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

Commvault Cloud vs N-able Cove Data Protection 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

Commvault Cloud
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
3rd
Ranking in Cloud Backup
2nd
Ranking in SaaS Backup
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
108
Ranking in other categories
eDiscovery (3rd), Disaster Recovery as a Service (3rd), File Archiving (2nd), Disaster Recovery (DR) Software (3rd), Threat Deception Platforms (1st), Container Backup Software (1st)
N-able Cove Data Protection
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
24th
Ranking in Cloud Backup
16th
Ranking in SaaS Backup
8th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
21
Ranking in other categories
MSP Backup (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Cloud Backup category, the mindshare of Commvault Cloud is 10.1%, up from 8.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of N-able Cove Data Protection is 2.6%, down from 2.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Backup
 

Featured Reviews

Cassandra Cinar - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides excellent visibility and helps reduce costs and time
We use intuitive administrative tools that readily reveal the volume of backed-up data. Our Commvault CommCell servers alert us to failed backups and provide detailed information. This transparency allows our managed service provider to easily grasp our pre-established thresholds and readily scale up with new technologies. We're highly satisfied with Commvault's automated data security and management policies. They meet our stringent requirements for secure and private data storage, including anti-ransomware protection and encryption. Notably, they also ensure compliance with GDPR for backups stored in Europe and other regions, fulfilling our regulatory obligations. Threat Scan's ability to scan backup data for threats is invaluable because it proactively identifies and neutralizes certain viruses and threats that may originate from our G Suite or be reported by our security incident response team, preventing potential outages. Commvault provides excellent visibility across our entire organization's data. They perform regular health checks, informing us of areas of strength and offering recommendations for improvement. These recommendations may include upgrading to newer product versions or addressing issues identified during the checks. It is important for our organization that Commvault provides a unified platform for recovery across cloud, on-premises, and software-as-a-service workloads. This is particularly important because many of our existing cloud environments rely on basic backups that are insufficient for our needs. Commvault empowers us to address this issue. We have implemented it not only in our own operating company but also across the corporate structure, rolling it out to virtually all AWS users. This is because the standard backup methods, such as snapshot backups, fail to meet our stringent requirements for recovery, service level agreements, and crucial functionalities like threat detection and other security features. Commvault ensures a robust and comprehensive backup infrastructure that satisfies all our essential needs. It has improved our organization by ensuring we meet our infrastructure requirements, adhere to our vulnerability methodology, and achieve service level agreements for both backup and storage requirements. The quarterly risk analysis allows us to effectively manage the lifecycle of both data and backups. It also sheds light on the types of data and backups we have, providing valuable insights. Commvault's risk analysis is one of the tools we use to meet our compliance requirements and implement the necessary controls for immediate security policy action. To ensure comprehensive data protection and comply with international regulations like GDPR, we rely on Commvault alongside our established financial systems and SOC-compliant practices. Commvault has helped us reduce our organization's data management costs by 75 percent, particularly for long-term backups. We ditched tapes and virtual tapes thanks to Commvault, replacing them with a fully disk-based backup system and cloud backups in AWS and Azure. By implementing Commvault, we've significantly reduced our backup times. This is achieved through a combination of incremental backups and data aging. Aged data is then moved to cheaper disk or cloud storage, ensuring cost-effective long-term retention while still meeting our recovery SLAs. While the overall time savings may be around 10-15 percent, the main benefit is not keeping everything on expensive primary storage and efficiently aging it out. Consequently, retrieving data from the Azure bucket typically takes five days or more, reflecting our agreed-upon SLA. It has reduced our recovery point objective, allowing us to store more backups. However, new regulatory and compliance requirements mandate that some backups cannot be deleted and must be retained indefinitely. To address this while still improving efficiency, we've implemented solutions for long-term data storage and improved data management practices. Commvault has helped our organization not only decrease our threat detection time but also improve threat prevention to such an extent that we often avoid facing the full impact of a threat altogether. By preventing these incidents, we're often unsure of the precise amount of time saved, but the benefit is clear: we don't need to activate disaster recovery mechanisms. It has not only helped us reduce our recovery time objective, but it has also ensured that our backups and long-term storage are secure, thanks to its comprehensive capabilities. In terms of total cost of ownership, Commvault has enabled us to significantly reduce both hardware and media costs for storage and backup. After factoring in encryption and compression, the total savings amount to close to 80 percent. It has been able to reduce downtime, but having a quick recovery plan and policy and SLAs that are published are met regularly.
