Dell Avamar Reviews

We're a managed services provider, and we've developed a custom version of Avamar. It is intended to be a product for single customers, but we transformed it into a multi-tenant platform. 

Avamar is a hybrid solution. We can deploy Avamar as a direct-to-cloud service, or we can deploy agents onto customers' endpoints at their branches, and they can then back up straight into our mobile attendant platform and update centers. We also offer customers on-premise appliances.

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. 

Another valuable feature is Avamar's support for endpoints and workstations. Businesses want to back up their company laptops, and they can't get that functionality from many solutions. Avamar can provide clients a multi-tenant portal, which isn't something other solutions can do. 

Continuing our long-term relationship with Dell, we will likely switch to Dell PowerProtect, but cybersecurity is one area of improvement for Avamar. Dell should add some more components to its Cyber Recovery vault. 

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.

We have used Avamar for more than a decade. 

I rate Dell Avamar nine out of 10 for stability. It's a stable and highly resilient platform. 

Avamar wouldn't be as scalable the way it is traditionally deployed, but we are using it as a multi-tenant platform, ensuring that capacity is always available. The platform is fairly elastic for us. Typically, you would deploy infrastructure for the customer and allocate storage, so your ability to increase that storage would be limited by infrastructure procurement and deployment within a data center. It isn't a cloud-native or software-based solution. It doesn't have out-of-the-box scalability. 

We regularly contact Dell for remote technical support and to replace hardware in our data centers or customer sites. We're Dell Titanium partners, so we get top-tier support. 

I am not directly involved in deployment, but we've used Avamar for so long that it's likely effortless for our engineers to deploy it. The infrastructure is already there. 

We don't have dedicated engineers for the Avamar platform, but we have a team of 15 to 20 administrators who manage and maintain our backup technologies.

I rate Dell Avamar seven out of 10. It's fantastic for on-prem infrastructure workloads, but it doesn't cover the SaaS, Microsoft 365 and the public cloud infrastructure that many customers are using. While we benefit a lot from Avamar as a managed service provider because of our unique deployment, I would recommend Dell PowerProtect for most use cases today.

My primary use case is backend storage for our VMs. We are fully virtualized, using VMware for our virtualization layer, and we use multiple VMs for our applications, so we have multiple workloads for the education school information systems. Then we have our ERP and HR systems, and our infrastructure monitoring the networking solutions, and so on. All these VMs are backed up using Avamar.

By bringing in Avamar and keeping the repository on the data domain, we got a very high DDU and high compression and reduction in data size.

The most valuable features are data deduplication and compression, backup and replication, and instant backup, which allows us to restore our data at any given point in time.

There are two areas for improvement I would suggest. First, some integrations are not in place, such as the email alerts, which are not compatible with Office 365 SMTP gateway. Secondly, Avamar has no APS for monitoring or alerting.

I've been using this solution for three years.

Avamar is very stable - we've hardly seen any issues with it. We have had some problems with the virtualization layer but not with the product itself.

It's very scalable. We did face some issues with using multiple applications, but we added a couple of proxies, and it's gone very well since then.

Dell's support is excellent - if any issues occur, we open the case, and the maintenance gets done. The only problem is that sometimes they can be slow to respond.

I previously used Veeam Backup & Replication, but it wasn't very reliable or cost-efficient because there was no deduplication or compression, so we switched to Avamar.

The initial setup was very straightforward and took about a week.

I used a partner involved by the principal vendor, from a company called MDS. They were really professional and were experts on the product.

We have seen huge data reduction and data deduplication and compression, which is very cost-effective and cost-reducing for the company. Overall we've saved around $200,000 when it comes to storage.

Avamar's pricing is quite competitive compared to other vendors. We don't pay any costs in addition to the standard licensing fees.

We evaluated Veritas and had previously used Veaam, but when we compared overall cost, integration, stability, and agility, we found Avamar was one of the best.

Before choosing any backup solution, run a use case so that you can evaluate the product and have proof of concept. I would rate Avamar as nine out of ten.

