Cohesity DataProtect vs Dell PowerProtect DP (IDPA) comparison

Cohesity DataProtect vs. Dell PowerProtect DP (IDPA)

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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

Cohesity DataProtect

Ranking in Backup and Recovery

8th

Average Rating

9.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Backup (6th)

Dell PowerProtect DP (IDPA)

Ranking in Backup and Recovery

21st

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Backup and Recovery category, the mindshare of Cohesity DataProtect is 3.5%, down from 4.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell PowerProtect DP (IDPA) is 0.6%, down from 1.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Backup and Recovery

Featured Reviews

Giovanni Golinelli.

Hybrid IT Architect at Quanture Spa

Easy to use, offers good scalability and responsive support

The deployment depends on the environment. Deploying on VMs is relatively simple. But for most of our customers, we implement physical clusters with at least three configured hosts using the existing model. So, it depends on the setup. Implementing DataProtect itself wasn't particularly challenging. One key requirement for successful DataProtect deployment is proper network configuration. If the network setup isn't right, you won't achieve optimal performance. We have developed a service for some of our customers where they implement an appliance or physical cluster of Cohesity at the customer site. Then, we use cloud clustering to replicate, and even in production, a second copy of the protected data. And in some cases, we have developed some disaster recovery procedures using Cohesity.

Read full review

SamuelThomas

Consultant at Key Information Technology L.L.C.

Ensures data safety and effective cloud integration with AI-powered protection

Dell PowerProtect DP (IDPA) offers a backup, recovery, and management tool that is very easy to use. It provides a flexible protection suite that accommodates scalability and performance needs. Integration with VMware and multi-cloud protection is effective. AI integration enhances backup operations by analyzing data and ensuring malware protection. Customers also benefit from hybrid cloud options and tiers of backup.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Cohesity customer service is the best that I have ever used. They are extremely fast in responding to cases, fixed all issues, and answered every question in a very timely manner."

"A robust, verifiable backup with a restore solution, which decreases our backup and has a restore window."

"Several features enable us to perform fast recovery, such as instant fast recovery. All our virtual machines protected with the product can be quickly restored to another healthy environment with minimal downtime for our main customers. These features have significantly improved our recovery time objectives."

"The most valuable feature is ease of use."

"Cohesity DataProtect is more of a unified solution, which is also trying to expand for ransomware protection."

"Cohesity is extremely easy to use and intuitive."

"Converged system. It makes much more sense to have the backup server running on the same hardware as the storage for backup and recovery."

"The most valuable aspect for me is that I don't have to deal with media in terms of tapes like our existing system does."

More Cohesity DataProtect pros

"The solution is strong."

"We don't need to manage different devices."

"The product is easy to troubleshoot and store data."

"The solution's most valuable features are networker and continuous data protection."

"Dell PowerProtect DP (IDPA) offers a backup, recovery, and management tool that is very easy to use."

"Instead of four or five tools, consisting of backup software, storage where the backup resides, and a separate system for reporting and central monitoring, they all now come in the virtual edition for IDP."

"Dell PowerProtect is stable and scalable."

"IDPA's best feature is Turbo Boost Technology. The compression and duplication features are excellent, too."

More Dell PowerProtect DP (IDPA) pros

Cons

"You need to put the full name instead of a few letters while searching for backup. It should also improve customization."

"Reducing storage capacity requirements and improving security features are also areas that could be enhanced."

"Cohesity DataProtect can improve in the area of databases. We have had some challenges with both Cohesity and Rubrik being able to effectively back up in a timely manner the SQL Oracle workloads."

"I would like to see Cohesity have the ability to do a file level restore from a Windows server, which is storing data on dynamic disk."

"When a new release is launched, there may be some bugs that need to be addressed by the developers. However, they promptly resolve these issues, and the software runs smoothly once again."

"At times, you may click the wrong server or click too fast and accidentally restore a cluster of servers. It would be very helpful to have a cancel option under restores."

"Microsoft Exchange online mailbox backups would be fantastic."

"I think Cohesity could add more platform support. For example, they could improve integration with DB2 or make the integration S3 object storage a little tighter. Some of that stuff could use some work, but overall, it's a relatively comprehensive platform."

More Cohesity DataProtect cons

"We would like to see the pricing drop a bit."

"The product's index master feature needs improvement."

"After resizing and compression, the system continuously runs out of space. Dell EMC doesn't do automatic cleanup or other things, so we constantly have to manually go in there or work with Dell support on this. The solution has not been working as advertised."

"The solution should be easier to use."

"We cannot add IDPA to DPC, and each IP has a DP Central, which cannot monitor other IDPAs."

