Commvault Cloud Reviews

We use the Commvault for data optimization because it maintains enough data. We have implemented it to run two incremental backups per day and a full backup at the end of the week. We also perform the restoration of the database and DR servers, using it.

Commvault is a software-based solution that can manage backups to any storage and VMs. It integrates redundant storage and preserves jams in a storage area, providing up to 70% compression rate. Backups of large volumes do not take much time to complete. It also facilitates restoring Oracle data, which can be opened directly to a database after restoration without any user intervention.

There are still a lot of ways to improve the recruitment process. Commvault deployment is executed remotely, but managing their support on time is difficult. They reply to the support portal weekly, but there are some delays.

I have been using Commvault Backup & Recovery as a customer for around two years.

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

There is some gap in technical support, but it is good. Restoration happens only when there is a disaster. In that case, customers always expect the solution providers to be present. They regularly go through the update process and release updates frequently.

Neutral

The initial setup is easy. Integrating the database and server for clients might be difficult. The deployment does not take much time. However, changing advanced features or integration may take some time. Once the software and backups are ready, it will take seven to ten days to complete. You may need more people involved in the deployment if you have many servers. A team of two to three people is usually sufficient, including a deployment engineer from Commvault and two to three executives on the client side. I rate the process a six or seven out of ten.

The product generates a good return on investment.

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

They should decide to go for Commvault Backup & Recovery or another solution depending on the infrastructure requirement. 

I rate it a seven out of ten.

The solution is primarily used to protect against ransomware. It helps protect data and allows for data recovery and backup.

The data protection itself is very good compared to other products. 

The backup agents are helpful.

Its pricing is pretty competitive. 

The technical support is responsive. 

It is easy to set up.

I haven't had any challenges with the solution. 

The pricing could be more flexible in terms of licensing. It would help attract more customers. 

I've used the solution for three to four years. 

We have around customers using the product with 5,000 or more users.

The response in terms of support has been fine. Whenever they need help, the team can respond to the ticket. They do provide solutions to issues. That said, I don't really use customer care directly.

The vendor will offer support contracts. The customers can decide if they might need support or not. 

The initial setup is straightforward. There are basic steps to follow for the installation. That said, I do not handle the setup directly. From my team, I have not heard of any kinds of challenges. I'm not sure how long it takes to deploy the product.

We handle the implementation for clients. 

The solution's pricing is competitive. It depends on the number of users required and if any discounts are leveraged. Bigger volumes will lead to bigger discounts. 

We're provided the solution to clients. We are implementors. We are using the latest version of the solution. 

I'd recommend the solution to others. I would rate the solution eight out of ten.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The initial setup is simple.

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

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

We have the solution deployed on-premise and private cloud.

There are many valuable features of Commvault HyperScale X giving many possibilities to complete jobs, particularly with the backup and restore.

HyperScale X is not user-friendly. There are many settings that have to be done on your own. It would benefit from a better interface. 

Commvault has a command center that is easy to use, but it does not have the functionality you need, so you have to switch to the Java GUI.

I have been using Commvault HyperScale X for five years.

The product is stable if it is set up correctly. HyperScale X is sophisticated software that requires you to configure it on your own. This can be difficult to handle.

This solution is scalable. In our company, we have two users of the product.

The support offered by Commvault HyperScale X depends on the country you connect with. U.S. support is better than the support offered in India. With the language barrier, different lingo, and how quickly they speak, I often cannot understand what they are saying.

Prior to using Commvault HyperScale X, we were using Commvault with Windows Server. We switched due to the complexity and software updates with Windows. HyperScale provided a good offer that would improve our space requirements.

The initial setup of Commvault HyperScale X was not complex, however, it was not easy either. It took two days to set up the appliances, which we completed with the assistance of a consultant.

HyperScale X is expensive. 

Anyone considering to implement Commvault HyperScale X should do so based on their own needs. There are many tools you can use, but it is complex even if you are running the command center. VM is an easier tool, but it has reduced functionality. 

I would rate the product a seven out of 10 overall.

I used it during a POC, and now, it is in production. We opted to go for the N minus one release and not the latest one.

We use it for the backup of servers. It is also used when users need to take a backup of their laptops or mail archiving.

It is easy to use and stable. It delivers what has been promised. When it says it can do something, it can actually do it, as opposed to some of its competitors.

Its dashboard could be improved to provide a summarized version of all the jobs instead of having to go through each one of them. We should easily be able to glance at all issues. If I had not gone with the on-premise version, I would have had regular reports with the cloud version. 

