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Executive IT Operations at Indian Immunologicals Limited
Real User
Reporting feature is too complex but the stability is okay
Pros and Cons
  • "The stability is okay."
  • "Dell EMC Avamar is a very complex product. It took a lot of time for the IT admins to get trained on how to use it. It is not very user-friendly, and we won't be using Avamar anymore. It needs a lot of improvement in terms of how the backups have been configured, and the reporting is too complex."

What needs improvement?

Dell EMC Avamar is a very complex product. It took a lot of time for the IT admins to get trained on how to use it. It is not very user-friendly, and we won't be using Avamar anymore.

It needs a lot of improvement in terms of how the backups have been configured, and the reporting is too complex. There are a lot of improvements that should be done in the reporting feature and how the endpoints are getting added to the console. These processes need to be a little more simplified. It is not that easy to get an immediate report based on our requirements. It is too complex. We have to write some scripts and things like that. There are predefined scripts, but they aren't very user-friendly for the customer.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using this product for more than six years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability is okay.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

If you want to scale up again, you have to buy a complete appliance. There is no option for just scaling up for the mid-phase entities. Only the larger entities would be able to afford that kind of complete appliance scalability. In terms of scalability, I'm not a fan of Avamar.

Buyer's Guide
Dell Avamar
January 2025
Learn what your peers think about Dell Avamar. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: January 2025.
830,526 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We haven't used Veeam before, but we are currently replacing Avamar with Veeam now. We are still in the process of switching.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The cost is high.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate this product 5 out of 10.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

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    Deputy General Manager ( Practice Head Data Protection and Migration) at Netmagic Solutions (An NTT Communications Company)
    Real User
    Great duplication and backup speed made a huge difference to us but it is expensive
    Pros and Cons
    • "Duplication and the speed of backup are great."
    • "It's an expensive solution."

    What is our primary use case?

    I recently stopped using this product because my work moved away from operations and I'm now a patents director, so I generally do the designing. My client was looking for backups and for an application along with a desktop backup. We are partners with Dell and I'm the deputy general manager of the company. 

    What is most valuable?

    The best feature is the duplication and the speed of backup, which really made the difference for us. 

    What needs improvement?

    Everyone is now talking about hyperscalers like AWS, Azure and Google, so I guess Data Domain and others are coming in a native format, but the pricing is really expensive compared to the rest of the competitors' software. Beam and maybe Commvault are providing cheaper solutions compared to Avamar and Data Domain on software hyperscalers. They should really move to cloud and reduce the price. It's not a portal service, so we have to buy the devices along with it. That was the problem we kept facing in the market.
    Nowadays every backup solution has more features compared to this, but I can't think of anything that needs improving in Avamar because it's already an enterprise tool. 

    For how long have I used the solution?

    I've used this solution for the past three years. 

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    The stability is good. 

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    The scalability is good. 

    How are customer service and technical support?

    Dell EMC is pretty good in terms of customer support. We use our own team for maintenance. 

    Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

    In the  case of Commvault, you should have a drive or your DVD engine, key machines which you have to start because you need to have the ability for the machine. That is the only difference I've seen between Avamar and Commvault. Commvault seems to have the upper hand because of the computation and duplication services. That said, Avamar is used mainly  for enterprise and Commvault is good for SMB and smaller customers.

    How was the initial setup?

    The initial setup was a bit complicated, it's not a simple setup. There are a lot of challenging networks to deploy. It's not related to the software, it's more from a customer network point of view. The deployment took me about one or two days, not more than that.

    What other advice do I have?

    If you're enterprise, you are definitely going to use Avamar because it can save a lot of space because of its duplication feature, which is great. Just the backup speed is tremendous compared to other backup solutions. If you're enterprise and having issues with set up, then I'd definitely recommend Avamar.

    I would rate this solution a seven out of 10. 

    Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

    Private Cloud
    Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner

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      Buyer's Guide
      Dell Avamar
      January 2025
      Learn what your peers think about Dell Avamar. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: January 2025.
      830,526 professionals have used our research since 2012.
      PeerSpot user
      System Architect at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
      Real User
      EMC Avamar has lots of Ying but not so much Yang

      First off let me say that Avamar is a great product and hopefully this won’t sound like a rant. I started working with Avamar last year and quickly saw the value in this product which provides enterprise class data protection (backups) to disk. The architecture I went with consisted of large centralized grids, multiple datastore nodes with a utility node, which would be hosted in regional datacenters with remote locations having smaller configurations of either a single datastore node or small grid setup. So at a high level remote sites would backup locally then replicate to a grid in one of the regional datacenters. The local backups in the datacenter would replicate to another datacenter as well. This way there is redundancy for site and datacenter backups while providing a way to do local restores.

