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AndreTan - PeerSpot reviewer
Data Continuity Specialist at Sapta Tunas Teknologi
Reseller
Top 10
Efficient backup and recovery with processes, centralized management, and seamless integration with various platforms, providing reliable data integrity for enterprise environments
Pros and Cons
  • "The feature that offers the greatest benefits in ensuring data integrity is its backup capability."
  • "Regarding improvements for NetWorker, I believe implementing cross-platform restore functionality is essential. This feature would allow for compatibility with various backup software solutions, similar to Veeam."

What is our primary use case?

We use Dell NetWorker in the banking sector.

How has it helped my organization?

It optimizes Backup and Recovery procedures, making them exceptionally swift.

The types of data and systems we predominantly safeguard with Dell NetWorker include VMs. It enables us to protect infrastructure, bare metal clients, databases, and applications.

Dell NetWorker itself cannot replicate, hence relying on Data Domain for replicating data and backup configurations. 

Integrating Dell NetWorker with other Dell products can bring significant advantages to both our organization and our clients. Utilizing NetWorker enhances our understanding of the backup environment and workload.

What is most valuable?

The feature that offers the greatest benefits in ensuring data integrity is its backup capability. This feature significantly enhances speed and efficiency, which is crucial for our operations. Additionally, NetWorker can be installed on Linux systems, and it offers a virtual appliance option, which enhances security measures.

What needs improvement?

There's an issue with the management environment. Regarding improvements for NetWorker, I believe implementing cross-platform restore functionality is essential. This feature would allow for compatibility with various backup software solutions, similar to Veeam. Additionally, enhancing features related to virtualization infrastructure would be beneficial.

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For how long have I used the solution?

I have been working with it for four years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It exhibits remarkable stability. One of our clients has utilized it for over a decade, encountering only a single issue during that time. I would rate it eight out of ten.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I would rate its scalability capabilities seven out of ten. Our clients are mostly large enterprise organizations.

How are customer service and support?

I would rate the customer service and support nine out of ten.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

How was the initial setup?

I would rate the initial setup six out of ten because technical expertise is required for the process.

What about the implementation team?

Deployment typically takes approximately thirty minutes if you are familiar with the required steps.

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

The pricing for the telecom, government, and banking sectors is relatively affordable. Dell offers bundled packages, making it cost-effective, especially when considering the inclusion of DTS data protection.

What other advice do I have?

Before implementation, I recommend investigating to determine the types and sizes of workloads, as well as the expectations of their usage. Overall, I would rate it eight out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
PeerSpot user
Stanislaw Jagielski - PeerSpot reviewer
Trainer, Storage Consultant at Oxon
Reseller
Top 5
Provides good automation but needs to be streamlined
Pros and Cons
  • "The tool's most valuable feature is its ability to recover the data."
  • "The tool should be more streamlined and simplified to create a backup to receive objects."

What is our primary use case?

I use the solution in my company for data protection, backup, and system restoration.

What is most valuable?

The tool's most valuable feature is its ability to recover the data.

What needs improvement?

The tool should be more streamlined and have the possibility to set up a backup for a bunch of clients who are different in nature. You have a few SQL servers with different credentials for backup, but you have to specify a single object for each of them because you have different credentials. The tool should have something similar to IAM tools and allow integrations with fiber channels and some IAM solutions so that it can be streamlined, resolving the problems with the management of the access to databases and backup.

The features of the tool meet my requirements. I have no such new requirements in the tool, so I cannot say what needs to be added to the product for me at the moment.

The tool should be more streamlined and simplified to create a backup to receive objects.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Dell NetWorker for twenty-five years. I recommend the tool to my company's customers.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It is a stable solution.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is a scalable solution. You can use the tool on one computer, but at the same time, you can use the same binaries to make a system that will protect thousands of them.

How are customer service and support?