It would be an advantage if they increase the compression rate of the backup. I am keeping it on-prem, so I'll need more disks depending on the policies that I have in the retention period. 

Its price could also be lower. If a good solution can be cheaper, it is always an advantage.

I used this solution for six months.

It is stable. I haven't experienced any issues.

It is scalable. We have approximately 30 users, but we are also backing up the servers that everyone uses.

I have had one call with their technical support, and they were of great assistance. They were really approachable, and they were able to answer the questions.

We have been using NetBackup and Veeam. As compared to NetBackup, Commvault is an improvement. NetBackup licenses are expensive as compared to Commvault. 

It was pretty straightforward. It took one day to do the installation and put all policies. It was really quick. I did the installation, deployed the agents, and started using it for testing. After successful tests, we decided to go with the solution.

I was accompanied by our business partner, but its implementation was pretty straightforward.

Its maintenance is really easy to do because you have everything in the console. It can be managed by one technical person. It doesn't require much. Because it is stable, there is not much to be done. You just need to enter the jobs that have been run and completed successfully. Every now and then, you might also do a restore.

It is cheaper than NetBackup, but its price can be lower. If a good solution can be cheaper, it is always an advantage. Its licensing is on a yearly basis.

I would definitely recommend this solution to others. We plan to keep using this solution.

I would rate Commvault a nine out of ten.

It is used as a single backup for my small office's Microsoft 365 account, particularly the OneDrive files.

The best example is that it hasn't impacted my operations, which is exactly how it's supposed to work. It's supposed to provide a backup in the case of an unforeseen event or emergency, if something happens to the OneDrive. That's what it's there for. Otherwise, it shouldn't have an impact and it doesn't.

It provides daily backups and, since I'm not doing manual backups anymore, it has greatly reduced the time that it was taking me to do those. I was doing them every day so it has greatly reduced my workload. In addition, it has provided much higher reliability and efficiency. It's saving me on the order of 20 hours a month, as it does backups more efficiently and more often than I did or would have.

The most valuable feature is the one that I'm using, which is the backup of my OneDrive. Thankfully I haven't had to use a backup yet, but the solution itself seems to be working very well.

In terms of the speed of backup, it operates seamlessly, so I'd rate it as excellent. The first backup took a while because I already had quite a bit of information residing on my OneDrive, but now, with my daily use and workload, quite honestly I don't even notice when it backs up. It's completely seamless.

I've been using Metallic for about a year.

I have not had any issues with its stability.

It seems like it has good scalability, which is another thing that I'm interested in because hopefully I won't be a small business for long. I've never run enterprise-level software, but I'm very happy with Metallic, as the owner of a small business.

As the business grows, as I add users, the ability to add backup features is there. It's something I've discussed with their customer support and tech support. I'm comfortable that as I add users and begin to use more features in my Office suite and elsewhere, Metallic will be able to provide backup. That's really the primary reason I have it: data backup and security.

I use it every day for the business. It's in OneDrive now but at some point I'm going to have employees and it will have to migrate over to SharePoint. I will then need it backed up in SharePoint as well for use by my team.

In terms of ease of use, I'm not an IT professional. I own a small business. So it was a little challenging to get running, but Metallic's customer service — their technical support and their sales and customer contact representatives — were world-class; among the best customer service interactions I've had with anyone, anywhere, for any reason. That was very much appreciated. I appreciate their follow up, their diligence, their responsiveness. That was just world-class. There's no other word for it.

They're very responsive. When a question comes in, they follow up, even when they haven't heard from me. They check to make sure everything is working properly, and they answer any questions preemptively. I have the utmost regard for their customer service and their tech support and their ability to solve issues. They have done a phenomenal job of customer outreach, problem solving, and tech support; the whole nine yards.

I had a physical hard drive that I backed everything up to, manually. That was my backup plan, which was not a good backup plan. I'm much more comfortable with how things are operating now.

The reason I moved to Metallic was that my OneDrive files got too big. The manual backup was taking too long and it was not being accomplished as often as I wanted it to be. I knew I needed an automatic cloud backup.

The setup was a little bit difficult for a non-IT person like me. My OneDrive is protected by multifactor authentication, and to get the backup to begin behind that multifactor authentication took a little bit of almost customized support, even though I was following the instructions and the videos. That process could have been easier. But considering that I needed the additional support, Metallic was phenomenally responsive and I give them the highest marks possible for their responsiveness and support.

It was configured through Azure. That was hands-on on my part. It was simple to understand. But even though I followed the instructions, I wound up doing a screen share with tech support that uncovered some additional items that the instructions did not cover. That was the source of the initial problem. But tech support and customer support helped me overcome those efficiently and they were really responsive and helpful.