Dell Avamar is a source-based backup solution. It is the best backup solution for people with laptops and desktops from various offices with a small bandwidth. We also use it for remote office backup tasks.

It is one of the best solutions for backing up Oracle and other servers. Our virtual environment backup experience has been good. One of the best features of the solution is that we can integrate it with Data Domain. We can store backups in Data Domain and replicate the data from one Avamar box to another. If one appliance fails, we can get the data from the other Avamar box. The product provides in-line deduplication at the source level. It is very good. I have used the product on VMware and Hyper-V. The tool integrates well with other solutions.

The recovery is a bit slow. There are some security gaps when we take backups of the client machines through the internet in cloud environments. The gaps must be fixed. If I use the tool to take backups through the internet, I have to open ports. It makes the entire IT environment vulnerable.

I have been using the solution for 11 years.

The stability is good.

I rate the product's scalability a five or six out of ten. I bought a license for 1 TB. The pricing was very high when I wanted to expand it to 2 TB or 3 TB. I had to consider alternate solutions to meet my requirements. The scalability is a challenge because of the price. Our clients are medium and enterprise-level businesses.

The support was very good when Avamar was handled by EMC. Since Dell acquired EMC, the support has been very bad.

Neutral

I rate the ease of setup an eight out of ten. For an experienced person, the deployment takes a few hours.

The solution is expensive. I rate the pricing a six to seven out of ten.

I will recommend the solution to others. The appliance is good. There are hardly any solutions that can match up to Avamar. It has always stood up to the test whenever we have used it. Overall, I rate the tool a ten out of ten.

Mainly we suggest it to our users, to our clients, when it comes to a fully virtualized environment of VMware.

The global duplication is great. The combination of those features with DD Boost from Data Domain, are the main features we suggest to our clients.

It is a very complete product.

The interface is fine.

We find the configuration capabilities okay.

It offers an easy initial setup. 

I don't have any notes for areas of improvement. 

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. The use cases we have are sometimes a fully virtualized environment and sometimes a mixed environment. When it comes to mixed environments, we have to suggest NetWorker and with NetWorker, the way it works is it's a very legacy-oriented solution. It is not very cloud-oriented. It does not have many features that are the equivalent to Veeam, for example. Avamar is limiting due to the fact that it only works with virtualized environments such as VMware.

I've used the solution for less than a year. 

The solution is relatively stable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. I'd rate stability eight out of ten. 

The main problem with scalability is the inability of the solution to perform backups on physical servers and cloud-oriented servers.

I'd rate the general ability to scale three out of ten. 

This solution does work for companies of all sizes. The solution is very versatile in that sense.

While I don't deal with technical support, the feedback from our deployment team is that they are pretty good. 

Positive

We've used Veritas, Dell NetWotker, and Veeam. Networker works well with legacy solutions, and Veeam does it all, including UNIX, Linux, virtualized, et cetera. 

Avamar only works with virtualized environments such as VMware.

There are also price differences.

Veeam is cheaper and more complete as a solution. It is not the most expensive. Veeam is very affordable for benchmarking financial solutions. It sits in the middle of all the other solutions. It is not very affordable when it comes to small to medium-sized enterprises, however. 

In terms of simplicity of use, I would rate Veeam as the most simple and most user-friendly when it comes to simplicity of use. It has a unique interface that can allow administrators to administer a very large scale of environments - including physical, virtual, and cloud, on the same plane. That's not the case for Dell EMC's solutions.

The solution is simple to set up. As long as an administrator has some knowledge, it's not too difficult. I'd rate the solution five or six out of ten in terms of ease of setup. 

You can deploy the solution in about half a day. 

I'm not really into deployment. We have a team that does deployment - a pre-sales team. I have very limited knowledge when it comes to deployment. That said, my understanding is only one person really needs to handle the deployment process. 

Jobs have to be set in the initial deployment, which is straightforward for recovering from older backups. After that, not much maintenance is required. 

The product is licensed by CPU. When it comes to Veeam, they switch from CPU to something they call universal licenses, which are instances. An instance can cover a VM, or an instance can cover a physical server, for example. It's a different model from CPU based licensing, and it has started to become a trend in Morocco especially.

