Dell Avamar Reviews

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.

Dell EMC Avamar is a backup solution. It has integration with the hardware that Dell has and you can backup many things, such as snapshots.

I have using Dell EMC Avamar for a few years.

The stability of Dell EMC Avamar is very good.

Dell EMC Avamar is scalable.

We have 80% of our clients are using this solution. Most of our clients have Dell hardware and this is why they are using Dell EMC Avamar.

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.

I have used Veeam previously.

Dell EMC Avamar is a little bit more complicated to set up than the Veeam.

There are licensing costs for Dell EMC Avamar and it is paid annually.

I would not recommend this solution to others.

I rate Dell EMC Avamar a five out of ten.

The primary use case of this solution was for projects to backup customer laptops for the application capabilities.

The product could be easier to troubleshoot. When I had a problem with the software, I invested a lot of time to find out what the problem was. Once I found the problem, I realized that it was a simple solution, but there were no helpful indications.

As an example, with Avamar, you have a different storage node and if one of these nodes had a problem with an NTP server and there was a different time on the node, nothing would work. Finding the solution to this problem involved many steps, which was not easy to determine.

I have been using the solution for 5 or 6 years.

The solution is stable.

The solution is scalable, but I prefer a solution like NetBackup when I am networking.

When we used the solution, it was still new, and so the customer service/technical support was not the best.

The installation of the solution is easy.

The cost of the solution is very expensive.

We use Dell EMC Avamar for backing up the data on the endpoint devices of the users.

The performance of Dell EMC Avamar is good.

I have been using Dell EMC Avamar for approximately 

The stability could improve, a lot of scheduled backups failed at one time.

We have approximately 5,000 users using the solution in my organization.

The support from Dell EMC Avamar was decent.

The initial setup is complex.

We used a consultant to do the implementation of the solution.

I would recommend this solution to others.

I rate Dell EMC Avamar a seven out of ten.

It was initially used for remote office, branch office backups, but eventually, it started to be used for small and large data centers.

The data reduction feature and the ease of enabling a server in a DR location are the most valuable. 

Its ability to back up very large objects can be improved. In terms of new features, they can include the ability to use cloud services, like S3, more natively.

I have been using this solution for 15 years. 

It has good stability.

It has good scalability, which is a good thing for VMware infrastructures. I see it mostly being used in midsize environments or focused on VMware infrastructure backups. It does a great job there. The negative of this solution is that it certainly wouldn't cover a super large enterprise where they have other tool needs. You probably won't use it for the entire data center or for large Oracle or SQL backups.

I don't interact with them a lot. I would summarize them as being average.

Initially, it was pretty complex to install, but it got easier over the years. It is still not the easiest of all tools to install. It certainly is not as easy to install as Veeam. It is probably comparable to a Commvault in terms of installation difficulty.

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.

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

File level, backup and recovery of data stored on AIX, Linux, and Windows server to Data Domain storage.

The product works. It does, however, require a significant amount of handholding from support. The support is good, but we should not have to reach out to them so often. 

File level, SQL Server and NDMP (NetApp) backups. Both backup and recovery work well for all three types of data.

• Stability has improved since we first started using it, but it still has a ways to go. The systems also collect metadata that builds over time. It will build until it cannot build anymore and fills up your nodes. I have plenty of space on my Data Domain, but I'm running out of space on the nodes due to metadata creep.
  

• It could also benefit from a web-based UI. The Java UI is clunky at best.
  

Client deduplication.

Reduced backup times.

• Restores should be faster.
• Backup image browse times should be faster.
• User interface is very dated.
• No accurate backup size utilization of clients.

Six years.

No.

No.

Yes.

Very good.

Fair.

NetBackup. We needed faster backup times for NAS and server clients.

Straightforward.

Vendor team. They did a good job.

Veeam, Commvault. We wanted to get away from managing backup hardware in traditional backup infrastructure/design.

We primarily use the solution as a backup. Avamar is used to back up our production workloads. Production workloads include Oracle, EBS, SharePoint, file and print service, other application services.

The stability is good. We have found that the performance is excellent.

The product is easy to use.

The installation process is pretty straightforward. 

The solution could be a bit easier to use in the sense that they need to make it simpler to backup products and restore items.

I've been using the solution for more than three years. 

The solution is very stable and the performance is reliable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable. 

Whether or not we will scale the solution depends on the business. If we have a requirement to do so, then definitely we'll expand it. If there will be year-over-year growth and if it will be 10%, we're likely to expand and will need to scale.

If you need to add more capacity, you will need to pay for it.

The installation process is straightforward. That said, it would require an engineer from Dell to do it. We ourselves cannot do it. We don't have the knowledge necessary.

We needed two engineers to handle deployment. 

Installation was quite fast. It took about four to five hours. After that, the configuration and other policies, that took about two days.

We had Dell assist us with the implementation process. 

This is a capacity-based license, it's a one-time payment.

In order to increase capacity, you need to pay more. You also can expect more maintenance.

The pricing of the product seems to be less expensive than other options, however, I can't speak to the exact cost of the product.

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten. We're quite happy with its capabilities.

This product is for production users. We do not backup user backups; it's only for the production workload.