      Avamar easily showed it’s power in reducing backup windows and reducing the amount of data put on LAN/WAN with source side deduplication for backups and replication. Even the first system backed up benefited from the deduplication and transferred roughly 80% of it’s data across the wire. Avamar backs up the data once so the first time pass will have a greater hit but all subsequent backups are incremental or blocks that are not already on the datastore. The more data in Avamar, the better the deduplication. This also helps reduce the amount of storage needed to store backups which could effectively yield a higher amount of data being protected than whats actually being stored on disk. Avamar also has a image proxy appliance for backing up virtual machines in vSphere which were easy to setup to start backing virtual machines agent-less. Not only is there an appliance that can be used to backup virtual machines there is also the Avamar Virtual Edition. This is an appliance that gets you all the features and functionality in an easy to deploy virtual machine where you have to supply the storage. It only supports a limited storage capacity and there is no supported grid setup but it works really well for those smaller locations.

      Now, I talked about some of the goodness of Avamar but there is a flip side. When I say “Avamar has lots of Ying but not so much Yang” I’m simply stating that Avamar has a lot going for it with a solid set of core features and functionality but it’s lacking in some key areas. One of those areas is in the ease of configuration. EMC support actually has to do a lot of the setup and configuration. This can be a good thing but something as simple as the Active Directory integration setup could be a long drown out setup with EMC logged in at the command line. Replication setup is also something that needs improvement because you can only setup a single replication cron job from either the Enterprise Manager or the Avamar Administrator java application. That brings up another area of improvement and in my opinion the most important thing which is the management of Avamar.

      There are two separate management consoles that can be used to do certain things Avamar like managing clients or checking backups. This can leave the consumer confused as to which tool should be used for what. The enterprise manager is web based and the avamar administrator is a java application and they both seem to be a bit disjointed and unfinished. The avamar administrator is not too bad and once you get where everything is you can be productive but you can lose yourself in all the windows which can be opened at one time that all look somewhat the same. I can go on with some of the small things like having to click the “show sub-domain groups”, why not make this a default' I use a Mac and the java application looks different. Not so much that I can’t find my way around but some of the elements don’t work the same. So a user interface change is needed in my opinion to add more functionality for configuring things without needing EMC support or going to the command line. And this change should also bring a more clean look and feel with a single pane with easy transitions from one area to the next. Plain and simple just make the management as powerful as the core features and functionality so that Avamar can have balance.

      Well, maybe I did rant just a little but there more good to say than bad with Avamar when it comes to protecting data, reducing LAN/WAN traffic, reducing backup windows, etc.

      EMC Avamar has lots of Ying but not so much Yang originally appeared on theHyperadvisor by Antone Heyward

      -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
      Avamar VMware Virtual Machine Protection Pt.1

      I wanted to give some insight into how Avamar protects VMware virtual machines. I have been using Avamar 6.0.x and most of the management and configuration from a Mac. Since the operating systems running on the Avamar servers and proxies are linux, having a terminal comes in handy. Plus the management using Avamar Administrator uses Java so it can be used on Windows, Mac or Linux. If your on a Windows system the Avamar Administrator console is a bit more attractive but offers the same functionality. The management of Avamar needs a bit of work and from the grape vine I hear the next release, which is coming soon, will fix a lot of the issues I’ve complained about in my previous post. Either way data protection and recovery with Avamar is pretty solid once you have all the pieces setup and ready but if your looking for easy, look elsewhere. PHD Virtual Backup fits the bill for easy but it only covers VM backups where Avamar can do both physical and virtual.

      First, let me give a short tour of the components we’ll need to protect a VMware vSphere environment with Avamar. This only includes the components for data protect or recovery and assumes you already have the VMware vSphere environment configured with vCenter, ESX hosts, with shared storage.

