Dell Avamar Reviews

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.

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.

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.  

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

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. 

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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

The pricing of the solution is okay.

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.

The primary use case is for remote office or branch office type protection.

We don't have a current instance. It is pretty old. We have tried desperately to decommission Avamar.

Quick incremental backups and product replication are the two highlights of the product. Once you capture a full backup, incrementals are pretty quick. It is fairly efficient from that perspective.

It is expensive. It is more about cost than it is about anything else. 

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.

I have been using this solution for a couple of years.

Once you're in the product, and the product is running, it does a really good job.

It is node-based, so you can add nodes as you need. It is pretty scalable.

The people who supported it did a very good job. If it gets messed up, it is not easy to fix, but on a day-to-day basis, it just runs like a tank of gas.

They were all set up when I got here.

It is expensive. Its cost is the main thing.

My advice would be to compare costs to other solutions and also look at the virtual appliance version of it.

I would rate Dell EMC Avamar a six out of 10.

We are using Dell EMC Avamar for backing up our virtual environment.

The most valuable feature is the virtual backup.

The reporting should be improved, as we currently have to use another tool for that purpose.

We have been using Dell EMC Avamar for two years.

This has been a stable solution, so far.

This is a scalable product. We have three people who administer it.

The technical support from EMC is quite good.

Prior to Avamar, I have worked with Veem and with IBM Spectrum Protect.

All of these are specialty tools and from my point of view, all of them are good. For the needs of my organization, EMC Avamar is the preferred option.

The initial setup is of average difficulty. It is not very easy and not very complex.

I did not evaluate other solutions.

My advice is that this product covers all of your needs as far as backup is concerned.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We deal with data that has compliance requirements for long-term retention, which is like 10 years plus the life of the client. As long as they're in our program, we have to keep anything related to them for that time period, which can run up to 30 years. We deal with all things related to that. I'm a storage management specialist and we are customers of Dell. 

I like that the solution integrates well with the different platforms that we have. Unix, Windows, Hyper-V and VM. Not all the solutions do that. 

My biggest thing for improvement would be support for either Azure Cool Storage or AWS Glacier. Right now they don't do that. They don't have official works for those peer solutions. It should go hand-in-hand with the solution. 

I've been using this solution for eight years. 

We've used up the space quicker than intended. We do have some growth available in the existing appliance. We're still in the process of migrating some of that data into the cloud. The big benefit of the cloud is that you can have it stored in disparate data centers that are in different regions of the country and it meets compliance requirements because it's in two physical locations that are apart. So it allows us then to totally remove it from our local copy. I do the deployment and maintenance. 

Technical support has been good, occasionally there are issues with the accents so a lot of times it's better with a chat session or typing messages versus a call. It's a very formalized process. It's virtualized now. So it's a little different than the old two physical boxes.

Moving from old to new was not as smooth as I would have expected, simply because we had to upgrade our local storage. Going forward we won't have those issues. We had just the formats and Avamar supports their own format and stores it locally. They also have the data domain which doesn't really migrate from app bar to data domain so you have to basically hydrate it and then we re-back it up to go on the data bank, which was our issue. They use their ADME product do that migration. Basically, they get their technicians involved and it took several months.

The system was sold on the premise that it was going to reduce man-hours and not require having to work with tape. I don't think it was a cost saving. Now with the cloud tier implemented, there are some long-term benefits, but I don't know if there was ever a cost benefit associated with it. It's just anytime you're having to have a dedicated internet connection or net for just simple tap operations, that's something that adds costs.

The old version didn't have a comprehensive search. It was one of my pain points with the product when it came to restores. That has now been included so I'd recommend this solution with the all-in-one solutions that they have with their data protection units - that's how I'd recommend it be deployed.  

With the DP 4,400 which includes Avamar, data domain search, and backup management, I'd rate this solution a nine out of 10. 

We primarily use the solution for virtual infrastructure.

The duplication is the solution's most valuable aspect.

The initial setup is easy.