"The only thing that could be improved would be the complexity of the initial setup."

"The solution's implementation was very complicated and could be improved."

"The price could be lowered slightly, to make it more competitive."

More Dell PowerProtect DP (IDPA) cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I expect the system to probably pay off within the first two years."

"With respect to pricing, make sure that you look at both Rubrik and Cohesity as they are very similar and are quite competitive."

"Pricing, setup costs, etc. are pretty typical. The initial cost for Cohesity was less than other products the we evaluated. Cohesity's pricing does offer benefits as DR target costs are less than other solutions. You are not charged for DataProtect licensing for target DR data consumption."

"The pricing model is impressive and very effective."

"From my last assessment, the pricing for Cohesity DataProtect was reasonable. Compared to its closest competitor, Rubrik, I found Rubrik's pricing to be somewhat high-end. While Rubrik may have more advanced security features than Cohesity DataProtect currently, Cohesity DataProtect is releasing a new solution in the near future that will compete directly with Rubrik."

"My advice is to always negotiate for better pricing."

"The tool's licensing costs are yearly. It is cheaper than other backup solutions."

"If SQL is in heavy use at your location, I would highly recommend narrowing your PoC testing to Cohesity and Rubrik. They will be competitive on pricing with each other, so really put them through the paces."

More Cohesity DataProtect pricing and cost advice

"We have a perpetual license. It is a capacity-based license."

"I would rate the solution's pricing a seven out of ten."

"The licensing is billed on a monthly basis. Dell is bundled so that when you order IDPA, you get everything together with the license."

"Dell PowerProtect DP (IDPA) has a yearly subscription fee."

"It is a cost-effective solution."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

44%

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

Government

Educational Organization

36%

University

10%

Government

Computer Software Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Cohesity DataProtect?

Several features enable us to perform fast recovery, such as instant fast recovery. All our virtual machines protected with the product can be quickly restored to another healthy environment with m...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cohesity DataProtect?

Typically on-premises nodes/clusters are deployed for primary backup (to enable instant mass restore) so price will be dependent on chosen OEM and capacity required. MSPs like us utilise PPU licens...

What needs improvement with Cohesity DataProtect?

While there are improvements to be made, such as providing support for older systems like IBM iSeries and tandem systems from HP, the solution overall shifts from older methods to modern practices....

What do you like most about Dell PowerProtect DP (IDPA)?

What I find valuable about Dell PowerProtect IDPA is its stability and strong performance.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell PowerProtect DP (IDPA)?

Pricing is competitive with other software vendors. The product's features, network, and VMware integration contribute to its value. There are different licensing options available, such as applian...

What needs improvement with Dell PowerProtect DP (IDPA)?

Dell PowerProtect DP (IDPA) requires more updates and innovations in AI-powered cyber resilience. While technical support is generally not poor, there are challenges with expertise in Linux-based c...

Rubrik vs Cohesity DataProtect

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Product Reports

Cohesity DataProtect

Download Cohesity DataProtect product report

Dell PowerProtect DP (IDPA)

Download Dell PowerProtect DP (IDPA) product report

Also Known As

Cohesity

Dell EMC IDPA, Dell IDPA, EMC IDPA

Overview

What is Cohesity DataProtect?

Cohesity DataProtect is a top-level, sophisticated, software-defined backup and recovery solution created for cloud environments. Cohesity DataProtect is made to hyperscale and is one the most thorough policy-based protection solutions available on the market today.

Cohesity DataProtect melds multiple-point products into a single software that is able to be deployed as on-premise or consumed as a service.

Top Features:

Hyperscale made easy: Cohesity DataProtect improves data protection by doing away with the need for backup silos and administers backup and recovery with a single user-friendly, easy-to-understand interface. Cohesity DataProtect provides extensive 24/7 enterprise-class protection for a large, varying set of sources, including virtual and physical servers, NAS and SaaS workloads, relational and distributed databases, and traditional and containerized applications.

Super fast recovery: Cohesity DataProtect offers near-zero recovery point objectives (RPOs) and near-instant recovery time objectives (RTOs) to satisfy your business service-level agreements (SLAs). Using Cohesity Helios’ unified data plane and control plane you can immediately search and recover data on any Cohesity cluster, located anywhere. DataProtect distinctively minimizes downtime by immediately mass restoring any amount of virtual machines (VMs) to any point in time, and lowers data protection costs by as much as 70% or more.

Backup as a Service: Feel free to take advantage of the elasticity of the public cloud and the cost-effective value of Cohesity DataProtect when delivered as a service. When you choose an OPEX option, you can eliminate the need for on-premises hardware. There is a SaaS option that will allow you to very simply configure your backup workloads and immediately begin protecting your vital all-important data and applications.