      As far as the Avamar Servers and Avamar Virtual Edition (AVE) are concerned you only need one or the other for a single location. They are the backend that stores all the backup data. The Avamar VM Proxy is used to do image level backups and the Windows File-Level VM Proxy is used to do file-level restores from the image backups. This removes the need for backup agents in the virtual machines. This is how the environment layout would look.

      I found the documentation very good and easy to follow but here are the basic step you’ll have to do in order to backup and restore VMware virtual machines.

      • Setup the Avamar Server with AvFS
      • Deploy and configure Avamar Image Proxy appliance
      • Setup vCenter Server in Avamar
      • Setup Avamar Image Proxy in Avamar
      • Deploy and configure a Windows File-Level Proxy

      Notes:

      • The Avamar Image Proxy in it’s current 6.0.x version has to be configured to protect either Windows or Linux.
      • I have seen the resolve.conf not be configured properly a couple times so you may want to check them if you have issues.
      • When adding the Avamar Image Proxy to Avamar don’t forget to select the VMFS datastores it should protect.
      • The Avamar Image Proxy can do only one VM at a time so you will have to deploy and configure multiple proxies for parallel processing of VM backups.
      • Make sure change block tracking is used which means virtual machine hardware needs to at version 7 or higher.
      • Image level backups leverages vStorage APIs for Data Protection which uses snapshots so it’s important to make sure datastores have plenty of free space.
      • By default, only a single vCenter Server can be added to the Avamar Server. You can override this if required but I think the max is 10.

      Once all the setup is done you can start protecting the VMs for that vCenter Server which you’ll see in the Avamar Administrator as a domain with a Virtual Machines sub domain. Restores are pretty easy from the Avamar Administrator whether it’s for a single file or a full virtual machine. The documentation shows the process for both very well so I will not try to recreate it here. Image based backups with Avamar have been unmatched compared to agent backups. I see more successful backups without the open file errors from agent backups.

      Avamar VMware Virtual Machine Protection Pt.1 originally appeared on theHyperadvisor by Antone Heyward

      Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

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        it_user108456 - PeerSpot reviewer
        it_user108456Application Architect at a tech company with 51-200 employees
        Real User

        Good writeup Antone, and I must agree totally that its configuration process is the most convoluted mess that I've ever had the "pleasure" to work with. The product seems to be trying to be all things to all OS's. Ah, well, at least when it works, it works well.

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        Storage specialist at Vodacom Business
        Real User
        Top 5
        Reliable and scalable backup and recovery solution that stands out for its efficient global deduplication, seamless integration with virtualized environments, and robust technical support
        Pros and Cons
        • "The entire system operates seamlessly, with minimal hands-on involvement, allowing us to focus on monitoring rather than constant adjustments or deployments, as seen in larger, more dynamic environments."
        • "The challenges we do face typically revolve around aligning specific features with our accustomed tool usage."

        What is our primary use case?

        It specifically caters to the backup needs of our data, ensuring secure and compliant operations.

        What is most valuable?

        The scale is small, yet it efficiently handles all tasks in a unified manner. The entire system operates seamlessly, with minimal hands-on involvement, allowing us to focus on monitoring rather than constant adjustments or deployments, as seen in larger, more dynamic environments.

        What needs improvement?

        The challenges we do face typically revolve around aligning specific features with our accustomed tool usage.

        For how long have I used the solution?

        I have been using it for a year.

        What do I think about the stability of the solution?

        I would rate its stability capabilities eight out of ten.

        What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

        Since it's limited to the PCI pages, it might not necessarily be scalable to serve as our enterprise-wide tool, especially when considering larger-scale environments. Focusing on the requirements outlined in the RFP and the demonstrations conducted as part of the RFP process, I find it satisfactory and that it meets our needs.

        How are customer service and support?

        Its technical support is excellent. It stands out as a primary factor in our decision to choose Dell. I would rate it nine out of ten.

        How would you rate customer service and support?

        Positive

        Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

        We transitioned from using Veritas appliances to the Dell solution in the same environment.

        How was the initial setup?

        The initial setup was straightforward.

        What about the implementation team?

        The installation process was smooth as we transitioned from using Veritas appliances to the Dell solution in the same environment. A third-party company, Plus House, subcontracted by Dell, handled the installation remotely, working closely with our junior team members. The initial setup was completed within a day for each site, and an additional day was required to configure the clustering of backups, including SQL backups. This extra day was dedicated to finalizing the clustering and ensuring that all configurations were in place. Maintenance is handled by a team of approximately seven individuals who undergo training and manage regular tasks.