I can't speak to the exact price of Avamar.

We sell the Dell EMC portfolio to others. We're a Dell partner. 

We're mainly using the latest version of the solution. 

I would advise potential new users to consider their environment before picking a solution. 

I'd rate the solution six out of ten. 

Our company has more than 5,000 employees, and we use the Avamar solution for the protection of our rear environment, we are protecting 1,500+ VMs using this solution.

We have Avamar Gen4 right now, which is already end-of-life, which is to be replaced this year with a better solution from either EMC or IBM.

We are going to replace the overall data solutions for our enterprise. Already the project is in a negotiation stage with EMC, IBM, and Huawei.

Avamar's source-side deduplication is very strong, it can easily back up remote sites' data, and not much bandwidth is required on the Avamar side.

EMC has discontinued their Avamar hardware version. They only advertise the Avamar virtual edition. I think it would be hard to deploy Avamar in the future with the virtual edition as we are protecting our large environment. We would not like to protect our environment in the virtual edition of the Avamar. We would like to protect our environment in a physical version of a new data protection suite that EMC offers - a server solution in the physical form.

They should bring back the physical implementation of the Avamar. In addition to that, they should also add the BMR for Linux that includes AIX and Solaris because right now the BMR for AIX and Solaris is not available.

We have been working with Dell EMC Avamar for eight years. 

I am the administrator. I am personally using the solution.

Right now, although the product is now two years past EOL it's supporting our infrastructure quite well. There were some failures of the hardware which we resolved ourselves. Overall, the product is very solid and it supports all the virtual and physical infrastructure, the databases, and all the stuff. It's quite a solid product.

Currently, our model is scalable, but the scalability of Avamar requires physical nodes to be added to the box. EMC has already said that it is the end-of-sales for this product. So they do not provide additional nodes for it. It is possible to scale the product more, but the nodes are not available.

I rarely contact Dell EMC technical support.

But when I do, they are very good, very responsive. They get back to you in 10 to 20 minutes and resolve the issue. They are very much a steady provider.

The initial setup is complex.

For example, we have approximately eight-node clusters of Avamar servers on the primary site and we have five node clusters of Avamar on the other site. Integration was a bit difficult. I am supporting the product myself, without the help of any EMC support, for two years now.

There are some issues because this is an appliance. The administration of Avamar is quite simple but there are underlining things that need to be supported and are quite difficult because this is an appliance.

It was approximately $70-80,000 when it was under support, but right now EMC has not been supporting this product for two years.

Because of the EOL issues, I would not recommend to anyone to use this product anymore. They have a newer virtual edition of Avamar. But Avamar is not available on the physical servers, as of now.

I would give Dell EMC Avamar a seven out of 10.

We're a solutions provider with backup and recovery software as our main focus, and my work deals with customer support for the backup domains from an architect's perspective.

Usually, it's for on-prem server backup. It's mostly virtual. We have VM backups and subsequent file backups, and we do file restores. In addition, the customer I work for has old Domino Notes, and we also provide support for that with Avamar.

We mostly work with its latest or latest minus one version. It depends on the bug fixes and vulnerabilities in a version.

For the on-prem backup, it has all the necessary features that we require. They keep coming up with new scripts and new updates. It's excellent for VMware backup, and we have no complaints. 

Everything is easy. We can do most things through the GUI. We don't have to go to the CLI for most things.

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.

I've been working with Dell Avamar for 10 years. 

Its stability is good. If I'm using the latest minus one version, it's pretty stable.

Scalability-wise, it's good. They're constantly increasing their backup size, as well as total storage size. So, we can scale it whenever we want.

We've about 1800 to 2200 servers for which we take backups. I'm not aware of the number of users, but it's an insurance company. It's an enterprise with multiple locations and businesses in most of the top countries.

