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Dell Avamar vs Veritas NetBackup 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
10th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
89
Ranking in other categories
Deduplication Software (3rd)
Veritas NetBackup
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
5th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.9
Number of Reviews
115
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Backup and Recovery category, the mindshare of Dell Avamar is 3.5%, down from 3.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Veritas NetBackup is 3.8%, down from 5.4% 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.
Wesam Qashou - PeerSpot reviewer
A mature backup solution, with many features, and great support
Veritas NetBackup is the first line of defense when disaster strikes. Before performing disaster recovery, we must have a good backup of our image that is also protected from ransomware. This way, we have a golden image that is resilient to ransomware attacks. We saw the benefits of Veritas NetBackup within the first three months.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution scales well."
"Its deduplication technologies are the best in the market, currently."
"Centralization is Avamar's biggest advantage. It moves data to a central location from various geographical locations."
"The function I find most valuable in Dell Avamar is its ability to take differential backups for users. This feature is very effective for both backup and restore operations. We've had multiple cases where we needed to restore files directly from Avamar, and it worked perfectly. The Delta feature, which captures changes in user files, is particularly useful."
"The data reduction feature and the ease of enabling a server in a DR location are the most valuable."
"The backup is the solution's most valuable feature. It's very reliable."
"Avamar has long been the best in its class, but that's changing as new solutions emerge. However, Dell has traditionally been a leader in deduplication and compression. Avamar enabled us to shift data from on-premise local appliances to data centers and multi-tenant infrastructure. That's a powerful feature. because customers can back up to the cloud without upgrading o high-capacity links or congesting their backups."
"It's stable and offers good performance."
"What I like most is it is a professional product. It supports all kinds of technologies, and I consider it one of the best backup products available."
"The solution is easy to scale."
"The backup and restore functions are very valuable aspects of the product."
"We were evaluating other products and getting confused between Commvault and Veritas NetBackup. The one reason that we started with Veritas NetBackup is the pricing of the license. There's no other reason from a technical perspective or even operation or capability of the two software. The main reason we chose Veritas NetBackup was that in our use case it is more cost-effective."
"Its ability to cover a large spectrum of products and operating systems is invaluable. We evaluated other products but always found certain limitations like some products had only intel-based virtualization, while others had power servers."
"The tool's information transfer and patching up is easy. The solution offers protection from ransomware which is also a valuable feature."
"Includes snapshots and multiple database agents."
"Logs are very easy to read, parse, and use for diagnostics."
 