        What was our ROI?

        They deliver substantial value in return.

        What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

        I am highly satisfied with the pricing structure provided and the discounts we get. The overall cooperation with Dell has been exceptional; they consistently go above and beyond to align with our budgets. The global transition and the impact of exchange rates, particularly the fluctuation between the South African Rand and the U.S. Dollar, have introduced some complexities, but nothing major. The current pricing is generally satisfactory. I would rate it nine out of ten.

        Which other solutions did I evaluate?

        Despite falling under Vodafone globally and dealing with VBC, the procurement company, there were instances where Dell offered superior deals in South Africa compared to what VBC could secure with other vendors. This was a key factor in our decision to stick with Dell rather than exploring alternatives like Huawei or HP.

        What other advice do I have?

        Overall, I would rate it nine out of ten.

        Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

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          Project Engineer at Concept Information Technologies India Pvt. Ltd.
          Real User
          Easy to use with lots of great features and great disaster recovery
          Pros and Cons
          • "The setup is very easy."
          • "The support is very bad."

          What is our primary use case?

          We are using Avamar as support for the VMware Virtual Machine Backup. The chain blocking is very good. With Dell Avamar, we have integrated with Dell EMC Data Domain. It has a 97% completion ratio. That's the reason we are using Dell EMC Avamar.

          What is most valuable?

          The most valuable feature is the disaster recovery. 

          Instant recovery is there and it is quite useful. If anything goes wrong, we can initiate troubleshooting within our end, our area, and use it instantly. 

          The SQL and Oracle database backup is very user-friendly with the Dell Avamar backup.

          It has lots of features, and it's very easy to use.

          The setup is very easy.

          What needs improvement?

          All of the features we need are there. I don't have a point of contention with the solution. 

          That said, the log analysis facilities are very, very bad in Avamar. The backup log analyzer gives us issues. If any backup fails, we can't analyze through logs. The log reading is very difficult with Dell Avamar. Only Dell, their support guys, can access and read the logs. We really need them to add a log analyzer. 

          The support is very bad.

          For how long have I used the solution?

          We've used the solution for four or five years.

          What do I think about the stability of the solution?

          The solution is extremely stable and reliable. There are no bugs or glitches, and it doesn't crash or freeze. 

          I'd rate the solution ten out of ten in terms of scalability and reliability.

          What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

          Right now, we have 250 customers on the solution, and they have been using it for the last ten to 12 years. 

          How are customer service and support?

          We have two techs here, however, in a year, if you calculate 365 days in a year, we've hardly had one or two times where we needed support. The product is very stable.

          The support is not good at all. It really needs to be better. When you actually need help, they are very poor at assisting. 

          How would you rate customer service and support?

          Negative

          Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

          Currently, we are using Commvault and looking at Avamar for clients.

          We have experience in Commvault, Veritas, Avamar, Net Protector, and Networker, among others.

          How was the initial setup?

          The initial setup is very easy. I have had a lot of experience in Avamar, so it is very, very easy to set up for me. If you are a beginner, you may need to take some training first. Once you understand it, then you can install it easily.

          The deployment is quick and easy. It's a one-click installation and it only takes two hours. 

          Maintenance is easy since no physical presence is required. This setup can be built remotely also.

          What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

          The solution is expensive. However, there is not any real competitor with the Dell Avamar Data Domain storage type of a feature. It's very unique. Competitors cannot make the same claims about their products.

          While it is costly, it's good value and worth the price. 

          Which other solutions did I evaluate?

          We are proposing Avamar to our customers and looking for other solutions to compare it to build the case for it. Currently, customers are using Commvault, and we are pushing to Avamar.

          What other advice do I have?

          We are users and have recommended the solution to clients. We're also a partner and in sales. 

          We use both on-premises and public cloud deployments. Depending on the customer's requirements, we can deploy either option. We can use various clouds, including Google, AWS, and Azure. We can use the Dell EMC cloud as well. However, it is more costly.

          We wouldn't recommend the solution to everyone since it is pricey. A small or beginner-level customer likely wouldn't be able to afford this type of solution. It's not an entry-level solution. 

