Commvault Cloud Reviews

Right now we are using on-premise and cloud backups. We run 300 to 400 jobs per day.

Compared to other products out there, we have found that Commvault is best suited for our needs. We can easily restore and deploy the data.

Previously, before the introduction of Commvault, we used other software including Rubrik. But with Commvault we can deploy multiple clients at a time and we can back up multiple clients without any issues. Right now, we are using about 1,000 VMs. Before Commvault we used to back up about 200 servers and 100 VMs. Previously, backups took nine hours. With Commvault it takes minutes.

The solution definitely helps our admins to minimize the time they spend on backup tasks and to spend time on other projects. If we need to run backups for dozens of servers, it can be done in one minute because it can be done in a click. We can select the backups by selecting the client computer groups. We can categorize those groups and, based on that categorization, we can run the backups and we can restore the VMs as well. It can be done in minutes. Running backups twice a week, it saves us about 5 to 6 hours each time.

It is also saving us on infrastructure costs and has helped optimize infrastructure usage, like storage space. By using Commvault we have saved about 3 TBs of space.

We have used it to recover data when there was a problem with our database. It took about four hours to bring the data back. But recently, we introduced HA and it has saved us more time. With HA the data can be brought up in one hour. With other solutions it would take 10 to 24 hours.

We do monitor all the backups using the user interface. It is user-friendly, easy to navigate, and easy to create solutions with it. It is very comfortable. We can do multiple operations at a time.

We use Commvault Command Center for backups and restores and for the creation of new clients. We use it for other functionalities as well. In terms of VMware, I can go directly to the Command Center, enter VMware, and I can search it directly. Command Center is very useful and it can be used for more advanced techniques.

The cloud support is good. The on-premises cloud is working for us as is traditional cloud. All the clouds we're using are working with Commvault. We have Office365 and Azure.

I need documentation for Azure backups. One expectation that I have is regarding PDF documentation. When I was trying to browse the documentation, I could not locate that. The documentation should be in PDF format where it can be downloaded easily.

I have been using Commvault for the past five years.

The stability has been good. We haven't had any issues.

Scaling can be done easily.

I am now looking into an orchestrator. High-availability is another future use case for us.

We do not have any issues with support. Everything is fine. Commvault helps in fixing any issues and they help us to deploy the data whenever we need help. And they provide the security as well.

In the first year we raised many issues, but now it is easier for us to manage. We refer to the documentation.

We used to use Rubrik but we found Commvault to be a better solution. It provided time savings, handled more complexity, and provided more security.

With guidance from their team, and based on the documentation, it was easy to install. The deployment took one-and-a-half hours.

There are updates every quarter and they are getting easier to deploy.

We have about seven staff members on my team, IT analysts, who handle the solution, to account for different shifts and meal breaks, etc. Within the company there are 10 clients using it, mostly within IT.

We are very satisfied. It is a very useful product, daily. 

Commvault is constantly developing new use cases based on customers' requirements. They are developing new features on a regular basis. In version 11, 19 new features were added. For example, in previous versions we did not have the Command Center and whenever backups failed we could not restore the data. Now, there are options for restoring the data. These kinds of advanced techniques are introduced from day to day.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Their technical support is very good.

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

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

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

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

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

We did it by ourselves.

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

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

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

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

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

Hybrid Cloud

We use Commvault for our data backup and imaging.

Commvault serves us by backing up multiple versions and multiple locations, giving us availability in case of any issues in one place. It has saved us a lot of time as scheduled backups happen automatically.

Commvault is an all-in-one product that is very simple and operational for business use. It has an imaging option and a deduplication option, and our license is per node, which is not limited to storage capacity. We can back up unlimited TBs due to our per node license.

I think Commvault needs to improve its virtual solutions.

We have used Commvault for almost ten years.

Commvault is a stable system.

Commvault is scalable.

I would rate the customer support five out of ten. Customer support has very closed departments, requiring us to shuffle between them to get one thing done because representatives have limited accessibility. We need to go through multiple layers, which is inconvenient for us as end users.

Neutral

We used to use Tivoli long ago. Now, for more than a decade, we don't have other experiences.

I think the initial setup was straightforward.

Numbers cannot be said because it is just a backup software.

Our licensing model is reasonable for us. We don't know the exact current licensing models in detail.

We will recommend Commvault because it is stable and an all-in-one solution. Users can perform multiple types of backups from different sources. I rate the overall solution as an eight out of ten.

