Commvault Cloud Reviews

We have changed out approach to our ROBO backup solution. Utilising Commvault we can now automate the decommissioning of our remote project sites and convert these on-premise backups into Azure hosted VMs. This not only brings the service online faster for our users but also reduces the operational impact of our remote IT staff, as they now no longer need to manually manage the data into the cloud or our eventual archive platform.

One of the biggest features is the global deduplication of our data sets. AWE have deployed a disk-to-disk-to-cloud solution for our on-premise backups. The capacity savings of this approach lead to significant cost savings on the long term retention of data in the cloud for us.

We have also been very impressed with the integration with public cloud services. We have deployed our Commvault environment on-premise and into Azure and this has given us the ability to not only make use of cloud storage for long tern retention, but also achieve the same level of protection as our on-premise systems for our Azure hosted IaaS VMs. We have also deployed backups from Commvault in Azure to our Office 365 install base too.

The cloud integration is a massive win for us, giving us a single backup service for all of our on-premise and cloud systems.

I have also been very happy with the automated updating of the platform. Since we have been running the platform we have had around five service packs released. These are automatically updated after a period of time (we set the system to defer updates for one month). The updates run without service disruption and patches the central management system, the media agents and the client agents too. Compared to our previous vendor this is another huge operational saving for out IT staff and ensures we get to utilize the new features that are dropped with each new SP.

The new HTML5-based management portals are very nice, but do not yet have all of the features of the Java-based client. I’d like to see all of the features move over to HTML5 so that we do not have to use Java ideally.

We have had no issues with stability. The service has been running for 18 months with no loss of service due to the platform.

We have grown our initial, on-premise VM-only backup solution to cover all three of our on-premise datacentres as well as our Azure IaaS and O365 environments. This was easy to do and the central management tool set easily coped with our rapid scaling up to our entire estate.

Customer Service:

We have had excellent engagement with our account team and they have been very helpful in ensuring that we get the most out of the platform. We get regular contact and they are keen to listen to data management issues that we have and see how they can address them with the Commvault platform. This has led us to be engaged in a couple of Beta test programmes and get early access to new features in some cases that resolved our challenges.

Technical Support:

Very good! We have had some very good dealings with support. In the main, this has been around us securing new systems and tweaking policies to get the best result for our infrastructure. In most cases the person answering the call resolved the ticket first time. When calls were escalated, the response was fast and the issue resolved to our satisfaction.

We often had scale issues with our previous vendor deployment or found other solutions were better for a particular system and so would introduce differing technologies to address these challenges. This led us to have a large and awkward-to-manage backup estate.

The biggest driver for us was to get all of the backup services into one tool set and to get better control and visibility of our data estate.

The initial deployment was straightforward. The only complex part was seeding our initial backup into Azure as, at the time, we were not on Express Route. We set bandwidth limits for aux copies during the working day and allowed the copies to burst out-of-hours. This just meant it took a week or so for the initial seeding to complete but all subsequent incremental copies ran fine.

After implementing Express Route we changes our architecture to copy the data through Azure hosted media agents into Azure storage. This then allowed us to seed much faster, although we now use the Azure import service for migrating large archive sets when required, as this is the fastest/cheapest approach we have found.

We used a vendor team to perform our initial deployment (a single resource). The consultant was very knowledgeable on the Commvault platform and made good recommendations regarding policy approaches to the various services we were targeting. The consultant performed a handover to our internal staff and we complimented this with certified training courses for the team who engage with our backup solution the most so that they could take on the task of scaling the deployment to the rest of our estate.

We have consolidated all of our backup technologies into the single platform and reduced maintenance costs and complexity in doing so. The OPEX costs equate to around the same but the biggest value returns have been in addressing our scale issues, ensuring compliance with backup policies and a significant reduction in operational staff’s time to manage the estate.

There is now a subscription based licence option that, depending on your environment, could offer a more efficient method to licence the solution if you are OPEX cost driven rather than CAPEX. This was not a concern for our deployment and we implemented on perpetual licences which had more commercial value to our business.

Initially we were looking at Veeam, as our first challenge was to address our on-premise VMware estate. Although they had a good vSphere integrated solution, we found limitations in cloud and beyond the virtual environment to be an issue for us. This was driven form our desire to have a tool set which could encompass all of our estate and allow us to simplify management and compliance etc.

Take the opportunity when engaging the Commvault sales team to walk them through other data management challenges that you have. You’ll likely find that the "backup" solution that you were looking for might be able to address these challenges and provide you with a greater ROI. This certainly worked for us and we have several new initiatives being developed to get more even value out of our deployment.

We use the solution for file system backup, Linux OS system backup, and Domino backup. Our data center team uses the solution for testing servers and database-level backups. In my company, we are not using the end-point features.