          I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. I would rate them higher if the log analyzer and customer service were better.

          Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

          Public Cloud
          Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner

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            reviewer2023947 - PeerSpot reviewer
            System Analyst II at a healthcare company with 5,001-10,000 employees
            Real User
            A user-friendly solution helpful in backing up various systems but the initial setup was complex
            Pros and Cons
            • "The solution is very user-friendly."
            • "The product could be improved by simplifying the components available."

            What is our primary use case?

            Our use case for this solution is robust and involves backing up various systems.

            What is most valuable?

            The solution is very user-friendly.

            What needs improvement?

            The product could be improved by simplifying the components available. Currently, there are many endpoints and GUIs to run.

            For how long have I used the solution?

            We have been using this solution for approximately three years.

            What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

            The solution is scalable. Currently, only three employees utilize the solution in our organization, and thousands of clients use it.

            How was the initial setup?

            The initial setup was complex. It took about a week to complete the deployment, and we required an engineer to assist.

            What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

            The solution costs approximately 20,000 annually.

            What other advice do I have?

            I rate the solution a seven out of ten. 

            Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

            PeerSpot user
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              Vivek Jaiswal - PeerSpot reviewer
              Assistant Manager at Shriram Pistons
              Real User
              Top 5Leaderboard
              Offers good backups without much of a failure ratio and is very scalable
              Pros and Cons
              • "The product has a proven track record of good backups without much of a failure ratio. It also has a good backup in terms of the compression ratio."
              • "The user interface still needs to have some level of improvement. It could be more user-friendly and intuitive."

              What is our primary use case?

              I'm using the solution for our entire daily data backup for laptops and desktops. We also use it for some of our virtual machines and some of our databases systems.

              What is most valuable?

              The product has a proven track record of good backups without much of a failure ratio. It also has a good backup in terms of the compression ratio. 

              Overall, my experience with Avamar is very good.

              Technical support has been helpful.

              The performance of the solution is excellent.

              The product scales easily.

              What needs improvement?

              The user interface still needs to have some level of improvement. It could be more user-friendly and intuitive. 

              The reporting aspect of the product could be better. For example, I'd like to have reports on the daily failure of systems. If I have more than 1000 systems, if I want to know that how many systems failed yesterday, I'd like to be able to pull that information in a single click.  

              For how long have I used the solution?

              I've been using the solution for the past ten years.

              What do I think about the stability of the solution?

              I'm very happy with this product and the performance of this product is good. For the purposes of backups and restoring, it is very smooth and proven for the last 10 years. The failure rate is low. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

              What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

              While, on the admin side, we have two to three people as administrators for Avamar. However, in the case of how many systems are to be backed up through Avamar, it's around 1,000 or more.

              Right now, the current product is Dell DP4400 and it's a very scalable product. I have purchased the license for 8 TB only, however, the box itself already comes with a 64 TB hard disk. At any point, we can increase it. We just have to put in a license and we can increase it very easily.

              We use the solution on a daily basis. 

              How are customer service and support?

              Technical support is good. I get support in a timely manner. Since our last installation, which was in March, we have just logged two calls and both were closed in a very timely manner. We are quite satisfied with the support.

              Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

              In the past, we've used Arcserve and Commvault.

              In terms of differences, Arcserve and Commvault, are both Windows-based systems. They do not have their own hardware, which means that they are only software-based backups. It's your own decision in terms of which type of hardware you want.

              There is nothing like a complete product with these two options. You are buying software from the vendors, and then you have to buy the hardware from another vendor. The issue is, when you need support, sometimes the software vendors tell you that problem is with hardware and the hardware vendors tell you that problem is with software. That can become an issue.

              Also, due to the fact that both are Windows-based systems, there are some performance-based issues. I found that the Avamar system is better than Arcserve and Commvault for these reasons.

              How was the initial setup?

              The initial setup is somewhere in between straightforward and difficult. 

              The deployment takes between four and six hours. 

              The maintenance required is quite minimal. It's based on a Linux setup, which makes it pretty easy.

              What about the implementation team?

              I have set up the solution with an expert from Dell. With the help of an expert from Dell, the setup is straightforward.

              What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

              The pricing of the solution is okay.

              What other advice do I have?

              We're just a customer and an end-user.

              I'm using the latest version of the solution. It's an iteration of version 17.