The solution is actually moving over to a new PowerProtect solution. I'm not sure, in terms of the roadmap, how long they'll have Avamar and NetWorker as they have now launched a new PowerProtect backup solution.

Therefore, the concern really is what the future will be with another product. Will we have to migrate, for example, and will it be easy or hard to do so?

It would be helpful if there was cloud support.

I've been using the solution for about eight years now. It's been a while.

We've been happy with the stability. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's not buggy. It's been good.

The scalability is limited right now. A company shouldn't expect to be able to expand it too much. That may be just the case in general for the kind of software it is.

We typically work to size accordingly to avoid having to make upgrades.

The support is okay. They are pretty knowledgable and prompt. I'd rate them seven out of ten overall. We're mostly satisfied with their level of service.

We actually used to use Veritas. We got rid of Veritas Symantec NetBackup because it couldn't do all the deduplication we needed and didn't have all of the features that Avamar has. The support was also very bad. We were happy to switch to something else.

The initial setup is not complex. Implementation is pretty straightforward.

We had Dell assist us a bit in the implementation process.

I'm not sure how to calculate the cost. It's a hard question to answer. I do know that we pay for support upfront for five years.

I'm not sure how to compare costs, however, I can say that based on what we're seeing we get very good deduplication rates with the data domain on the backend.

We did briefly look at another solution, however, we decided not to move forward with it.

We're currently just customers with Dell. We don't have a business relationship with them.

I'm not sure if I would recommend the solution as there's a new solution that will be replacing it. However, it's not a bad solution as it stands.

Overall, I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. It's a pretty decent product.

We used Dell Avamar for backup and recovery of a virtual environment.

The solution used to freeze sometimes while taking a snapshot backup. The team had to do some back-end work to fix those issues.

I have been using Dell Avamar for a long time.

I rate the solution a nine out of ten for stability.

I rate Dell Avamar an eight out of ten for scalability.

The solution’s technical support is excellent.

Positive

The solution’s initial setup was easy.

The solution’s deployment took around two to three weeks.

Dell Avamar is a moderately priced solution.

We were using Dell Avamar for banking services and different banking applications. Dell Avamar's user interface impacted our backup operation quite well. I rate Dell Avamar an eight out of ten for its performance for our business size.

Dell Avamar is a good product to use. Since there is competition with other products doing a similar or better job, users should evaluate and compare different solutions.

Overall, I rate Dell Avamar an eight out of ten.

Backup of virtual machines.

Very reliable tool.

The speed of backups.

Reports generation.

We use it as a backup and restore solution for our customers. For replication, we use the Data Domain application. We replicate from our primary site to the DR site.

Its stability and deduplication capabilities are most valuable.

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.

It should be simplified because currently if we want to upgrade Avamar, it requires us to assemble too many EMC products. For upgrade, we have to ensure compatibility with Data Domain, proxy, and firmware for storage. There are many dependencies and many steps that we have to take if we want to upgrade the services, which is a weakness of Avamar.

It should also have support for reporting. We have too many reporting challenges. We cannot get information from the console about how big is the data of customer A, customer B, and customer C. EMC should think about providing reporting for the backup solution. Our customers use the basic reporting, but inside our infrastructure, we should be able to see and then analyze the data consumption by different customers. We should also be able to split information and see data consumption within our organization. Such analytical reporting will help us in planning our usage for the future, such as for the next two years. It will be useful for customers and service providers.

Its price should be reduced, and it should have a flexible and pay-per-use licensing.

I have been using this solution since 2017.

It is stable.

We have had their tech support until now. There is no problem with their tech support. They provide good support.

Its initial setup is complex. 

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. 

Currently, we are evaluating Veeam to see if it is possible to switch to Veeam. Veeam has an issue of deduplication failure. With Avamar, we use Data Domain, and the deduplication ratio is 26 or 25 times, whereas, with Veeam, the ratio is only half. We are thinking of using Avamar for archive backup and using Veeam for short retention.

I would rate Dell EMC Avamar a seven out of ten.