Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Cohesity DataProtect vs Microsoft DPM comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 5, 2025

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
72
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Backup (6th)
Microsoft DPM
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
27th
Average Rating
7.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
19
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 Microsoft DPM is 1.2%, down from 1.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Backup and Recovery
 

Featured Reviews

Giovanni Golinelli. - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
RifkanHasan - PeerSpot reviewer
Backup and recovery that is stable but support is no longer in existence
The DPM is pretty good, but when it comes to external devices, you can't back up to the external device. It's a huge drawback because once everything goes down, it goes down fully. We can't take a snapshot and take it outside, which is a problem. Also, when it comes to recovery, the recovery process doesn't work properly. It doesn't recover. One of our drives failed and when we wanted to recover it from the other drive, it never worked. So, we couldn't recover the data. Recovery of data if the server goes down, is not very good. The DPM is good apart from the support services. We were told that the support was no longer in existence, which is why we are looking for another provider. In the next release, I would like to see backup to external devices, so it can always restore the backup and we can take it externally and store it somewhere that it is off-site and archived. Currently, it does not allow us to do that because it is required to be in one location.

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 of Cohesity DataProtect are SpanFS and the handling of hybrid workloads."
"The tool is faster and easier to use than others. The most critical feature for our data protection needs is the accuracy of backups and restores."
"It makes our administrators' lives much easier to combine backup, archiving, and services like hosting file shares in one central system with only one user interface."
"We like that we can use production data to run intensive reports that would otherwise bog down the production server."
"Cohesity DataProtect is easily manageable, and you can see every option from the user interface."
"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."
"The restores are easy to do and have made it so that we can incorporate restores into our troubleshooting processes."
"The customer service and support are fast and professional."
"Microsoft DPM is scalable."
"I could back up all the stuff we had, even the VMs we have for Hyper V."
"The most valuable feature is the total integration of the System Center solution."
"The most important feature is that it's easy to use."
"The automated procedure is quite good for us, as it is able to capture all of the information that we require."
"One of the most effective features of Microsoft DPM is its integration with the entire Microsoft ecosystem."
"It has an application backup, a file backup, a system backup and a hypervisor."
"It is almost perfect for Microsoft products. It is not a very powerful tool, but it is okay for small sites and small businesses with Microsoft products. It is easy to use for backup and restore. It is good for backing up Microsoft servers such as Exchange and SharePoint servers."
 

Cons

"There is room for improvement in terms of price."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"If someone were to change an admin account password, I would like an alert raised for that, which is not available at the moment."
"Physical RDMs on virtual machines could be a bit easier to configure and plan out."
"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."
"It can back up, yet it lacks features compared to Veeam."
"Microsoft DPM could improve if it was available in a public or private cloud."
"There is a very poor online user community in terms of people blogging about their experiences with DPM."
"Additional Hyper-V knowledge would be great."
"The data tagging feature needs improvement. The solution could be a bit more intuitive in certain aspects."
"You have only a few settings and if you change them for some special configurations, it's very difficult."
"It would be better if it integrated seamlessly with open source and competitor products. In the next release, I would like to see some data governance frameworks. It should have support features for data integration and data replication like Veeam. Right now, we are also using Veeam for certain scenarios."
"Management reporting could be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Sizing is important and it is easy to overestimate."
"The tool's licensing costs are yearly. It is cheaper than other backup solutions."
"Cohesity came in at the best price."
"I expect the system to probably pay off within the first two years."
"The solution's pricing is in the mid-range, where it's neither costly nor cheap."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a seven out of ten."
"The ROI is huge. Not really measurable at this point, but the price of the unit was a fraction of what a couple hours of downtime could result in."
"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."
"Microsoft DPM is a free solution. However, we pay approximately $3,000 annually for support."
"I think Microsoft DPM pricing is reasonable. The additional costs are related to storage and technical support."
"Microsoft DPM can be considered as an expensive solution for smaller or medium enterprises, but we have been satisfied with the price structure as it is fixed and it offers a variety of useful features"
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Backup and Recovery solutions are best for your needs.
845,040 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
44%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
Government
5%
Computer Software Company
15%
Government
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Educational Organization
7%
 

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 Microsoft DPM?
This solution helps us to manage all of the operations across servers and different workstations.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft DPM?
Microsoft licensing is complex, especially for enterprise or data center solutions. However, it's not more complicated compared to other competitors and the market is well balanced.
What needs improvement with Microsoft DPM?
I am not sure if I am competent enough to address areas for improvement in Microsoft DPM.
 

Also Known As

Cohesity
DPM, Data Protection Manager, MS DPM
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Tribune Media
Medical Park, Centropol Energy, a.s., NCFE, D & H Distributing, Metalor, Colosseum, a.s., Sanitas S.A., Icebreaker
Find out what your peers are saying about Cohesity DataProtect vs. Microsoft DPM and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
845,040 professionals have used our research since 2012.