Cons

"Avamar is still competitive because of the way we have deployed it, but we need to diversify and shift away from specific technologies. In addition to hypervisors, virtual machines, and bare metal servers, our customers need protection for Microsoft 365, SaaS, and the public cloud, so we need other technologies in the business to cater to those customers' needs. Those are the enhancements we would want from the Avamar platform, but that's not likely to happen. Dell has PowerProtect and Apex backup services. There are other Dell solutions that we'll use to fulfill our customers' requirements."
"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."
"I have found the support from Dell EMC Avamar to be not as good as Veeam. The time it takes to receive support could be improved. However, once we have the support the agents are knowledgeable and helpful."
"What would make Dell Avamar better is if it can do faster backups because right now, PowerProtect Data Manager is better in this area with its new UI and a new way to implement backups. Customers nowadays also expect more up-to-date solutions, and this is another area for improvement in Dell Avamar. It's not as up-to-date, so I'm counting on PowerProtect Data Manager, but customers who have Dell Avamar don't want to switch because you don't have as many backup problems in Dell Avamar compared to other solutions. What I'd like to see in the next release of Dell Avamar is an updated UI and a different way to manage backups because currently, backup management is a bit heavy for customers using Dell Avamar."
"The interface has room for improvement. It's not ideal right now."
"If you need to pull data out of it to offload to tapes, that's messy. You have a mechanism for it, but it is painful."
"In my opinion, the user interface and the user friendliness could be improved. The specific thing I have in mind are the graphics, which are not quite user-friendly."
"EMC has discontinued their Avamar hardware version. They only advertise the Avamar virtual edition."
"It was very complicated, and it required a lot of work in terms of management. We have moved to Rubrik. One of the reasons for getting rid of Veritas NetBackup was the fact that at one point, we had the support staff with 12 to 15 people to manage Veritas NetBackup, whereas, with Rubrik, I'm the only one managing Rubrik. There is one more person who works with me mostly due to the fact that in case I'm not around, someone else knows what to do, but I'm the only one who is a full-time manager of Rubrik. The complexity of Veritas required a large staff to manage it. We had daily issues that had to be looked into and resolved. A lot of these issues revolved around Veritas' handling of VMware, which is why first we moved VMware off Veritas. After we did that, we were also able to reduce our staff count. Their licensing is a disaster. It is extremely complicated. In most cases, Veritas themselves can't understand their own licensing."
"The biggest additional features needed are more cloud capabilities and security from ransomware."
"The solution must provide a different way to schedule backups."
"It's not a user-friendly solution. It's a little bit complicated. The UI is not very friendly."
"There is room for improvement in the implementation of Power servers."
"It needs support for Kernel-based Virtual Machines (KVMs)."
"Updates were not always consistent."
"We want a solution that can be scaled-out because our data is growing very quickly, and we aren't able to back it up quickly. It takes one or two days, which is a problem. It is very slow. We just use one backup server. We want another solution with maybe a backup server cluster to back up more data in one day. We want a solution that can be scaled-out to back up our data quickly and efficiently."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Its price should be reduced. It would be good if you could pay as per usage, and there is a subscription model like VMware. There should be some flexibility because sometimes, the customer only uses the backup for one month or three months. Currently, I have to pay whether I use it or not. Its licensing should be flexible and based on consumption."
"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."
"It is very expensive. It's a trust based licensing. So that's an ethical challenge."
"I rate the pricing a seven out of ten because it is expensive."
"Licensing was generally on a per VM or terabyte basis. They changed their licensing model a couple of times and turned it into socket-based licensing, which is an improvement in their licensing model."
"Dell Avamar, including its virtual add-ons and cloud-based offerings, is cheaper than other solutions, but in the end, the price still depends on your use case. Price-wise, I'm rating Dell Avamar as six out of ten."
"The price of this product should be lower."
"On a scale of one to five, I would rate the pricing policy of Dell Avamar as five. The solution has a very good price, and a lot of improvements were done to it."
"My licensing model is based on capacity so as we grow, the price we pay increases and it becomes too expensive."
"It is reasonably priced."
"We are very satisfied with the price of this solution."
"Veritas NetBackup is more expensive than other backup solutions like Dell Power Protect and Veeam Backup."
"The licensing fees are expensive."
"The solution is expensive compared to other products."
"If you want to have more scalability you have to purchase more licenses. The license is annually and there are a lot of different licensing depending on the number of terabytes needed. It is not based on per-user, core, or servers. You can backup anything you want using the purchased terabyte space."
"NetBackup is expensive. They need to work on the pricing side. I find it comparatively on the higher side when I compare the terabyte backup costs."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Government
12%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
9%
 

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 do you like most about Dell Avamar?
Easy to configure and highly reliable for backup.
What is the best next generation backup tool?
Assuming you have an onprem ecosystem which runs the VMware, physical systems on Win, Linux and Unix and run both traditional DB's and nosql DB's like mongo, then Netbackup (NBU) will be the right ...
What do you like most about Veritas NetBackup?
The most valuable feature of cloud integration is the ability to send data outside of your location. This can be achieved by integrating cloud tier options or other object storage solutions.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Veritas NetBackup?
The product is cost-effective, and I would rate its pricing as an eight out of ten. The pricing model is based on the amount of data transferred, making it manageable for us.
 

Also Known As

Avamar
No data available
 

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
Beta Offshore
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Avamar vs. Veritas NetBackup and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
848,716 professionals have used our research since 2012.