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Arcserve UDP vs Dell Avamar comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 11, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Arcserve UDP
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
19th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
43
Ranking in other categories
Disaster Recovery (DR) Software (10th)
Dell Avamar
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
10th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
89
Ranking in other categories
Deduplication Software (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Backup and Recovery category, the mindshare of Arcserve UDP is 1.2%, down from 1.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell Avamar is 3.5%, down from 3.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Backup and Recovery
 

Featured Reviews

MukundKambli - PeerSpot reviewer
Global deduplication, stable, and flexible licensing options
I give the solution ten out of ten. This solution offers one dashboard to manage the BC con, disaster recovery plan, DR solution, and backup as well as different licensing options, unlike other OEM products. We are the system integrators for our clients, so we design the solution as per the customer's requirements. We provide several solutions options to our clients such as Druva inSync, Druva Phoenix, and Arcserve UDP with the specifications and the client makes a decision based on their requirements. I would advise potential users to first be clear on whether they are going to use it as a backup solution for compliance purposes, just wanting to take the backups of files and servers, or for instant recovery. The IQ and RPO discussion with our customers usually takes 30 minutes. I recommend this solution.
Rahul Sarangdhar - PeerSpot reviewer
Works excellently for on-prem backup but not the best for Azure backups
Avamar is not the best tool when it comes to taking Azure backups. Like Commvault, if Avamar can support VM-level backups for the cloud, that would make it a bit better. There is another Dell EMC tool called NetWorker, which is a bit centralized tool. If you deploy a storage node locally, you can use the same UI tool for central management, but in the case of Avamar, it needs to be deployed individually on a site, irrespective of whether it's small or big. So, if I have 10 sites, I have to manage 10 Avamar. That's a bit of a headache. The Dell EMC solution professionals who connect with the clients should suggest NetWorker to clients with multiple sites rather than Avamar. That's because NetWorker gives more centralized control, but they keep recommending Avamar, which isn't the best practice. There are no free or cheaper training plans. Unless your company is a partner with Dell, you don't get the student guide training, etc. Their administrator guide does not have all the information required for a new person. It doesn't cover the basics. The student guide is good, but it's not free. If you are a partner, only then it's free. Otherwise, there is a cost of $2,000 to $3,000. For people who are new to Avamar, there should be some resources to enable them to study on their own at least 50% of the basics. If I want to study Commvault, I get so many documents and resources to study, but in the case of Dell EMC products, there aren't any free resources. Only if you're a partner, the resources are available for you to learn. The user manuals and administrator guides are just for deployment. They aren't good for learning the basics for a fresher.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The most valuable features are the replication to the cloud and the deduplication."
"Arcserve has a feature called virtual standby (VSB), which has been very helpful because I already have a hot standby copy of my critical infrastructure. If something breaks, I can spin up that virtual standby copy in less than five minutes and ensure that my data is available to everyone and that business continuity is maintained."
"The ability to switch between different hardware platforms and utilization tools are some of this solution's most valuable features."
"Instant recovery is the most valuable feature of Arcserve UDP."
"Arcserve UDP has a good configuration and user interface. It makes the job of an administrator easy."
"It's simple to set up."
"It is very stable."
"This product is extremely user-friendly and it is capable of performing large-scale archive/backup (five+ years worth). It is easy to store, maintain, and check backups."
"The solution is very stable."
"Dell EMC Avamar is easy to work with and is user-friendly."
"The stability of Dell EMC Avamar is very good."
"It's a good solution."
"The most valuable features are scalability and integration."
"Quick incremental backups and product replication are the two highlights of the product. Once you capture a full backup, incrementals are pretty quick. It is fairly efficient from that perspective."
"The most valuable feature of Avamar would have to be the way it works over needing very little bandwidth to move data across a WAN or LAN."
"Avamar has long been the best in its class, but that's changing as new solutions emerge. However, Dell has traditionally been a leader in deduplication and compression. Avamar enabled us to shift data from on-premise local appliances to data centers and multi-tenant infrastructure. That's a powerful feature. because customers can back up to the cloud without upgrading o high-capacity links or congesting their backups."
 

