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Dell Avamar vs ExaGrid EX Series comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 5, 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 Deduplication Software
3rd
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
88
Ranking in other categories
Backup and Recovery (11th)
ExaGrid EX Series
Ranking in Deduplication Software
8th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Deduplication Software category, the mindshare of Dell Avamar is 9.1%, down from 9.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ExaGrid EX Series is 9.4%, up from 9.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Deduplication Software
 

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.
Daan Lieshout - PeerSpot reviewer
With great features like deduplication and landing zone, the tool also provides stability and scalability
Speed-wise, ExaGrid is much faster than the other solutions in the market. When you choose between or from several different manufacturers, you need to understand a little bit about how the product exactly works and why its speed can be so high while being able to compare it to other solutions, allowing you to know of the backup window if you ever need it. You have to understand how it works and the product's preferences, even though the price may be slightly higher. Learning about the solution is not at all a problem, but when you open a console, you see so many things, and in the beginning you don't understand it all. Later on, it becomes more usable when you start understanding it. In general, ExaGrid provides you with a lot more information than any other system in the market. It is difficult to say what is additionally required in the solution because, presently, it has a lot of things like immutability, anti-hacking, and retention. The solution does put efforts towards improvement. The product's interface provides you with a proper overview of the deduplication rate and the status of how many storage systems you are left with through a visual screen, which is more than enough. When you go deeper, you can access all the enhanced consoles. The product can easily be integrated with third-party products because ExaGrid has all its best practice documents for integrating it with many other products. I rate the overall product a nine out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Scheduling is valuable. It does a good job of backing up, and it does a good job of restoring. Nobody has got a problem with that. The agents are well supported."
"We used Dell Avamar for backup and recovery of a virtual environment."
"We have seen huge data reduction and data deduplication and compression, which is very cost-effective and cost-reducing for the company."
"Graphically, it's very user interactive. It's got a very nice interface."
"It is very easy when you want to restore back to the original state."
"Dell Avamar has a push upgrade feature that lets you simultaneously push updates to thousands of clients. I also found the self-service part of Dell Avamar helpful."
"I have found the product to be scalable."
"I think the brand is very good. Support is also very nice for end users and integration with EMC products for businesses."
"It is a solid and a quite simple solution, which is a good combination. The customers like the simplicity and its scale-out capacity. They like the support pricing, and even the extension capacity pricing, a fixed price, which the executive is offering in Czech market."
"The most valuable features of the solution are deduplication and landing zone."
"The most valuable feature is the ease of use and data deduplication. It's extremely easy to use and does a very good job of data deduplication and compression."
"The tool has improved backup and recovery times. One of the key features contributing to this improvement is the landing zone and deduplication retention zone. When data is in the landing zone, the process is fast, ensuring smooth backup and recovery operations at high speeds. However, the process becomes slower for long-term backups moved to the retention zone due to fragmentation. So, if the data is older than a few days, the speed may be limited, especially for non-deduplicated data in the landing zone."
"The solution easily integrates with the backup targets, such as Veeam."
"One of the main features is the landing zone, it is a particular space where the information is not duplicated."
 

Cons

"We'd like to see something that could also work with Unix servers and physical servers to have a unified solution that works with everything."
"It would be helpful if the product offered more integration potential."
"If there is a need to move the data from one backup solution to another, it might be difficult since there is no option for a straightforward migration."
"I want to see a more user-friendly and administrator-friendly Dell Avamar. The solution also needs a better UI and dashboard."
"Avamar is dependent on the hardware. It can't be implemented with ordinary storage. It can only be implemented with an EMC product. We want to have a backup solution that allows us to use independent storage and other hardware. It would be good if they can simplify its technology and make it possible to implement it with another storage. This is probably not possible because Avamar is an EMC product, and EMC would like to sell its own products."
"Reporting in Dell Avamar needs improvement. The current reporting tool is very basic, and you have to dig deep into each function to get the information you need. For example, getting the status of failed and succeeded backups is very difficult in Avamar compared to Veeam. As for additional functionality, I would suggest improving WAN optimization. It's very important for getting offline or off-site backups. It should also include a tool to check for ransomware which would be beneficial. If a backup is vulnerable to ransomware, there should be a way to detect it, like using ARR rules to ensure your backup is ransomware-free. I haven't had any experience integrating Dell Avamar with AI solutions. It’s also a good point that Avamar doesn't offer such integrations, which is an area where Dell could improve."
"The interface has room for improvement. It's not ideal right now."
"Backup image browse times should be faster."
"The tool reduces storage footprint. However, clients are now storing data for longer durations with increasing requirements to retain backups for longer periods, particularly as a defense against ransomware attacks. As a result, the retention zone with duplicated data is experiencing more demand, leading to space constraints. This necessitates using higher-end, more expensive models to address the issue."
"The product's documentation can be made more precise."
"I would like for them to develop direct cloud integration with a third-party cloud. Direct integration with AWS and other cloud providers."
"The one place where we are sometimes losing the opportunity with ExaGrid is that a few customers still require a fiber channel connectivity, which is not always possible."
"The solution could improve by switching to a flash-type solution rather than the spinning drives that they currently use. However, we have not had any failure with the spinning drives. The flash-type drives are more up-to-date and are something that is in their roadmap."
"When speaking about a scale-out, you want to have better equipment. You cannot just add a disc to the foreign equipment. You have to buy another one and put it together, like parallel."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Dell Avamar is a moderately priced solution."
"The solution is expensive."
"The solution is costly."
"When it comes to competition the price is not what is important, it's not the problem."
"Dell Avamar is free when we deploy the data protection. When we order data protection, this software is included in the hardware."
"Dell Avamar is expensive."
"It might not be beneficial to smaller businesses due to its high cost."
"It is very expensive. It's a trust based licensing. So that's an ethical challenge."
"The previous solutions I have used both included the Backup Software and the Appliance making it hard to compare to this solution. However, overall the solution is reasonably priced for the features you receive. ExaGrid EX Series is priced better than HP, Dell, and possibly Commvault which I have compared in the past."
"In comparison to other solutions, it's affordable. They're all too expensive."
"I rate ExaGrid EX Series' pricing eight to nine out of ten."
"My company had to pay 1,60,000 EUR for the system we use, and the payment was made just once for the system and five years of full support."
"The current agreement has 21 terabytes of free space and it cost approximately $35,000."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Government
12%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
6%
 

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 ExaGrid EX Series?
The tool has improved backup and recovery times. One of the key features contributing to this improvement is the landing zone and deduplication retention zone. When data is in the landing zone, the...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ExaGrid EX Series?
I rate ExaGrid EX Series' pricing eight to nine out of ten.
What needs improvement with ExaGrid EX Series?
The tool reduces storage footprint. However, clients are now storing data for longer durations with increasing requirements to retain backups for longer periods, particularly as a defense against r...
 

Also Known As

Avamar
EX Series
 

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
NCI Group, North Attleborough Public School, North Kingstown School Department, NPS Pharmaceuticals, Prudential Douglas Elliman, Rathbone Brothers PLC, Rio Hondo College, Ruder Finn, Sarah Lawrence College
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Avamar vs. ExaGrid EX Series and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
842,296 professionals have used our research since 2012.