Everybody wants the response time to be less or zero, but no support team can meet such expectations. I rate the technical support an eight and a half out of ten.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

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

I have experience with Tivoli Storage Manager, HPE, NetBackup, and Dell Avamar. Dell NetWorker is the best option in the market if you know how to implement and use it. If you know how to use it, the tool is very good.

How was the initial setup?

Considering my twenty-five years of working experience with the tool, implementing it is easy. The implementation phase of the tool can be easy for beginners because the product has an interface that is quite okay. There are a lot of wizards now, so it is more streamlined from the point of view of how to create the protection policies and so on, making it an easy process.

The solution is deployed on an on-premises model.

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

I am not a customer of the tool, so I never paid the price for the tool. My customers or end users use the tool because they pay for it.

What other advice do I have?

The tool's automation is very good because you can automate all the traffic to run the backups. We don't want to run the backup but prefer to restore the copies of the backups to the client's systems. You can use the system easily and customize things to meet all the requirements from the point of view of automation. The tool is a very flexible system for both automation and protection.

I think there is no integration with any AI-driven management tasks. AI is more or less very popular nowadays, but I think there is nothing like it in the tool.

I recommend the tool to others, especially to those who use Dell Data Domain. If you plan to use the tool on one computer and then go to thousands of them, then I won't recommend it to you.

The integration of the tool with third-party products is fine.

I rate the tool a seven 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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Dell NetWorker
February 2025
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IT Specialist at a university with 10,001+ employees
Real User
A complicated enterprise-level backup solution
Pros and Cons
  • "Storage-wise, EMC is user-friendly."
  • "The configuration is too complex."

What is our primary use case?

We mostly use this solution for file-based backups. 

We are a global company. We use NetWorker and other backup products throughout the world. We have a very close and long-term relationship with the EMC Networker and we are not going anywhere. We have roughly 30 to 40 TB of data stored with them.

We use this solution daily.

We have scheduled backups, daily, weekly, and monthly and we use the dashboard as a monitoring tool; if there is a failure, we can reconnect all the operational activity.

I don't directly do the backups, my backup administrator coordinates with EMC regarding all configurations, upgrades, and operational needs.

What is most valuable?

Storage-wise, EMC is user-friendly.

What needs improvement?

The configuration is too complex. As a backup solution, it's not user-friendly.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using EMC NetWorker since 2014.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Dell EMC NetWorker is stable. We don't have any issues scalability-wise, but configuring and upgrading are complex.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Scaling out is very easy. We have a capacity-based license so we have no issues with the scalability.

How are customer service and technical support?

I personally don't deal with customer support but due to multiple unsuccessful attempts to upgrade, my administrator is not satisfied.

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

We are using Microsoft BPM in parallel; it's not an enterprise backup solution, but it is an alternate solution. EMC is a one-vendor solution — that's why we chose it, but it is not a good backup solution, it's a complex solution.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is complex. Currently, my team is doing an upgrade and they are having a lot of trouble. They have attempted it multiple times but are still unable to complete the upgrade.

What about the implementation team?

We are located in Pakistan, we have a vendor that supports and guides us. The configuration and upgrades are not simple compared to storage and other uses; it's much more complex.

We have our own team that takes care of all maintenance-related issues.

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

We're using a capacity-based license. My administrator can take backups as per we have the license. Our license includes support and maintenance. 

What other advice do I have?

In my opinion, Networker is not a very good product. It's very complex compared to Veeam and other products. In short, we needed a single bundle solution, that's why we chose Networker. Overall, I think Veeam is better.

I don't recommend it because of its complexity and the updates, etc. We don't recommend that anyone uses Networker. We recommend looking into Veeam or another solution.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give Networker a rating of five.

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
Michael Schwarzer - PeerSpot reviewer
Managing Director at INT/box GmbH
Real User
Top 10
Works well for small-scale NFS file backup and disaster recovery
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable features for us at the moment are NFS, file system backup, and IP backup."
  • "We are looking forward to better stability in future versions."

What is our primary use case?

I was hired as a solution architect and implementation specialist for this solution. We are maintaining this solution for a customer in Hamburg, Germany.