I'd rate their L1 support a three out of ten. Their L2 and L3 support is good, but in the case of L1 support, for everything they have a single copy-paste response. It's like talking to a chatbot. They should improve that. Even though they're L1, they should try to understand the issue rather than just going through the SOP. There should be some SLA for L1 so that if they are not sure, they should directly transfer to L2 support rather than spending time on it. If you are stuck in a critical issue, it's painful to wait and let three or four hours pass before being transferred to L2.

Negative

We use both Avamar and native Azure Backup. The native Azure Backup has a lot of limitations, and it's still not developed, whereas Avamar is good, but it's not the best for the Azure cloud. So, we have Azure Backup for the cloud as well as Avamar for on-prem. For the VM backup, we have to use only Azure Backup. For file backup or any other backup that Azure Backup doesn't support, we use Dell Avamar.

Its initial setup is of medium complexity. It's neither too difficult nor too easy.

Usually, I'm the only one doing the deployment all the time. It takes half a day for the virtual backup.

Its ROI is good. I'd rate it a nine out of ten in terms of ROI.

I'm not involved in its pricing. My involvement is purely technical.

There is no free training. I'd recommend this solution if the company is giving great training. Otherwise, if you have to learn it on your own, I won't recommend it.

Overall, I'd rate Dell Avamar a seven out of ten. 

We use the tool to create backups of every system we have in the infrastructure.

The solution works well. The tool’s ability to restore files discretely is useful. We can restore specific files of a specific server. We do not have to restore everything.

The licensing price must be reduced.

I have been using the solution for more than five years.

The tool is stable.

We have never had any problem with scalability. We have backed up many terabytes of data. We have more than 1000 users. We have a lot of servers and VMs in the company.

When we have any issues, we receive professional support. We get the optimal level of engineering support we require.

Positive

When we moved to PowerProtect, we were very pleased with the performance of the backups of the VMware infrastructure. It was disappointing when we faced difficulties using PowerProtect with SQL. We also faced problems with the infrastructure. We had a lot of files, and PowerProtect could not handle it. So, we switched to Dell Avamar.

The solution is costly. Competitors are less expensive. However, Dell Avamar is the right tool if we want to protect our critical systems and receive proper engineering support.

I will recommend the product to organizations that are providing critical services. The solution requires maintenance. The maintenance is not complex, but we must apply all the required fixes. We must follow the things recommended by the vendor to guarantee that we are aligned with the service provider's guidelines.

People who want to use the solution must find a good partner. The product is good. It must be implemented well. The tool protects us against risks that could cost us millions if we have a problem. Overall, I rate the product a nine out of ten.

My clients use Avamar to back up VM solutions on VMware's infrastructure.

The fast backup and recovery and the Full Backup features are valuable. When our customers have issues with data loss, Avamar helps them recover data within a few minutes.

Some customers need to back up to tape, but Avamar lacks support, so it costs a lot.

I would like to see backup for container-based applications. Avamar doesn't support container-based backup right now. Dell has a new product called PPDM that they just announced last year, and it has a feature for container-based backup solutions. However, PPDM doesn't support legacy applications like Notes and Domino and some of the high-end databases. Avamar supports all these, including Unix and Linux.

I've used the solution for more than five years.

I rate Dell Avamar's stability a ten out of ten.

I rate Dell Avamar's scalability a ten out of ten. There are over 100 servers, and I have ten companies as clients. One is an enterprise-level business, and the rest are medium-sized businesses.

The initial setup is easy. I rate it a ten out of ten. The time taken to deploy the solution depends on the end customer's environment. If it's complex, we'll need about one day to deploy. The price is quite low because right now, most of the Avamar appliances, like the DP4400, which comes together with Avamar, are ready to use. We just need to put the required IP addresses in the initial stages. After that, it's ready to use. We then just add a host to back up to Avamar. In this case, completing the implementations takes about two to three hours.

I rate the pricing a seven out of ten because it is expensive. I don't think small companies would choose Avamar because the price is high but reasonable for medium-sized companies. Normally, there are no additional costs when we choose the DP4400.

If the customer is a small business, I would not recommend Avamar because of the price. If the customer only wants a simple platform for data protection, though, Avamar is a really good option.

I rate Dell Avamar a ten out of ten.