I knew the setup would take a little bit of time and I set the time aside. When it didn't work and the backup wasn't occurring or was having trouble, I got in touch with customer support and technical support and they provided assistance. And then I would get busy and not be able to respond to them for some time, and then they would get back with me. The plan was to sit down and have it all done but it didn't work out that way. It took a little bit longer than planned, but that was not Metallic's fault.

I got everything installed, but I didn't have any backups accomplished till after the free trial expired. But again, that was not Metallic's fault.

It was just me and the Metallic support. One of the customer support agents at Metallic, Alix, was fantastic. I don't recall the names of the tech support people who I spoke with, but they were also excellent.

I'm the only one using and maintaining it at the moment.

It hasn't saved money for my company on infrastructure costs but the idea is that in the event that something unforeseen or catastrophic happens, it will save me money. It's like an insurance policy.

It certainly provides me with more predictable costs for my backup requirements. And there is ROI because I've got a backup that I don't have to do manually. That saves me time and headache.

I looked at this at the beginning of the year and I don't remember what the prices were for all the other services, but I thought that Metallic's was fair. It was also highly rated, which was even more important than cost because I need a reliable, secure, backup method.

I looked into other options but Metallic seemed like it had the greatest ability to scale up, add features, and it had a good price.

I would highly recommend it.

The biggest lesson I've learned from using it is that when I expand, I'm going to need an IT consultant to assist, so that I don't have to spend the time doing it. I will want someone who can deal with the issues efficiently.

With the caveat that I haven't needed a backup yet, since nothing catastrophic has happened, I would rate Metallic and their team as a 10. I can only assume and hope that if, God forbid, something were to happen and I were to need the backup, it would be as good as the service has been so far.

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).

We're using it mainly to back up operating systems like Windows, Linux, and databases such as Oracle and Microsoft SQL.

It has simplified disaster recovery and we have used it for migration as well. For migrating from old FX servers to new FX servers, it was not possible to use any new feature from VMware. There was just vMotion and the success rate of migration of the whole disk was less than 50 percent. It was not possible to manage it that way. We used Live Sync and it was able to migrate 150 machines every day during the weekend, without major problems. That saved us a couple of weeks of time, probably 50 percent of the time it would have taken us. Without Live Sync it wouldn't have been possible to manage it.

The fact that the solution is a single platform has definitely enabled our company to accelerate growth because you don't need to leave the Commvault console. With NetBackup or TSM (IBM Tivoli Storage Manager) when it comes to customization of scripts for databases, you have to go into the client at the operating system level and modify the scripts. With Commvault you don't have to do that. You don't need to access the operating system, which simplifies the work.

Commvault helps minimize the time spent on backup tasks, creating time for other projects. I'm able to write a workflow in Commvault's internal environment and I can automate any action I did manually before. For example, deployment of remote offices can be fully automated.

It also saves us money on infrastructure because the configuration which will be used for IntelliSnapshotting is very simplified.

Another company I worked for previously was being attacked by a ransomware virus. The company lost its whole Windows infrastructure, so it didn't have Active Directory. Commvault was on Windows as well and the Knowledge Base which ran on Linux was authenticated with AD. Everyone lost their workstations.

The recovery process was that we got the database from Commvault, because part of raising cases includes the ability to upload databases to Commvault. The Windows team found a backup of the main controller and the most important thing was to start communications and for every one to have Active Directory. With Commvault's support, we were also able to develop a process which recovered Volume C, and that was sufficient to fix the images. Within two months they were able to recover the whole infrastructure from scratch. Without Commvault, or with another solution based on Windows, I don't think the recovery would have been possible. 

I had never seen this kind of disaster. Nobody expects to lose everything. You think about losing the primary location or a remote office location, but no one thinks about losing the whole platform.

Among the best features are the BMR (Bare Metal Recovery), Live Sync, and IntelliSnap, which is used for snapshots of hypervisor storage. It's predefined so you only need to enable it and it works. I haven't seen anything like this in other backup tools like Veritas NetBackup or Dell EMC or TSM. We will use snapshotting for all our machines.

Live Sync replicates incremental data to remote locations. If you lose your primary data center, you enable the replicated machines in your DR location so you don't need to restore data.

It's great as a DR solution because it has a lot of capabilities for syncing with a cloud provider. But if you want to keep everything in-house, it's great that way as well because the replication is done by incrementals.

