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Dell Avamar vs Dell Data Protection Advisor 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

Dell Avamar
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
12th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
88
Ranking in other categories
Deduplication Software (3rd)
Dell Data Protection Advisor
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
26th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.9
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Backup and Recovery category, the mindshare of Dell Avamar is 3.6%, down from 4.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell Data Protection Advisor is 0.5%, down from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Backup and Recovery
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Mario Castillo - PeerSpot reviewer
Backup solution that improved our RTO and RPO
I would rate this solution 8 out of 10. It would be a 10 for me if there were more features for disaster recovery. For someone who wants to implement this solution, my advice is that they need advanced knowledge about the solution. It can't be implemented without technical experience.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution is easy to use and has high performance."
"We have seen huge data reduction and data deduplication and compression, which is very cost-effective and cost-reducing for the company."
"Easy to configure and highly reliable for backup."
"We've found the product to be stable."
"The solution integrates well with Unix, Windows, Hyper-V and VM."
"The product is very powerful and offers very good performance."
"It is a very complete product."
"It is one of the best solutions for backing up Oracle and other servers."
"It supports our chargeback process by identifying resource users, which helps ensure that departments are billed accurately for data protection services rather than receiving them for free."
"The deduplication is probably the most valuable feature of that requirement."
"The solution is easy to use, flexible and has a lot of out-of-the-box functionality. You can configure the dashboards or you can use a script. However, to fully utilize its capabilities you will want to use a lot of scripts which you will need advanced training. The reports can be customized for many things, such as chargeback billing."
"It has a lot of stock reports. I believe over 300 canned reports, which for the most part meet a lot of generic needs."
"The most valuable aspects of the solution are the compression and the duplication."
"The product's ability to give predictions and advice on how to protect data is incredible."
"This is a stable solution."
"It generates very detailed reports, which makes things easier when it comes to IT auditing."
 

Cons

"When we used the solution, it was still new, and so the customer service/technical support was not the best."
"The challenges we do face typically revolve around aligning specific features with our accustomed tool usage."
"It would be helpful if the product offered more integration potential."
"Backup image browse times should be faster."
"If you don't have DPA, the reporting features are not as user-friendly, so reporting is something that they can improve on."
"The interface has room for improvement. It's not ideal right now."
"The solution is not very strong on the Cloud. They should work out how they can use this as a backup as a service."
"It's an expensive solution."
"The functionality of the Data Protection Advisor is limited and is something that is lacking in this solution. Other solutions like CloudIQ and DDMC provide a much better outlook on how data protection should be done."
"Some minor adjustments could be made regarding the graphical interface and customization options."
"It is difficult to manage the solution with the available tools. You need to know exactly what are you are doing."
"We have encountered issues where we were unable to pull data from the database server. It should also improve the backward compatibility."
"The stability of the solution needs improvement for stand alone users."
"The product could be improved by addressing intermittent collector failures affecting status reports' accuracy."
"Customization of reports or creating new reports can be difficult. Users need to have a deep knowledge of SQL. 70-80% of customers can't seem to understand how to do it. They don't know how to address reporting. If Dell EMC could simplify it, it would benefit the end-user."
"They should empower their customers with the ability to upgrade this solution as long as it's in the same major release."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Avamar's pricing is quite competitive compared to other vendors."
"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."
"I rate the tool's price as a three out of ten if one means expensive and ten means it is a cheaply priced tool."
"Dell EMC needs to lower Avamar's price and add more features to stay competitive."
"It is expensive. Its cost is the main thing."
"The solution is not expensive for the value one gets."
"Its licensing is weird. It is not just the licenses; we also purchase hardware. With most software products, such as Veeam, Commvault, and Data Protector, there is no hardware purchase at the same time. Because Avamar and Data Domain are tied together, they have an integrated pipe. You can separate them, but basically, they're designed to work as a couple. Because the Data Domain backend is designed to do dedupe and compression, we get 60:1. When you count it, you count it as a straight compression, but of course, that's with dedupe and some other stuff. You have to buy the hardware, the licensing, and the software at the same time. So, it's not just software."
"It was approximately $70-80,000 when it was under support, but right now EMC has not been supporting this product for two years."
"For pricing, I would rate Dell 2 out of 5. It's affordable."
"The product is affordable."
"You need to make an upfront payment for three, five, or seven years and renew the licenses for support. We can do an annual maintenance contract with Dell. I would rate the product's pricing a six out of ten."
"It's not very expensive — I think the price is fair."
"If the customer has huge lineup of Dell Products then they receive discount on the pricing."
"The product pricing has been satisfactory, particularly with the economy of scale in our agreement."
"You have to procure the license when you are ordering or quoting for Dell Data Protection Suite (DPS). DPS is bundled with the suite and comes with a license. However, if you purchase NetWorker separately then you will have to procure the license for DPS separately."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Government
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
13%
Government
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell EMC Avamar?
I don't currently have detailed knowledge about the pricing, however, it is geared towards enterprise businesses and might be on the higher side.
What do you like most about Dell Avamar?
Easy to configure and highly reliable for backup.
What do you like most about Dell Data Protection Advisor?
The platform's most valuable features are data protection and retention.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell Data Protection Advisor?
The product pricing has been satisfactory, particularly with the economy of scale in our agreement.
What needs improvement with Dell Data Protection Advisor?
The product could be improved by addressing intermittent collector failures affecting status reports' accuracy. Additionally, enhancing bulk update capabilities for items like cost centers would be...
 

Also Known As

Avamar
DPA
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Dodge County, St Laurence's College, FieldCore (a GE Company), Comanche County Memorial Hospital, Getronics, Lewisville Independent School District, EnvisionRxOptions, Cincinnati Bell Technology Solutions
Nielsen, Trek Bicycle, Cal-Israel Credit Cards
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Avamar vs. Dell Data Protection Advisor and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
831,020 professionals have used our research since 2012.