Jack Henson - PeerSpot reviewer
Allows us to back up workstations and servers, and saved us time when checking endpoints and the viability of backups
I have some issues with the agent failing on workstations. I've had to completely uninstall several of them, delete everything, and start over to get them to work. That's been the biggest source of my problems recently. The problem is that when we delete one, we lose the backup. Consequently, it means we're without a backup unless we have a local copy. When we delete the agent, there's the problem of how to go back and restore it. I haven't had to deal with it yet, because I haven't had a failure that occurred while I was doing that. I had a workstation that started failing, and we couldn't get the services to run. I don't know what caused it. I had to reinstall the agent, which didn't work. I had to go into the machine and delete everything and load another agent onto it. Once I did that, I was able to make it work, but 90% of the time I never have an issue. During the other 10% of the time when I have a problem, it's a mess. The ability to recover to a different workstation or a different data point is a little bit clumsy. It could use some work.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We can use it on-premises and in the cloud."
"The backup and restore capabilities are key. The most useful things to us about Commvault, in general, is the breadth of the applications that it can protect as well as the features inside of it, like deduplication and encryption. When people get their data encrypted, Commvault has a way to tell if somebody is being attacked through a cybersecurity threat because their data changes. So, Commvault has what they call honeypot files out there to look to see if anybody is changing these files. Only Commvault knows which files those are, so nobody should be messing with those files. If it changes, then it will alert you to say, "Oh, I potentially have somebody messing with my files." It will alert you to something going on in your environment that probably shouldn't be happening. We deploy that with all our customers so they have this capability as well."
"It's the leader in backup and archiving."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"This is a very stable product."
"It's an enterprise product. It's a stable product. We have good support. Almost all databases are in the scope."
"We use Commvault Command Center for backups and restores and for the creation of new clients. We use it for other functionalities as well. In terms of VMware, I can go directly to the Command Center, enter VMware, and I can search it directly. Command Center is very useful and it can be used for more advanced techniques."
"Commvault can actually come in and assist you with aspects of the implementation - and they are quite helpful."
"The most valuable feature is that it's hands-off. I log in every morning and there are pre-canned filters that I've created to make my life easier. I have something called server status color bars, and that gives me all the servers and, in a nutshell, I can see: if any errors are being reported; when the last backup was; if one is not working, should there be one, and it literally jumps off the page."
"N-able Cove Data Protection is user-friendly and straightforward, and the dashboard is clear."
"What I like the most about it's the ease of use and the reliability that it has when copying information to the cloud."
"The most valuables feature is the alerts and monitoring that catches the failed backups."
"The monitoring makes it very easy to check whether a backup has gone bad."
"For starters, this is one of few databases that allow us to backup MySQL databases, most others only support Microsoft SQL. This solution also has a very user-friendly interface accessed through a web browser. Additionally, backups can be easily configured through N-able Backup."
"The most valuable feature by far is the Virtual Disaster Recovery. On top of that is the bare-metal recovery. The recovery options that we have are great. We have tested the Virtual Disaster Recovery and the bare-metal recovery in just about any scenario you can think of. We have even restored bare metal, a full server, to a laptop, and had full functionality. It's just insane how well it works and how simple it is. It does most of the work for you."
"The solution has reduced backup times by an immeasurable amount. Its backups are incremental, so you are only backing up data changes based on the last 24 hours or so. If you are also maintaining the stored images, the restores are also only incremental, happening in minutes. Whereas, with a lot of the other solutions that we have looked at, each time it goes to refresh the restore, then it has to build a completely new image. That takes forever. This solution also improves recovery time."
 