When it comes to the user interface for managing on-prem, cloud, or multi-cloud environments in one place, it's always better to have everything in one. I myself like multiple consoles, a Java console and an admin console. I only work with the Java console. It's great because it's possible to configure everything from there. But operations has that nice console, and having that one console is better than having multiple consoles.

They should move the CommServe outside of Windows machines and the database should be distributed among servers. It's still a single point of failure.

Also, I work a lot with workflows, which means a combination of XML files and commands. It would be helpful if they unified the use of workflows.

I have been using Commvault at my current company for almost two years but I have a total of five years of experience with it. I'm a Commvault engineer. I have built Commvault from scratch using the approach that is best for the client, and then prepared the documentation.

We are using service pack 16 because it is a new deployment so we have to deploy that before we push updates.

I haven't seen a crash of the database. The stability is great.

When I started with Commvault and compared it with NetBackup, I found that Commvault had features that NetBackup didn't have. Currently, we are able to cover 12,000 virtual machines.

Commvault has what it calls a HyperScale Appliance which is a media agent with the disk. This is the best option for storing data. The media agents are in clusters so they share data. It's a nice feature and I haven't seen any other backup company that has integrated this kind of solution. They always use a third-party vendor for this capability. But that involves communication over the network, something which HyperScale skips.

We plan on using IntelliSnaps more and we are testing the cloud backup. We will use the cloud as a hot-DR location. I expect that will happen this year.

From my experience, I have had the best support interactions with Commvault. I always get a response within a couple of hours. If there is a task for Commvault's development side involved in the issue, I get an update every three days that someone is working on it. 

I have yet to find a support engineer at Commvault who has to speak to someone else. They are always able to troubleshoot the issue on the first strike. I can definitely recommend Commvault support.

Our company previously used NetBackup and TSM. One of the reasons we switched to Commvault was that our company was not satisfied with IBM's support. It was challenging. If support is not able to help you manage problems, you can't use the solution.

The plus with Commvault is that it really focuses on automation for deploying machines and discovering databases, etc. A Commvault administrator doesn't need to understand, in-depth, the application he is backing up because he doesn't need access into the application. It's much more focused on snapshotting for the synchronization between locations. The BMR process can be used across the cloud and on-prem solutions, so you can easily move machines from your environment to a cloud environment. And from that cloud environment you can convert to another vendor in the cloud.

That is all built on the BMR process, which is better than any other backup tool I know. Some of them, like TSM, don't even include a native BMR solution. Instead there is a third-party vendor that does it, so it's not fully-integrated.

I like it when everything is in one console and things can be automated via an internal workflow and deployment is fully automated so I don't need to access the operating system or application platform. Those are all benefits of Commvault.

The initial setup was really easy for me because I already had experience with NetBackup and TSM. It wasn't difficult for me to understand Commvault's logic. But, in my opinion, it's very easy to understand because the logic involved is minimal yet it offers a lot of configurable options. Because the process for the installation of agents, such as for databases and applications, is fully automated, you don't need to touch the application at all. That is one of the main reasons I prefer Commvault over other tools, where you always need to touch the client.

A basic implementation of Commvault depends on the size of the company. Installation of the server takes a couple of hours, but that is the same as with other backup tools. But the installation of it on clients and their configurations will take days if you don't want to customize it because Commvault comes with pre-defined groups. The process will take a number of days for a small company.

In terms of staff for deployment and maintenance, it could be just one person involved, depending on the roles of the people in the company. This person has to be able to do a lot of things, so it depends on whether he has these responsibilities and the capabilities.

We have about 100 users of the solution because we have a lot of operations.

The ROI is there, but I don't have figures on it.

Our deployment is primarily on-prem. We are trying to assess the cloud capabilities but it looks like the cloud is more expensive if you want to have the whole infrastructure.

Commvault is more administrator-friendly than other backup tools.

We are using Commvault for cloud support, but that part is at the PoC stage. But it's the same as the on-prem solution. Whether the library is on physical disk or in the cloud, it looks the same in Commvault, so that's not an issue in terms of configuration or use. There are even more cloud vendors than I had heard of and it looks like Commvault supports all of them.

We don't use it, but there is an archive function in Commvault which allows you to move data from primary storage to another type which is much cheaper.

Version 11 of Commvault has been on the market for something like seven years now. They have changed the naming so what they called service packs are now called feature packs. That means they are no longer changing the version number and they do what they call a "platform release." That was changed in SP19. In each new pack they add new features every three months. They also have hotfix releases every week or so.

I'm still surprised that they continue to come out with features that are really nice and that you didn't even think were possible.