I am working with an SAP on Oracle solution at the moment.

Our customers use this solution for backup and disaster recovery.

The usual deployment model for this solution is on-premise.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable features for us at the moment are NFS, file system backup, and IP backup.

What needs improvement?

The main problem that we are having had to do with stability. We are looking forward to better stability in future versions.

Our customers often ask for better integration with Microsoft Exchange.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using this solution for six years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Stability is something that needs to be improved.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

This is a highly scalable solution, but on a larger scale, it is not very stable.

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

I was contracted to migrate our client's disaster recovery environment from Tivoli Storage Manager to EMC NetWorker.

How was the initial setup?

The solution itself was easy to set up, but configuring a global disaster recovery environment was quite complex.

What about the implementation team?

I am a consultant who implements these solutions for our clients.

What other advice do I have?

When it comes to choosing this solution, it depends on the environment and the scenarios that you're focused on. There are many advantages with EMC NetWorker compared to other disaster recovery solutions, but the software is lacking in some areas that other vendors focus on. It really depends on what you want to get from the solution.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
it_user1256415 - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager Private Cloud Solutions at ufone
Real User
Great recovery features but needs better BMR support
Pros and Cons
  • "NetWorker's most valuable feature is recovery, including the policy-based backups that can be configured."
  • "Currently, the NetWorker server only supports the Windows server bare-metal recovery, so an improvement would be built-in support for Linux and UNIX BMR."

What is our primary use case?

I primarily use NetWorker to back up over 1,200 virtual machines and over fifty databases. 

What is most valuable?

NetWorker's most valuable feature is recovery, including the policy-based backups that can be configured.

What needs improvement?

Currently, the NetWorker server only supports the Windows server bare-metal recovery, so an improvement would be built-in support for Linux and UNIX BMR. In the next release, NetWorker should include support for container backups and Kubernetes.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using NetWorker for over ten years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

NetWorker's stability and reliability are very good, but it still needs monitoring by external software solutions to be maintained properly. NetWorker requires monitoring by the backup administrator to check for failed backups, and it also sometimes has issues pop up that require patching.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

NetWorker isn't scalable - you can't add more nodes to it, although you can add some data zones. If you want to add environments to NetWorker, you have to deploy more standalone solutions. 

How are customer service and support?

I'm very satisfied with Dell's technical support. It's very easy to open an SR and get support from them, and whenever we open a request, we get a response, and they ensure our issue is resolved.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is a little complex as you have to deploy a virtual machine or  NetWorker on a physical server, depending on your architecture and environment. However, once that operating system is deployed, the NetWorker installation is quite simple. The deployment takes about half an hour, but the integration with the virtual machines and the environment takes two to three weeks.

What about the implementation team?

We used a partner team.

What other advice do I have?

I'd advise anybody thinking of implementing NetWorker to look at their environment, virtualization solutions, and infrastructure requirements and then decide how their environment should be designed. They should also consult with the EMC architect who will be designing the data zones and will be responsible for migrating their environments. I would give NetWorker a rating of seven 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.
PeerSpot user
OmobolajiOlaloku - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Enterprise System Engineer at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees
Real User
Top 5
User-friendly, easy to install, scalable, and is very stable, but they should provide local support
Pros and Cons
  • "Deduplication is the most valuable feature of this solution."
  • "I would like to see encryption included in the next release to encrypt the data that we are backing up."

What is our primary use case?

We use Dell EMC NetWorker for our database and applications.

How has it helped my organization?

Because of the duplication feature, we were able to save a significant amount of storage space. We do not have to duplicate the data that is being backed up to storage. With this feature, we can back up a single data set rather than multiple data sets.

It has enabled us to save a significant amount of storage space while also lowering our storage acquisition costs.

What is most valuable?

Deduplication is the most valuable feature of this solution.

It is very intuitive and easy to use.

What needs improvement?

I believe that the area of support could be improved. They don't appear to have an adequate number of staff members to assist us if we have any problems. It would be extremely beneficial if they could provide local support.

