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Dell Data Protection Advisor vs NetApp SnapCenter 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 Data Protection Advisor
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
24th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.9
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
NetApp SnapCenter
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
51st
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
27
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 Data Protection Advisor is 0.5%, down from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp SnapCenter is 0.6%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Backup and Recovery
 

Featured Reviews

ErmiasGirma - PeerSpot reviewer
Proactive support with predictive insights and seamless integration
As a system engineer, I am deploying Dell Data Protection Advisor solutions, especially in the areas of protection like Avamar, NetWorker, and Data Domain. Our team has deployed these solutions for three organizations in Africa and India Dell Data Protection Advisor provides proactive support by…
Mir Gulzar Ahmed - PeerSpot reviewer
Integrates well with various applications , provides a cloning feature for creating snapshots or clones of volume and a centralized command
It is basically centralized command control software. When the users visualize the workflow of the backup, the management and the customer storage administrator know the ins and outs of the backup and recovery. They can make the strategy for their backup and recovery and the certainty of their backups and restore. Strategic planning: Also, it is easy to make a strategy when you have visualized the inflow and outflow of the backup and recovery. With the CLI or native way, without any UI or management tool, you might not be able to create any strategy at all. This is especially important when you have multiple storage systems inside your data center or organization. You need a tool that connects and visualizes the workflow of the backup and recovery from all the storage systems and NetApp storage systems installed within the organization. It is very important when you have multiple storage systems, and you need to manage your backup and recovery workflow. Ease of Management: Unlike other storage vendors, NetApp has its own product called SnapCenter. Other vendors need to acquire third-party software or integrate with other software to manage storage systems. NetApp has its own solution, which is SnapCenter. NetApp's SnapCenter gels well with their storage systems and products. Ease of management is already there. It's a fine software with easy installation, management, and understanding. It's not a complicated software to understand.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The product's ability to give predictions and advice on how to protect data is incredible."
"The deduplication is probably the most valuable feature of that requirement."
"The initial setup is very straightforward. Deployment typically takes about one hour. You just need one person to handle the deployment process."
"The most valuable aspects of the solution are the compression and the duplication."
"The reporting feature and the Dell's continuous improvement of the solution are the most valuable features. The solution not only supports Dell Power Products but also other products."
"It has a lot of stock reports. I believe over 300 canned reports, which for the most part meet a lot of generic needs."
"It generates very detailed reports, which makes things easier when it comes to IT auditing."
"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."
"I like the instant backups and recovery feature that SnapCenter provides within NetApp storage systems."
"The support from NetApp is very good, and I would rate it as ten points."
"It's all together managing both storage and backup, which makes it easier for troubleshooting issues and the automation part of it"
"The Exchange plugin is the most valuable because we have a lot of customers that use SnapManager Exchange and have to migrate to SnapCenter."
"Being able to add everything in as resource groups is a valuable feature... Having all the SQL servers put into specific buckets, based on their year of release - 2008, 2012, 2014 - allows us to get almost immediate backups that are easily seen and reported on."
"It's a centralized, easy-to-use solution empowering RBAC management, monitoring, notifications, extensive logging, and backup schedules for standalone as well as groups of the same types of environments. The cloning capabilities accelerate development."
"The way that it interconnects with VMware is really handy, because you can go right into your vSphere client, where you spend a lot of the day anyway, right-click on one of the VMs where you have backups running for however long, and you can restore either some files or restore the entire thing."
"The simplicity of backup and restore directly with VMware is an advantage and the time to backup and restore is reduced."
 

Cons

"It is difficult to manage the solution with the available tools. You need to know exactly what are you are doing."
"There is a steep learning curve to use the interface and to create new reports, this could be made easier. If the solution could provide more drag and drop functionality to build more advanced reports that would be very helpful."
"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."
"The solution requires more integration with our other solutions. I know that they have full integration with VMware because it is also from EMC. However, we have to have better integration with Microsoft and Nutanix as well."
"Dell Data Protection Advisor's feature for data domain protection needs enhancement."
"We have encountered issues where we were unable to pull data from the database server. It should also improve the backward compatibility."
"They should empower their customers with the ability to upgrade this solution as long as it's in the same major release."
"The product could be improved by addressing intermittent collector failures affecting status reports' accuracy."
"The UI, the User Interface, needs to be improved. It's not as clean or modern as it could be."
"I would like to see replication support between systems. Right now, it's kind of limited. We manage them separately from the storage system interface, not from SnapCenter. It would be nice if it was integrated into SnapCenter."
"The replication feature needs improvement in future releases."
"One thing that might be improved is the ease of management."
"The Microsoft environment is its biggest disadvantage due to the central management of all the actions. Because the SnapCenter server is where we deploy everything, it also affects the Microsoft environment, which can cause many difficulties when resolving issues like Windows update problems."
"Some of the minor functionalities from SnapManager did not transfer over to SnapCenter. These should be added in future releases."
"I'm waiting for SnapCenter for hybrid solutions. Right now, we only have SnapManager for hybrid. I need agents for that. People are looking to install SnapCenter in a SQL environment, but where they're running SQL on Hyper-V and using virtual files. Currently, we don't have support for hybrid."
"Plugins should be developed in shorter times. Performance generally could be a little bit faster."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"If the customer has huge lineup of Dell Products then they receive discount on the pricing."
"For pricing, I would rate Dell 2 out of 5. It's affordable."
"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."
"The product pricing has been satisfactory, particularly with the economy of scale in our agreement."
"It's not very expensive — I think the price is fair."
"The product is affordable."
"We see a financial value with SnapCenter because we don't have to license Commvault, which is pretty expensive."
"We have a site license, so it comes with the product."
"The product is inexpensive."
"Pricing is very good because if you already have NepApp controllers, then it's included."
"The license for SnapCenter was included with the storage array."
"It comes free with the amount of equipment we purchase from NetApp. In terms of pricing, zero is my favorite number."
"It's free. The license is included with other NetApp products."
"The licensing is well-designed because it's already included in some packages with NetApp storage. Therefore, for most customers, it's okay as the SnapCenter license is already included in some NetApp bundles."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Government
12%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
21%
Computer Software Company
14%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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...
What do you like most about NetApp SnapCenter?
Most banks and financial institutions use the solution.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetApp SnapCenter?
If you have a license, you don't need to buy anything extra. If you have multiple storage systems and want to manage them with a central tool, you are covered.
What needs improvement with NetApp SnapCenter?
There is always a chance for improvement. One thing that might be improved is the ease of management. It might be made a little less complicated.
 

Also Known As

DPA
SnapCenter
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nielsen, Trek Bicycle, Cal-Israel Credit Cards
All for One Steeb AG, Accenture
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Data Protection Advisor vs. NetApp SnapCenter and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
847,625 professionals have used our research since 2012.