs improvement in terms of the UX. The product itself, it works as expected. It's all user experience and user interface improvements that could be made and it could be made a little more consumer-friendly. Instead of having one person or a few people that know the system intimately, it gives us the ability for other people that don't have to know the system intimately be able to navigate it.

I have been using this solution for two years. 

It's a SaaS offering. It's deployed in our infrastructure and we have a single VM in our infrastructure that we use for pulling any backups down to our infrastructure that we need.

It's appropriate for an enterprise-level environment. It's scaled with us from 900 mailboxes to 12,000 mailboxes, plus our scale of the Office 365 platform.

Before the COVID pandemic, we had six users using this solution. They're system administrators, they manage infrastructure and systems.

It has a 100% adoption rate. The product is being used every day. The backups are automated four times a day and we restore them on a need basis. We use the product every day.

Their support is awesome. On a scale from one to ten, I would rate them a fifteen. The entire Commvault team always goes above and beyond every time, for everything.

We were on-prem before with an old version of Exchange, and we used old backup software to back it up.

For us, the initial setup was complex because we were one of the first customers on this solution. However, we've reset it up a couple of times just as a demo for some of our subsidiaries, and the way the set works now is very straightforward, and very clean compared to what it was when we first got to it to 18 months to two years ago.

The configuration interface was fairly straightforward. Aside from the initial, "This is a product that we are building. You are a beta customer. You're one of our first few customers on the platform.", it was fairly straightforward. Now it's very point and click. It's very straightforward, very intuitive, and well automated.

The deployment took one week.

Our implementation strategy was to get it absorbing our email while we're still migrating users to Office 365 from our on-prem solutions. For us, it was a shotgun approach. I was adding more users to our office tenants than anybody had expected. When we were rolling out Commvault we were rolling out Office 365 at the same time, and it was overwhelming Microsoft at the same time. The implementation strategy was to try to run a slow controlled burn and cut people over as needed, but we managed to get Commvault set up. Then every day, myself and the team at Commvault, were checking to make sure that all the users we had just imported into Office 365 were imported into Commvault.

It wouldn't have been possible without the support team and the development team. The implementation that works now is very clean compared to what I went through. They made themselves so available to us when we were doing our implementation that the reason it took so long to implement was because they were waiting for me for the next step.

Metallic provides us with more predictable costs for our backup requirements. They charge us on a model that we understand. We understand the pricing model a little bit differently. 

We investigated Backup Exec and Backupify. Backupify and Commvault were the top two. They were the two that we had narrowed in on, based on our needs analysis. We chose Commvault simply because of the scalability and expertise in enterprise.

Backupify was a SaaS solution and they had many similar features. But at the time they wanted us to add more service than we were expecting. They were fantastic competitor and they did everything we wanted them to do, just like Commvault. But we went with Commvault specifically because of their enterprise heritage.

We started with a free trial of Commvault. It might've been a POC then we just went from there.

They do a fantastic job with their documentation, so you can follow their documentation and implement it.

I would rate it an eight out of ten. We can't compare it against another staff solution that we're using. So for now it works for us, we're not seeing any issues, and it's better than what we used on-prem.