I would like to see encryption included in the next release to encrypt the data that we are backing up.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been working with Dell EMC NetWorker for three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It is very stable. We have no issues with the stability of Dell EMC NetWorker.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Dell EMC NetWorkerDell is a scalable product.

We upgraded to a newer version twice.

We have a large company with over 200 users.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was easy.

What about the implementation team?

We were able to complete the installation ourselves.

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

Dell EMC NetWorker is very expensive.

Licensing fees should be reduced. It is a bit expensive, but it is a good application.

What other advice do I have?

I used to manage the backups, but I am no longer responsible for them.

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

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: partner
PeerSpot user
Isaac Fisher - PeerSpot reviewer
Chief Financial Officer at STL
MSP
Top 5
Stable, easy to set up, and offers good technical support
Pros and Cons
  • "The updated graphical interface is better than it used to be."
  • "There should be more vendors incorporated into the solution."

What is our primary use case?

Primarily, I use the solution in order to backup to tape, usually for long-term backups.

What is most valuable?

With NetWorker, I'm still trying to use it more now, as I wasn't so much in the past.

I like how easily I am able to recognize the labels, the barcodes on the tape. With NetWorker, once you know your tapes and you have your record of them, you should be able to identify them easily.

The updated graphical interface is better than it used to be.

The initial setup is very straightforward. 

The solution is very stable.

We find the product to be scalable. 

Technical support is very helpful.

What needs improvement?

In older versions, the graphical user interface isn't so good. 

There should be more vendors incorporated into the solution.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using the solution for about two years or so. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We have found the stability to be quite good. The performance is reliable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The solution scales well. If a company needs to expand it, it can do so. 

We have five people working on the solution in our company.

We do not plan to increase usage at this time. In fact, we may switch to another solution.

How are customer service and technical support?

We have been satisfied with technical support. They've been helpful and responsive. 

How was the initial setup?

A company will find the initial setup wot be straightforward. It's not complex or overly difficult. The implementation process is easy.

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

I can't speak to the licensing costs.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We are considering switching to Commvault. We're looking into it a bit more. However, that would depend on what the client would like to do. It's not up to us.

What other advice do I have?

I've been using the solution as a customer and an end-user.

I work on the latest version of the solution, however, I can't speak to the exact version number. 

Currently, I'm just trying to find out if, let's say you've done a backup with NetWorker in the past, how are you'll be able to migrate that data to Commvault.

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.
PeerSpot user
Chea Thoya - PeerSpot reviewer
Business Unit Head - Enterprise Compute and Business Resiliency at Konvergenz
Real User
Top 10
Highly reliable, quick support, and integrates well
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable feature of Dell NetWorker is its quick configuration and handling of large databases."
  • "Dell NetWorker could improve the GUI to include rack recovery."

What is our primary use case?

I am using Dell NetWorker for backing up mission-critical business databases.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature of Dell NetWorker is its quick configuration and handling of large databases.

What needs improvement?

Dell NetWorker could improve the GUI to include rack recovery.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Dell NetWorker for a few months.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The solution is highly stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We have four engineers using this solution in my company and we plan to increase our usage.

Dell NetWorker is a scalable solution.

How are customer service and support?

The support from the vendor was quick.

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

I used IBM Spectrum Protect prior to Dell NetWorker. We choose to use Dell NetWorker because it has quicker recovery time objectives and the integration into DD is a lot better.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup of Dell NetWorker is straightforward. The process took a few days to complete.

What about the implementation team?

We had some assistance when we did the implementation. However, after a while, we can do it ourselves.

What was our ROI?

We have observed a return on investment by utilizing Dell NetWorker, and we deem it a worthwhile expenditure compared to not having the solution.

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

The solution follows a subscription model for licensing. We pay annually to use the solution and the price is high.

What other advice do I have?

I would recommend this solution to others.

I rate Dell NetWorker an eight 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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Updated: February 2025
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Buyer's Guide
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