Dell NetWorker Reviews

Our primary use case is for our critical servers. We have servers across Unix and Linux environments. We back up our critical servers daily, some are scheduled and some are done manually. 

It has deduplication capabilities, where you have two similar data sets. This helps to speed up backup processes because it takes a shorter amount of time to do a backup because it has the deduplication feature already. Though, you have to buy this deduplication software separately from the license.

The security features need backup and encryption. It would be nice if they added this feature. I would also like to be able to decrypt when restoring the security features. Hackers can sense these vulnerabilities today, and we need to have our enterprise prepared. 

Overall, it isn't intuitive enough. It is a bit complex and not evolving with the technology. 

The stability is 80 percent out of 100. It hardly goes down. When there are issues, we can check the logs and see how to resolve it. We have never had the whole system fail. 

It is pretty scalable. This is not an issue. 

The response time of the tech support is swift. The support is fantastic.

The initial setup was straightforward. The configuration was not difficult. We used user guides which helped us with best practices. 

When choosing a solution, I always consider:

• Support
• Availability of parts
• The technology of the solution.

• Very nice tools (nsrwatch, nsradmin) in CLI for administration, monitoring, and management. And GUI is available with enterprise level as well.
• NetWorker’s commands are executed directly from shell/command line (you don’t need to log in to the DB or to any other kind of tool).
• Very good backward and forward compatibility between NetWorker’s versions. You are not limited by higher version on backup client side.
• Availability of cumulative hot fixes.
• NetWorker server is supported on Windows and Linux OSs (unlike Commvault).
• List of supported OSs and their versions is really long and it is the same for DBs and applications.
• Provided documentation from EMC is quite good and well organized.
• Block based backup and parallel save stream features are really helpful for classic backup of big file systems and lot of small files.
• DDboost protocol speeds up backups and saves bandwidth of your LAN.
• Possibility to create and use your own scripts in backup process or in administration.

Backup admins don’t need to dedicate so much time to installation and configuration of backups.

NetWorker’s code needs improvement. There are so many bugs in each version, so I have to wait until the last cumulative hotfix of each service pack is released, to be sure that I will not affect production and create more work for myself.

Since 2006.

I had some issues in the past, but I fixed them by updating the product. I would recommend installation of new, major or minor releases of EMC NetWorker if the second service pack of each version, and sixth or higher cumulative hotfix of that version, are both available.

This is difficult question. Honestly, EMC NetWorker technical support is not very helpful for me, because I have much more experience with it than the engineers who are initially assigned to an issue. I have to wait till my service request is moved to a higher level of support and, often, by the time that happens, I have fixed many service requests by myself.

On the other hand, EMC engineers are friendly and try to help as much as possible, so if you are not an experienced customer they can search in knowledge database for your issue and fix it via a WebEx session. This can be done over a live chat session or via a regular service request.

You can enable notifications (at the EMC support page) for security and technical alerts as well, so you will be informed about any big issues quickly.

I used Hiback from NovaStor a long time ago, but it was not as good as NetWorker. I switched because I was no longer responsible for the Hiback backup environment; I focused on EMC NetWorker.

Initial setup of EMC NetWorker is really easy work if you have basic knowledge of OSs, LAN and SAN, if needed. (A basic IT background is really needed). Just a few clicks in Windows or the installation of a few RPMs in Linux. I really like that EMC provides specific RPM packages and not only binaries in its archive, which are installed by installation script.

Ask your EMC representative for discount. They can provide really good discounts.

I did not do so.

Use EMC Data Domain (DD) system and EMC NetWorker. It really is number one on the market in backup and recovery solutions.

Provides backup automation and monitoring centralization. Having easy scalability of the covered data zone is also a big advantage.

All environment backups are monitored by a central management console. This allows us to have a global view and the statistics of data protection in the overall data center.

Native reports are not really user-friendly. This is the case because EMC wants to sell DPA, which can give more reports/details. I think this policy is unfair.

We have been using this solution for seven years.

There were stability issues, especially with version 9.0. The backup integration failed many times and the resolution was related to bugs fixed in later releases.

There were no scalability issues.

We did not use a different solution before this one.

The initial setup was complex. In fact, the NetWorker Management Console is divided into many tables. To configure a simple backup, you have to switch between many tables. You must have a good understanding of the configuration logic before you can manage this tool.

Use capacity licensing instead of the traditional one. With capacity licenses, you have all the capabilities enabled. With traditional licenses, you have to activate functionalities one by one.

• TSM : This solution does not offer the media server option, which means that all data that has to be backed up has to be sent to the TSM backup server before being backed up to media devices. In the NetWorker solution, we can define media nodes which write data directly to the backup devices. There is no need to move data to backup server beforehand. Also in NetWorker, we can define different retention policies for backups and copies. In TSM, the same retention applies to both the first copy and the second copy.

• DPM: This Microsoft solution is well defined for Microsoft environments, but for VMware and others (SAP, Oracle) EMC NetWorker suits better and does offer more functionalities/options.  
• Veeam: Suitable for VMware environments only. EMC NetWorker capabilities are greater regarding other platforms (Microsoft, SAP).