Cons

"For simpler environments, they have some templates for startups. Possibly for a smaller environment, they need to do more automatic configuration and selections of users who want to do backups. This is mainly for smaller environments. I would like them to have the same system fit for all environments: small and big environments. Currently, we have to do a lot of configuration of the layout, which takes time. This solution is appropriate for enterprise-level enterprise, but I would like it to be easier to use for SMB environments."
"What I need is deeper CLI documentation for both QCommand and SQL queries."
"Data center backup must be improved."
"I would like Commvault to have a feature for cybersecurity threats, e.g. securing the target backup repository. Commvault just started testing and releasing this feature, but it needs to be stabilized."
"We are using a production environment with customer-sensitive data on it. As per our central bank rules and regulations, we can't keep our customer's sensitive data in the cloud."
"The deployment process should be simplified because it is not something that just anybody can do."
"There is room for improvement in the Knowledge Base and error reporting. I would like to see best practices in the Knowledge Base, and have the ability to diagnose errors without contacting support."
"The solution requires constant attention. Commvault is very complex. We are constantly making adjustments and working through hotfixes, updates, and issues."
"I have some issues with the agent failing on workstations. I've had to completely uninstall several of them, delete everything, and start over to get them to work."
"The reporting feature and functionality need improvement. We would like to see a little bit more detailed reporting that offers more CEO or C-level focused reporting options."
"This solution is not very good for image restores, mainly just files. The solution also does not allow you to enable or disable backups. Sometimes, our users will connect via mobile device and it will use their data to perform the backup. If they were able to enable and disable the backup, they would not have this issue."
"A better default view on my dashboard would be great. There is a lot of useless information there that it pulls up. They could present the dashboard slightly better, in terms of the extra information after the first five columns. The first five columns are awesome. After that, I don't care about the rest, and there are another seven things after that."
"We don't use the solution’s automated recovery testing because SolarWinds made me cross. When they released it, I went, "Oh, well, that's quite good." Because if you use the system, then it supposedly spins up, and on the portal, it gives you a screenshot of the booted device. So, I phoned up, and I said, "Oh, that's really quite cool. How much is that?" They said, "No, no, no. It's all included in your license." I went, "Okay then," and went and deployed it on about half the fleet. One of the options that our customers have is they can pay us a small amount every month for us to test the recovery just to prove that it's viable, and I thought, "Well, this will do that for us. Nice." Then, in the next invoice, we got a charge for it. While It was not a huge amount, I took offense at the fact that we were told that it would be a no extra cost option that was part of our license, but it turns out that it's chargeable. Therefore, we haven't used it since."
"A disaster recovery console would be an improvement for the product."
"There could be a possibility to create a local NAS backup for infrastructure."
"Having the licensing available for partners to be able to take advantage of testing without paying would make a big difference."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool is cost-effective."
"The price of Commvault HyperScale X is a lot higher than competitors. As a government institution, we have annual costs. We made a budget for one year in advance. It was difficult to calculate the other solution's costs because each solution has another way of licensing. The solution is expensive but it is very good and we know the good quality we will be receiving."
"The license for Commvault HyperScale X is paid annually."
"Its cost is reasonable, but anybody else can do better benchmarking."
"It is cheaper than NetBackup, but its price can be lower. If a good solution can be cheaper, it is always an advantage. Its licensing is on a yearly basis."
"Its cost is reasonable."
"Our yearly cost is around €20,000... The cost is based on the number of users and the amount of data. They sell it per terabyte."
"The pricing is far better than we had in the past. The license for Dell EMC was not too expensive, but the storage, given that Dell EMC is based on data domains, was pretty expensive."
"The cost is around ten dollars per workstation a month and that includes a certain amount of data."
"I believe that the price is very reasonable in comparison to other options. It is cheaper than both Redstor and Acronis and, since we are now using our own on-premise cloud, there is absolutely no comparison since we have unlimited storage rather than paying per gigabyte used for their onsite storage. We are currently able to backup fifty computers for the same price that we use to backup five computers."
"The pricing is very competitive and it's well worth the price."
"The pricing of SolarWinds seems to be fair compared to the rest of the industry."
"N-able Cove Data Protection is an averagely-priced product."
"There is no per node cost, at least not the way I am doing it. I am on bulk. New customers can be set up on a trial, where they can get things all squared away, then they can switch over to being a billed customer."
"When you have a device/appliance on the site quite a lot of the other enterprise class backup people insist that you have their appliance, which is frankly offensively expensive. Because when you pry the top off, it's just a standard 19-inch tin box with a standard Intel I5 in it, some RAM, and a hard drive. Then, you go, "Why have they just charged me 5,500 quid for a box, which I could have probably build for under 500." Whereas, with the SolarWinds product, they don't have that. The backup appliances that we have onsite are just plain cooking PCs. We can build our own machines, which is reflected in the price that we can offer a customer."
"The price isn't extreme, but I'd love to pay less."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Cloud Backup solutions are best for your needs.
832,138 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
22%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Real Estate/Law Firm
7%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Commvault?
The tool is affordable. I rate the pricing a six out of ten. Implementation requires additional costs because we need Commvault Professional Services.
What needs improvement with Commvault?
Data center backup must be improved. We also want the product to provide us with a cloud-based backup. If we use Microsoft Exchange Online for email services, we want to know how to get a backup in...
What do you like most about Commvault Complete Data Protection?
IntelliSnap and file system backups are valuable features.
What do you like most about N-able Backup?
The initial setup of N-able Cove Data Protection was very easy.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for N-able Backup?
The pricing is affordable. N-able Cove Data Protection has a direct-to-cloud architecture, but it also allows saving backups locally without extra storage costs.
What needs improvement with N-able Backup?
There aren’t any challenges. Regarding the additional features, Cove is limited to disaster recovery with Azure. It would be great to make disaster recovery compatible with AWS.
 

Also Known As

Commvault Complete Data Protection, Commvault, Commvault Backup & Recovery, Commvault HyperScale X, Metallic, ThreatWise
N-able Backup, SolarWinds Backup, SolarWinds MSP Backup & Recovery, SolarWinds MSP Backup
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Aberdeenshire Council, Acxiom, BAM Group Ireland, Catholic Education Diocese of Parramatta, CI Investments, Clifford Chance, American Municipal Power, American Pacific Mortgage, AstraZeneca, Dongbu Steel, Denver Health, Dow Jones, Emirates Steel, Penn State Health, Prime Healthcare, Sonic Healthcare, Sony Network Communications, TiVO, UCONN Health, The Weitz Company
Computer Depot, Leading Edge Computers, IT Logic Australia
Find out what your peers are saying about Commvault Cloud vs. N-able Cove Data Protection and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
832,138 professionals have used our research since 2012.