Cons

"One area for improvement in Arcserve UDP is its capability to interact with other cloud servers."
"Backups are very slow and time consuming."
"I think that the price could still be a bit cheaper and I do not like that they have been purchased by Arcserve."
"The solution can use a lot of bandwidth when the scheduling is not done, it should auto-schedule itself. For example, if there are 50 users connected in the network at 12 o'clock and the backup is not scheduled. At this time the network offices are going to have performance issues when it is doing a backup. Having a feature to auto-schedule a time when the network is not being used often would be beneficial."
"The time to backup servers that sit in DMZ must be improved."
"The problem is just reliability. If the promises in the marketing material were realized in real life, it would be the perfect solution, but it's just the reliability issues."
"The tool doesn't provide cloud integration in India."
"I don't know whether the tool has VMware integrations. It would be good to cover this area if it doesn't have those."
"I have found the support from Dell EMC Avamar to be not as good as Veeam. The time it takes to receive support could be improved. However, once we have the support the agents are knowledgeable and helpful."
"The solution could be a bit easier to use in the sense that they need to make it simpler to backup products and restore items."
"It is very scalable, and that's its claim to fame, but that also makes it hard to make changes. Anytime there is a large piece of software, changing that piece of software is harder. You've got a larger install base, so you can't just rapidly change. We also use another product called Veeam, and it has this new feature called Continuous Data Protection, which basically lets you get very close to the way the system was in time. We have a system or two up there on which we have set 10 minutes Continuous Data Protection. So, we can roll it back to whatever it was 10 minutes ago, 20 minutes ago, or 30 minutes ago. This feature doesn't exist in Avamar Data Domain. That's the one feature I'd like to see first."
"Performance can sometimes be affected when tools are utilized for tasks like backup or deep archiving."
"It's very slow to backup and store information. It has two consoles and an application which are more difficult to use than a solution like Veeam."
"Dell hasn't done a good job at handling these upgrades, or the way EMC used to handle them."
"Its ability to back up very large objects can be improved. In terms of new features, they can include the ability to use cloud services, like S3, more natively."
"Setup and deployment of this solution is complex and requires expert engineers."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I rate the product price a five on a scale of one to ten, where one is low price and ten is high price."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a four or five out of ten."
"I do not work with the pricing or licensing issues of the solution for our organization."
"It is a bit pricey, considering the reliability problems. If the tool worked flawlessly, the price would be fair, even cheap."
"The solution is priced well compared to other solutions."
"The solution is expensive."
"The solution is not very expensive, but it is not cheap."
"The price of StorageCraft ShadowProtect is competitive in the market."
"I rate the tool's price as a three out of ten if one means expensive and ten means it is a cheaply priced tool."
"It's an expensive tool"
"The cost is high."
"Dell Avamar, including its virtual add-ons and cloud-based offerings, is cheaper than other solutions, but in the end, the price still depends on your use case. Price-wise, I'm rating Dell Avamar as six out of ten."
"Dell Avamar is free when we deploy the data protection. When we order data protection, this software is included in the hardware."
"I rate the pricing a seven out of ten because it is expensive."
"Dell Avamar is expensive."
"The solution is expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
19%
Non Profit
10%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Government
12%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Major Differences Between These 4 Backup and Disaster Recovery Solutions?
Comparing the features of the four is not the right approach. You need to develop a list of requirements for backup and DR that are specific to your organization and then compare each of the four ...
What do you like most about Arcserve UDP?
The most valuable feature of Arcserve UDP is the initiative UI and the logs are clear and detailed that are generated when there has been an issue or failure on the user's system. We only have to l...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Arcserve UDP?
The licensing cost is for one year. There are not any hidden costs involved in the pricing model of the solution.
What's the difference between Dell EMC Avamar and Dell EMC NetWorker?
From the very beginning, Dell EMC NetWorker considers users and those who might potentially become users. In terms of both pricing and setup, this product offers an experience that is significantly...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell EMC Avamar?
I don't currently have detailed knowledge about the pricing, however, it is geared towards enterprise businesses and might be on the higher side.
What do you like most about Dell Avamar?
Easy to configure and highly reliable for backup.
 

Also Known As

StorageCraft ShadowProtect, StorageCraft Backup Analyzer
Avamar
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

ITPS, North Hertfordshire Homes, SEMIKRON, Kajaani University of Applied Sciences, Test Valley Borough Council, EK Services
Dodge County, St Laurence's College, FieldCore (a GE Company), Comanche County Memorial Hospital, Getronics, Lewisville Independent School District, EnvisionRxOptions, Cincinnati Bell Technology Solutions
Find out what your peers are saying about Arcserve UDP vs. Dell Avamar and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
844,944 professionals have used our research since 2012.