              I'm very happy with this product. I recommend it to everyone who is searching for any complete backup for an entire infrastructure, for example, for a virtual server, a database server, or a laptop or desktop. This is a single product that can handle a complete infrastructure backup. 

              I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten.

              Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

              On-premises
              Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

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                reviewer1688637 - PeerSpot reviewer
                Senior Engineer, Disaster Recovery at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
                Real User
                Rock solid, does its job, but needs better UI, deduplication, and ease of doing certain things
                Pros and Cons
                • "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."
                • "When you get down to doing certain things, such as somebody wants a particular file restored, the process by which you do that is stupid. You kind of have to know exactly where to look for in order to find it. Even on older backup products that I've used, I didn't have that kind of problem. If we were looking for a file with a particular kind of a name, the solution would find that file anywhere irrespective of where it resides within the backup system. So, we didn't have to know the name of the specific server, the specific timeframe, almost all the characters of the file name, and all kinds of data in order to find a file. In Avamar, we got to know these details. We've gone around and around with them on that, and their attitude seems to be that it is working just fine. There is nothing for them to improve. The organizational system of other products that I'm working with, such as Zerto and Cohesity, seems to be centered around the tasks that you would most commonly do and want to do, as opposed to we've laid it out in a really neat technical hierarchy."

                What is our primary use case?

                It is our main backup system while we're in the middle of switching over to Cohesity.

                What is most valuable?

                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. 

                In terms of functionality, it is rock solid. It does its job.

                What needs improvement?

                The UI is a complete mess. It is graphic, but it might as well be a CLI considering how difficult it is to work with. It takes an entire person and a significant amount of time to manage backups within the company. It really shouldn't be that hard.

                When you get down to doing certain things, such as somebody wants a particular file restored, the process by which you do that is stupid. You kind of have to know exactly where to look for in order to find it. Even on older backup products that I've used, I didn't have that kind of problem. If we were looking for a file with a particular kind of a name, the solution would find that file anywhere irrespective of where it resides within the backup system. So, we didn't have to know the name of the specific server, the specific timeframe, almost all the characters of the file name, and all kinds of data in order to find a file. In Avamar, we got to know these details. We've gone around and around with them on that, and their attitude seems to be that it is working just fine. There is nothing for them to improve. The organizational system of other products that I'm working with, such as Zerto and Cohesity, seems to be centered around the tasks that you would most commonly do and want to do, as opposed to we've laid it out in a really neat technical hierarchy. 

                There should be some kind of greater granularity in the way it is storing backups. The reason why we're using things like Zerto and going to Cohesity, at least in the DR environment, and this will work in terms of backups as well, is that we need to be able to have a recovery point objective with some kind of granularity, such as every 15 minutes, every half hour, or every hour in case of a disaster recovery scenario, ransomware scenario, etc. We're pretty much allowed to do our once-in-a-day backup every 24 hours or however we schedule them. In most cases, we don't do anything different for basic backups, but it seems very difficult within Avamar to do anything if we want to have an image of a system every so often or at least an incremental point of reference or an RPO point. 

                The other thing is that the way that it locks files seems to make those systems unavailable while it is operating the backup. So, we have to very carefully schedule our backups after hours or over periods of time when there is low bandwidth of the transactions happening. With the other products we have, we don't have this problem. I certainly don't have that problem with Zerto. I've got a recovery point of every few seconds, and it doesn't seem to take a lot of storage room to do that. Storage is a big thing for us. It is very expensive, and that's always an issue for us. So, things like deduplication would be really nice to have.

                For how long have I used the solution?

                I have been using this solution for at least six years.

                What do I think about the stability of the solution?

                It is rock solid. We don't ever have any problems with backups being lost or anything like that.

                What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

                All of the data in the company is used by one person or another, so there are a couple of thousand users.

                How are customer service and support?

                Their technical support is excellent. We've never had any problem dealing with Avamar in terms of technical support. We've had some nasty instances too where they've not been able to drill down on things and support their own product.

                How was the initial setup?

                I've only been with the company for about five years, and it was present when I came on board.

                What other advice do I have?

                I would rate Dell EMC Avamar a six out of 10. It is a pretty basic backup system in terms of features. It does its job. However, its UI is just ridiculous.

                Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

                On-premises
                Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

                PeerSpot user
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                  Updated: January 2025
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