Earlier, it would take us a long time to create a backup. After implementing Commvault, the time needed for creating a backup has been reduced.

IntelliSnap and file system backups are valuable features. There are multiple functions, but we are currently using these two functions.

Data center backup must be improved. We also want the product to provide us with a cloud-based backup. If we use Microsoft Exchange Online for email services, we want to know how to get a backup in Commvault.

I have been using the solution for the last three years.

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

The solution is really good in terms of scalability. I rate the scalability an eight out of ten. We have deployed the product in three factories. We are centrally managing the solution from the head office. Three people in our organization currently use the solution 24/7 to its maximum potential.

We have faced a little bit of delay in support. The support team is not available during the night. The product must improve support.

Neutral

Previously, we were using EMC NetWorker. It had some limitations. We compared it with Commvault to determine which solution would fulfill our requirements. We switched to Commvault because it had certain features that were not available in EMC NetWorker.

The initial setup was easy. I would rate the ease of setup an eight out of ten. Currently, we are using the solution on-premises. We are also checking whether we can take backups on the cloud. It took us almost three to four months to deploy the product.

Commvault Professional Services helped us with the deployment. We required two or three professional team engineers for the deployment. We have two to three engineers to manage the solution in the data center.

The tool is affordable. I rate the pricing a six out of ten. Implementation requires additional costs because we need Commvault Professional Services.

We evaluated other options, like EMC Networker and Veeam.

People considering using the solution must consider their budget and requirements. They must also consider the quality of support. Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

I'm using it in my company and using it with customers. 

The product offers many very valuable features that we use often.

It is straightforward to set up. 

It's stable.

Technical support is great. 

The solution is scalable. 

There are some features that need general improvement. 

With respect to the cloud, they need to offer more integrations.

We'd like to see the administration be a bit easier with respect to the command center in the future.

I've used the solution for 12 years. 

The solution is stable and reliable. there are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. The performance is good. I'd rate the reliability nine out of ten. 

It is scalable. It is able to expand as needed. I'd rate the ability to scale at an eight or nine out of ten. 

In our company, we have about 100 people using the solution. 

They offer very good technical support. 

I do work with a variety of other products as well. Commvault offers easy administration and access and also is less complex. It has a lot of upsides. 

The solution is very simple to set up. 

The maintenance and how many people need to maintain the solution varies according to the product that is used. 

The pricing is mid-range. It's not too high, not too low.

We are Commvault partners. 

I'm using the latest version of the solution. 

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. 

We need to take a log backup every fifteen minutes, and HyperScale X sends the data fast (even over a terabyte) and runs on time, so we're able to do the backup and discovery for customer and audit procurement.

HyperScale X's best features are Deep Look and Archiving, which really reduce the backup time, and DR solution, which allows us to replicate data from the primary data center to the backup data center and immediately activate the backup set if the primary set goes down.

I really struggled to configure HyperScale X as there was a lack of detailed documentation. In the next release, I would like to see increased capacity and automated solutions for backup.

I've been using HyperScale X for three years.

HyperScale X is really stable.

HyperScale X's scalability is okay.

Commvault's technical support is responsive and helpful. Sometimes it takes a longer period to get a solution due to the complex environment, but we're always able to get one in the end.

I would rate the ease of setting up HyperScale X as four out of five. It took around fifteen minutes to deploy.

We used an internal approximate services team.

We've seen a good ROI from HyperScaleX as it's a really useful endeavor environment. I would rate our ROI as five out of five.

We did a POC for Azure backup, but Commvault had more services available at our level.

HyperScale X is really user-friendly and has a lot of features. It's also cheaper, faster, and more stable than its competitors. I would rate HyperScale X as eight out of ten.

We are a customer service provider. The implementation that we carried out is for a client that wanted to support all the operating systems, applications, and services in the cloud that it has but only with a centralized product, which would additionally allow having Snapshot within the platform in order to speed up the RPO and RTO times that are currently available. 

Version 11 was implemented with capacity licensing that allows the integration of an innumerable number of products, limiting only the use of the license.

It helped us reduce the number of servers that are required for a stable operation. Since previously there were different solutions depending on the product, operating system, application, or database it is within the client and thus able to ensure critical information for the company, derived from that, Commvault allows us to centralize the administration of the data since it has a wide range of products that must support the different critical mission systems that must be protected to offer security.

The initial analysis for which the test of the Commvault product was carried out, is derived from the client's need. It had different applications and environments, where, in other circumstances, two or more products of other brands would be implemented depending on the environment (Virtualization, Databases, Public Clouds, and private clouds).

With Commvault the integration of the different products is centralized. Additionally, you can also control storages that are responsible for generating snapshots and control them from the same data management tool, as well as replication and in its latest benefits, security protection against ransomware.

