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 (8th)

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 July 2025, in the Backup and Recovery category, the mindshare of Cohesity DataProtect is 3.3%, down from 4.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell PowerProtect DP (IDPA) is 0.6%, down from 1.0% 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.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The enterprise search and instant restore are pretty valuable. Also, the Helios stuff is pretty good and the SAS engine for ransom malware detection."

"With instant DR failover using SiteContinuity, we are able to keep our files available no matter the situation."

"We are saving valuable datacenter rack space, which is critical as we evaluate co-location options."

"The spin-up of a VM within a test environment for backup testing along with quick restores."

"It is also very easy to determine which VMs are being backed up and which ones aren't. This is helpful to make sure nothing is being missed."

"The product is easy to put in place. All backups are done very quickly. It's easy to perform restores. What I prefer in the product is its simplicity. There are no useless settings to define, and everything is ready after the initial setup."

"The solution is stable."

"It's completely reliable and easy to restore."

More Cohesity DataProtect pros

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

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

"The most valuable feature is the deduplication rate."

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

"It backs up our Windows systems and our Linux systems and everything."

"We use it for complete backup and recovery. We have multiple clients and have created multiple large virtual capabilities and zoning backlogs."

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

"Dell PowerProtect is stable and scalable."

More Dell PowerProtect DP (IDPA) pros

Cons

"The support team sometimes takes a long time to resolve issues, although, in our experience, these have been specific things like SQL blobs."

"I like that Cohesity offers the chance to have data on-premises and on the cloud. All the data is automatically sent to the cloud."

"It would be great to add SQL Object Level restore, so user objects, tables, etc. can be restored without having to restore the entire DB."

"Cohesity cluster upgrades have not been as easy as a single button click. They are a manual process that requires upgrading each node into a cluster individually."

"Cohesity DataProtect needs to improve its reporting capabilities."

"The tool could benefit from further improvements in AI features, particularly in areas such as a generative AI chat interface. This feature could help answer queries about the data being protected. One feature that would greatly improve our experience with the product is the ability to identify data redundancies through a central console. This feature would help us reduce storage costs by managing redundant data."

"Better support for legacy platforms would be nice, but we should be moving off those anyway."

"The error handling could be improved."

More Cohesity DataProtect cons

"Managing the product is a little bit complicated."

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

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

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

"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."

"I would like to see integration with Dell EMC's Cloud Tier."

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

More Dell PowerProtect DP (IDPA) cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution's pricing is quite high, more so than that of its competitors, Veeam, Veritas and Rubrik."

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

"There is monthly licensing."

"It has reasonable pricing, and we know they can give discounts. If you look at the primary pricing or the list pricing, it conforms to the market pricing, but you have to have a discount on it. Otherwise, it is way too expensive."

"Sizing is important and it is easy to overestimate."

"We purchased support from Cohesity to ensure that should we face an issue, we don't have to deal with different service providers."

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

"Cohesity came in at the best price. Setup was included and done in half a day."

More Cohesity DataProtect pricing and cost advice

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

"It is a cost-effective solution."

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

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

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

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

15%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

University

17%

Government

11%

Educational Organization

10%

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?

I find Cohesity DataProtect to be expensive.

What needs improvement with Cohesity DataProtect?

What areas have room for improvement? Is there anything that could be simplified to make it better?

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

Comparisons

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Veeam Data Platform vs Cohesity DataProtect

Compared 16% of the time

Commvault Cloud vs Cohesity DataProtect

Compared 11% of the time

Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) vs Cohesity DataProtect

Compared 6% of the time

Veritas NetBackup vs Cohesity DataProtect

Compared 5% of the time

More Cohesity DataProtect Competitors

Dell PowerProtect Data Manager vs Dell PowerProtect DP (IDPA)

Compared 38% of the time

Dell Avamar vs Dell PowerProtect DP (IDPA)

Compared 20% of the time

Veeam Data Platform vs Dell PowerProtect DP (IDPA)

Compared 17% of the time

Commvault Cloud vs Dell PowerProtect DP (IDPA)

Compared 9% of the time

Rubrik vs Dell PowerProtect DP (IDPA)

Compared 7% of the time

More Dell PowerProtect DP (IDPA) Competitors

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)