On-premises

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Neutral

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It is the primary backup/recovery solution for our VMware platform.

It provides solid backup automation for VMs and automatic backup replication. It also has real-world compression and deduplication.

As a backup solution, it has minimized our task of backing up VMs. It is difficult to give it a time frame, but we are backing up over twice as many VMs than our previous solution with less effort.  

We have not experienced a disaster or attack so far. Commvault allows us to recover VMs rapidly with different levels of recovery.

Its compression/deduplication allows us to store more backups and save storage space. The reporting is great; we are able to obtain critical business reports and infrastructure/usage information very easily.

The backup, recovery, and replication of VM workloads in a single platform has reduced backup windows, augmented platform availability, and recovery times.

The solution’s user interface for managing on-prem, cloud, or multi-cloud environments in one place is not the best. There are discrepancies between Java GUI plus HTML5. While additional improvements are coming soon, the lack of CLI makes administration tedious and time consuming.

The Command Center is decent. It does require major improvements for usability. SP19 will provide many desired features. It would be optimal to have CommServe running on Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

The solution requires constant attention. Commvault is very complex. We are constantly making adjustments and working through hotfixes, updates, and issues. 

There is a steep learning curve. Training is essential.

More than one year.

We did not have the best initial impression regarding stability. Things got better after four months.

The Hyperscale scalability is very good. CV LiveSync is a great tool for protecting Commvault’s database.

There are two full-time engineers doing day-to-day administration of this solution. 

The product is currently in Phase I: VMware. We have plans to increase usage in Phase II: Exchange/Physical/Isilon.

They have very good, knowledgeable engineers.

We previously used IBM Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM). TSM does not offer a solid VMware solution nor does it have strong reporting.

This solution has helped us to optimize infrastructure usage. With the solution's deduplication, we are saving storage space. Whereas, on our old solution, we still needed the same storage space. We now have faster backup storage, giving us faster restores and file level restores. This saves time and time is money.

The initial setup was straightforward but that was primarily because of all the planning and a clear architecture design. We were able to run production backups in two weeks

Phase I of our implementation was the VMware platform. We hired a Commvault consultant who followed an approved architectural design.

The solution has enabled us to save on infrastructure costs by being able to manage what were disparate data management solutions in one place.

The solution’s model is cost-efficient. It provides an all-around, exceptional enterprise backup platform.

We work with Commvault and a partner on our environment needs according to capacity, licensing, pricing, components, modules, etc. Additional costs depend on your backup needs.

We evaluated Veeam, but concluded that it was not an enterprise solution.

Commvault is a great backup/recovery solution. Start small, then scale out. Training is very important, as it is a complex solution. 

The solution is very capable as a single platform. It has many features. However, we have not leveraged the capabilities to move, manage, and recover our data across on-premise, hybrid, and cloud locations yet.

Commvault offers the best integration of multi-cloud/hybrid environments and is a leader in the market. The solution offers an extensive array of cloud options and features. However, we are leveraging it for on-premise workloads at the present time. 

Biggest lesson learnt: Backup replication requires a solid network infrastructure.

I would rate the solution as a nine (out of 10).

On-premises

Our clients use the solution for their emails.

The email archiving feature is very smooth and better than others.

The product must improve Oracle client configuration. It is difficult to configure clients of Oracle and SaaS. The solution must also improve bare metal restore for Oracle and Active Directory. Active Directory is not fully protected with bare metal restore. The tool must improve the 1-Touch recovery of Oracle and Active Directory.

The product must provide features for converting VM to physical and physical to VM.

I have been using the solution for six years.

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

The tool’s scalability is very high. It can be scaled in any environment. I rate the scalability a ten out of ten. In a single organization, we have 4000 to 6000 users. Our clients are enterprise businesses.

Technical support is very good. The support personnel are very fast and helpful.

Positive

It is easy to configure the tool. I rate the ease of setup a nine out of ten. The on-prem version is better than the cloud version. In the future, as the technology grows, the cloud version will be better. Our customers trust the on-prem version. It takes one day to deploy the product.

To deploy the solution, we must install Commvault’s master server and MediaAgent. Then, we must configure the email archiving solution and add storage.

The product is cheap. It is an integrated solution. I rate the pricing a two out of ten on a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive. We have to pay for the implementation services.

Our company has a partnership with Commvault. Overall, the solution is better than its competitors. I would advise people to use the solution again and again. Overall, I rate the product an eight out of ten.

On-premises

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. 

Positive

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.

On-premises

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.

On-premises