It’s as easy as: sign-up, connect, and protect!

Ransomware protection: Cohesity DataProtect offers stellar recovery at scale. The solution is so intuitive, it has machine learning-based anomaly detection to stop incidents before they happen. Cohesity DataProtection can provide immutable backups, Datalock write once, read many (WORM), encryption, and role-based access control (RBAC).

Cohesity DataProtect integrates well with many of today’s top solutions, including, but not limited to:

Hypervisors: VMware vSphere (5.5 and later), Microsoft Hyper-V (2019, 2016, 2012 R2), Nutanix AHV and RHeV

Kubernetes-based data and application state

Cloud: AWS EC2, Amazon RDS, Azure VM, and Google Compute

Physical: Windows, Linux(RHEL, CentOS, OEL, Debian, Ubuntu), AIX (7.x), and Solaris

Databases: Oracle (11g R2, 12c), Oracle RAC and SQL (2008 or later)

Distributed Databases (NoSQL and Hadoop): MongoDB, CouchbaseDB, Apache, Cassandra, Cloudera, and Hortonworks.

Bare Machine Recovery: Windows and Linux

Applications: MS Exchange (2010 SP3 or later), MSFT Active Directory, Microsoft 365 (Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, OneDrive, Teams, Groups), SalesForce (SFDC), and SAP HANA

Primary storage: Pure FlashArray, HPE Nimble, and Cisco Hyperflex

NAS: Pure FlashBlade, NetApp, Isilon, IBM GPFS, Google EFS, Elastifile, and generic solutions*

Reviews from Real Users

One reviewer, who is head of IT infrastructure at Kampmann says, “Cohesity really is a Next-Gen Data Management Software,” and goes on to indicate that Cohesity “works flawlessly with easy replication of backups and numerous supported backup sources.”

Another user, who is a senior network engineer at a legal firm, relates that "Cohesity is a robust and feature-rich solution"

Cohesity

The PowerProtect DP series appliances is the integrated appliance solution from the Dell data protection appliances portfolio.

PowerProtect DP series appliance: Simple, efficient and agile data protection

The DP series is an all-in-one backup appliance that reduces the complexity of managing multiple data silos, point solutions and vendor relationships. The DP series simplifies deployment and management—while delivering powerful, enterprise-grade data protection capabilities for small, mid-size and enterprise organizations at a low cost-to-protect.

It is an integrated solution that offers complete backup, replication, recovery, deduplication, instant access and restore, search & analytics, seamless VMware integration — plus, cloud readiness with disaster recovery (DR) and long-term retention (LTR) to the cloud — all in a single appliance.

With the DP series, customers reduce their time-to-protect and become more agile with a solution that’s fast, protected more efficiently, can be recovered quickly and is reliable.

Simple to deploy, scale and manage

The DP series enables organizations to protect a broad ecosystem of applications quickly with a single system management console, consolidating workload protection, and eliminating infrastructure or data sprawl. The easy-to-use System Manager simplifies backups and automates daily tasks, including monitoring, management, reporting, analytics and search. The DP series delivers all-in-one data protection: protection storage and software, search and advanced monitoring and analytics, combined with cloud extensibility. It offers integration with VMware, SQL and Oracle management tools so that admins can use familiar UIs.

Powerful cloud, performance and efficiency

The DP series can scale to fit the needs of enterprises with the ability to protect up to 195 PB (logical) of data to the public, private or hybrid clouds with Cloud Tier, with no additional hardware.7 Plus, native Cloud DR with end-to-end orchestration allows enterprises to copy backed-up VMs from on-premises DP series environments to the public cloud with AWS, Azure, or VMware Cloud on AWS —3 clicks to failover and 2 clicks to failback.

The DP series provides support for modern applications like MongoDB and MySQL and is optimized for VMware. It provides fast, single-step recovery of individual files, dynamic policies for VMs as well as complete VMware images, which can be instantly accessed and migrated live from the DP series appliance back to the production environment (using vMotion) while still running, further simplifying and optimizing VM recovery. Plus, instantly access up to 64 VMs with up to 60,000 IOPS to meet the strictest SLAs.

Data protection search simplifies file-level-recovery (FLR) activities with an easy-to-use search interface. The DP series is also built on the industry-proven Data Invulnerability Architecture (DIA), for encryption, fault detection, and healing.

Dell Technologies

Sample Customers

Tribune Media

Under Armour, Christian Brothers University, Presidio

Cohesity DataProtect vs. Dell PowerProtect DP (IDPA)