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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
7th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
89
Ranking in other categories
Deduplication Software (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Backup and Recovery category, the mindshare of Arcserve UDP is 1.3%, down from 1.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell Avamar is 3.4%, 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 interface is very refined, works fine, and is very intuitive most of the time. Scalability is nice. The multi-tenancy feature is very welcome. The integration with Linux works fine too."
"The product's deployment process was straightforward."
"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."
"It allows us to back up all the servers and centrally manage them."
"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 log onto the client's system to retrieve the information. It is possible to precisely identify the problem's location. The system categorizes and logs every step in a structured manner, selectively displaying only the essential logs. However, to view a comprehensive log, one must access the line machine log and examine the actual client for detailed logging."
"The most valuable feature of Arcserve UDP is live replication."
"The product provides instant and virtual standbys."
"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 performance of Dell EMC Avamar is good."
"Graphically, it's very user interactive. It's got a very nice interface."
"Easy to configure and highly reliable for backup."
"All the features in the system are highly valuable."
"Scheduling is valuable. It does a good job of backing up, and it does a good job of restoring. Nobody has got a problem with that. The agents are well supported."
"We used Dell Avamar for backup and recovery of a virtual environment."
"The tool’s ability to restore files discretely is useful."
"We sell Avamar with Data Domain. Data Domain and Avamar work really well together and their compression ratios are very high compared to Veeam, Commvault, and all the other backup software on the market."
 

Cons

"I had an issue with Arcserve UDP during the failover and the secondary machine didn't get back online, even though it ran automatically. I faced the issue during a crisis situation. However, I haven't faced such a problem again."
"We cannot restore each user's mailbox. Each user's mailbox should be independently restorable. Also, this solution is very slow. If you select all of the servers, it runs for a long time... It needs to be faster. Finally, If anything happens to one server we should be able to switch to another server."
"The time to backup servers that sit in DMZ must be improved."
"One of the biggest drawbacks of Arcserve UDP is that it does not have a single console, making it an area that needs to be considered for improvement."
"The only problem with the solution is that when I change the drive capacity, it has to do a full backup. It's a problem when I have five servers to backup. When I only want to change the size of the drive, I have to do a full backup that can take one week."
"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 support could be more knowledgeable and faster."
"One area for improvement in Arcserve UDP is its capability to interact with other cloud servers."
"The stability could improve, a lot of scheduled backups failed at one time."
"There also needs to be single sign-on support."
"We don't trust the product 100 percent. Kaspersky has many features Dell Avamar doesn't support, such as granular backup and history."
"It was challenging to back up our Exchange database, which is one of the reasons we did not continue using this solution."
"The UI is not easy to use. There are other products such as Veeam that are easy to use for the end-user which is why they are moving away from Avamar or Networker."
"The solution is not very strong on the Cloud. They should work out how they can use this as a backup as a service."
"Avamar is still competitive because of the way we have deployed it, but we need to diversify and shift away from specific technologies. In addition to hypervisors, virtual machines, and bare metal servers, our customers need protection for Microsoft 365, SaaS, and the public cloud, so we need other technologies in the business to cater to those customers' needs. Those are the enhancements we would want from the Avamar platform, but that's not likely to happen. Dell has PowerProtect and Apex backup services. There are other Dell solutions that we'll use to fulfill our customers' requirements."
"Reporting in Dell Avamar needs improvement. The current reporting tool is very basic, and you have to dig deep into each function to get the information you need. For example, getting the status of failed and succeeded backups is very difficult in Avamar compared to Veeam. As for additional functionality, I would suggest improving WAN optimization. It's very important for getting offline or off-site backups. It should also include a tool to check for ransomware which would be beneficial. If a backup is vulnerable to ransomware, there should be a way to detect it, like using ARR rules to ensure your backup is ransomware-free. I haven't had any experience integrating Dell Avamar with AI solutions. It’s also a good point that Avamar doesn't offer such integrations, which is an area where Dell could improve."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Normally our customers purchase the premium plus license, rather than the standard one, which provides more options."
"We only have the maintenance of three standard UDP licenses. Each license is 50 Euro. There are some additional costs for the storage and software but it has nothing to do with the UDP."
"The pricing is moderate."
"It is a bit pricey, considering the reliability problems. If the tool worked flawlessly, the price would be fair, even cheap."
"The price is based on the number of sockets. We use a four-socket price that includes two servers and the cost is $4,375."
"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."
"The solution is priced well compared to other solutions."
"I rate the product price a five on a scale of one to ten, where one is low price and ten is high price."
"It is easy to use."
"Avamar's pricing is quite competitive compared to other vendors."
"The price is fair."
"Dell's pricing structure is not overly expensive."
"It is expensive. The maintenance comes with it for five years. So, you buy the whole thing for five years, and your maintenance is included with it, but it's a big chunk of change upfront. We like capital expenses because we can CapEx them. We pay once every five years, so we spend a big chunk of change. You'd have to divide that out by the five years to come up with how much it costs. It's just about three-quarters of a million dollars for five years."
"It might not be beneficial to smaller businesses due to its high cost."
"The solution is not expensive for the value one gets."
"Dell EMC needs to lower Avamar's price and add more features to stay competitive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
18%
Non Profit
10%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
12%
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 StorageCraft ShadowProtect?
The interface is very refined, works fine, and is very intuitive most of the time. Scalability is nice. The multi-tenancy feature is very welcome. The integration with Linux works fine too.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for StorageCraft ShadowProtect?
Pricing for SPX MRP/MSP is under $400 per server (Single VM) with a 1-year subscription. After discounts, it could decrease by 20%-30%, and opting for a 3/5/10 server pack may offer even better (lo...
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 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: April 2025.
850,671 professionals have used our research since 2012.