So far, the only improvement that has been identified is to keep its documentation updated.

They need to integrate configuration screens or videos (free training courses, webinars, demos) so that engineers with little experience can fully exploit the features that are offered or managed within the license that was acquired, and thus have better quality and completely satisfactory experience, in addition to integrating more products derived from the result of the integration of the first product or license.

I've used the solution for six years. 

The stability is very good and derived from the fact that in all the points of contact that make up the backup environment, there is the possibility of configuring the High Availability of the platform.

It is a good solution that can grow horizontally to a large number of nodes.

The support is extremely good as they have it separated by levels and types of service with dedicated engineers with advanced knowledge about Commvault and the different applications or products.

Positive

Previously, different products were used depending on the product or brand, however, it meant having a dedicated specialist for each product as well as more space in the data center, greater use of servers, storage, networks, etc.

The initial setup was very simple. Due to the fact that each of the installation phases provides detailed information on the information required to configure or gives you the option to request help, it sends you to the official documentation page to follow up on the Wizard.

We implemented using the in-house team.

Within the analysis carried out, it is estimated that in one year the investment generated will be recovered.

It may be a high price, however, the quality of the product gives it an acceptable value.

We also looked into Veeam and Veritas.

It's an enterprise backup tool. It is the competitor to Dell and IBM, TSM and Symantec NetBackup, or rather what's called Veritas NetBackup. 

It's an enterprise data protection tool. It's almost in the top three or four solutions out there.  

We have one environment with 500 servers, and another environment with 1,000 servers.

We definitely plan to continue using Commvault. We basically support the customers, their MSP. We use Dell as our own data center MSP product but we are supporting this for other customers.

It's a very good competitor database.

It's very user-friendly. It supports a wide range of workloads. It's quite easy to use, it's very powerful and it's scalable.

It's got the ability to do automation, that's another good thing about it. It's got workflow automation built-in. It enables you to automate certain tasks.

It can create backups, restore, and be used for DR testing. It's got all those features which are better than many other tools out there. It also has good reporting as well. 

It has a very easy-to-use interface that allows you to do everything within a single pane of glass — everything is right there. It's superior to many products in terms of its management interface.

We've run into some issues when attempting to restore very large numbers of files. Of course, that's more of a design issue. For example, if you have, say, 10 million small files with added encryption, and you want to restore them, it can end up taking days to restore them. That is a file-level restoring operation. One option is to go for Image Level backup and restore the entire image, which is much faster. Then you can extract whatever data you want from that image.

IntelliSnap is a storage snapshot application for storage snapshots. The tool is very good but we could not use it because we didn't have compatible storage. That would've helped us a lot because that's one of the very few tools which integrates with lots of storage products out there. It's very flexible, very easy-to-use. We had the VMware vSAN version which is not supported by Commvault IntelliSnap. 

The thing about Commvault is there are a lot of moving parts. You have to design it properly for resources, hardware and software, and licensing because you can install it on any of your Intel servers and then you can use any other storage as the destination. It just comes down to proper lower-level design in sizing.

I have been using Commvault for the past five years.

Commvault is quite stable.

The environment can scale nicely. It's got the ability to scale for multi-node clusters, but you need to ensure that you keep it updated.  

Commvault support is usually very, very responsive and they always help us quickly resolve any problems that we may have — they are excellent.

The initial setup is very easy, actually. We did it within one day.

We had a professional service engagement with Commvault and they did it in a matter of roughly one day. Implementation and configuration of the policies — it only took one day to set it up and test it.

We needed to have professional assistance from Commvault as it can be a little difficult to deploy. It can be done, but it's always handy to have professional assistance from Commvault factored into your own solution.

Capacity licensing is very good with Commvault.

I would definitely recommend using Commvault. On a scale from one to ten, I would give Commvault a rating of eight.

I am primarily using Commvault for backing up the physical and virtual servers.

This product has allowed us to recover data when we've had issues.

This product does what it says it's going to do, and generally backs up the data that you want it to back up.

It is a little more complicated than it really needs to be.

Reporting could definitely be improved.

I have been using Commvault, personally, for about three years.

It works, and there are definitely some bugs, but nothing major.

As it gets larger, it gets a lot more complex in terms of the configuration. Generally, the larger it gets, the harder it is to manage. We probably have about 1,000 servers right now that it is backing up.

In general, technical support is okay. I would rate them a seven out of ten.

Prior to Commvault, we used Tivoli Storage Manager from IBM. It is a bit lacking in terms of features, compared to Commvault.

The initial setup was relatively straightforward.

The price is a little bit high.

My advice for anybody who is looking into implementing Commvault is to do their research. It's a good product for most use cases, although it's not the best. My main complaint is that it needs better reporting.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

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.