• NetBackup: This is the real EMC NetWorker competitor. For price reasons, EMC NetWorker was chosen in our case.

Take a training course before implementing this solution, especially if you are used to managing another backup solution. The backup integration generally takes a while to stabilize. However, once you have done it, you can forget about it. The backup will run automatically and backed up data will expire automatically based on configured policies.

We use Dell EMC NetWorker as our backup application and everything backs up to Dell EMC Data Domain, where we replicate it to another EMC Data Domain. The two solutions work combined to meet our use case. Both solutions are from the same vendor and work very well together.

I started off as a storage engineer and ended up owning Dell EMC Data Domain and Dell EMC NetWorker. I've not used any other backup solutions at this scale. Dell EMC NetWorker does what I need it to do, it's efficient.

The front end of the solution could improve. The user-friendliness is lacking.

I have been using Dell EMC NetWorker for approximately eight years.

We have had limited downtime, the solution is highly reliable.

Dell EMC NetWorker is scalable.

When I need Dell EMC NetWorker support and there's a Dell EMC Data Domain issue, it's really easy to have support for both of them from one location. Support has always been there when we needed them.

We have a team of two that does the management of Dell EMC NetWorker and Dell EMC Data Domain.

I rate Dell EMC NetWorker a ten out of ten.

Backup jobs can be scheduled and automated

Monitoring of backups and configuration tasks are centralized

Compatibility of the solution covers large OS/DataBases/Applications

In a large enterprise DataCenter there is traditionally a lot of applications/databases which are owned by different administrators.

Without a centralized backup solution, each application/DB owner has to ensure its backup separately and if a problem occurs, he has to execute recovery tasks. In these conditions, the application rower has to make some extra jobs : backup scripting, verifying backups have finished successfully, recovery jobs... This does impact his efficiency and the global enterprise efficiency.

If a centralized backup solution like Networker is deployed, the backup/recovery tasks will be on the responsibility of only one resource which is the backup administrator. This does directly involve that each application/DB owner can spend more time on his real job: optimizing the platform that he owns.

With Networker 8.0 I had an issue related to VMware VADP backups.
An Image level backup of a RHEL VM finished successfully, but when I tried to restore it the transfer speed was very low, and the restore operation took 20 hours to restore 17 GB which represents 50% of total VM size. I was then obliged to abort the restore operation because there was backup jobs planned and Networker was deployed with only one tape drive in this case (the tape drive can't write backups and perform restores simultaneously).

I contacted the support team to analyze this performance issue. They said that this happened because it was a Linux machine backed up with Windows Vcenter Proxy. For me this is not acceptable... I hope this will be resolved in the 8.2 version of Networker, because restore speed is important (RTO)

4 years

Deployment tasks are not really hard. Networker is well documented.

7/10

Initial setup was complex because I had to integrate Exchange Server and I had no knowledge on how it works.

I asked to the Exchange administrator to assist me on the deployment and together we setup up the Exchange backup job.

IBM TSM; HP data protector; Symantec Netbackup/Backupexec are main competitor to Networker.

I remember a customer asked me to advise him between deploying Networker or TSM. The customer wanted to integrate a Data Domain device to his backup solution. I advised him to use Networker because TSM is not compatible with DDBoost protocol which improves DataDomain performance: Deploying TSM in this case was a limitation!

The primary use case is for system and data backup. I'm the area technical manager and we are resellers. 

This is a good solution and our clients are happy with it. There are no issues and it meets expectations. It's very user-friendly with a good interface. 

I'd like to see a faster recovery window. Having a better recovery system would make a big difference. 

We've been using this product for 20 years. 

The stability is great. 

The scalability is good, we currently have over 100 users. 

Customer support is very good and I rate it highly. 

Positive

The initial setup is very straightforward and usually takes a couple of hours. 

Licensing costs are a little high. Dell has different kinds of licenses including a traditional license and a capacity-based license.

I recommend this solution and rate it nine out of 10. 

We use it to record sites in the system.

The extensive information provided on tool properties has been very useful, specifically the information on databases.

The user interface of this solution could be improved. It is not user friendly and is difficult to understand for new users. New users struggle to understand the logic.

I have used this solution for five years. 

This is a stable solution. 

It is really scalable but the scaling process is not that easy. You have to find the documentation to support setting it up for scale.

The customer service and support is good, but at times I have wanted more involvement from the people that are giving support. 

Neutral

The initial set up is easy, but when you do it for the first time you will need videos and some information to support the process. Once you do it once, you can do it really quickly the next time.

We have a lot of clients who use NetWorker. Especially in government and big companies, they rely on the NetWorker to do their backups. Two or three people are needed for deployment. 

In order to use this solution, you need to rely on communication and information on how to do a proper setup. At the beginning, you have to understand how the process works to configure the devices data needs to be stored.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten. 

We use Dell EMC NetWorker for backing up VMs, files, and databases.

The user interface is hard to use, it should be simplified. There are a lot of web-based management interfaces which they should consider.

I have been using Dell EMC NetWorker for approximately eight years.

I have found Dell EMC NetWorker to be stable.

Dell EMC NetWorker is scalable.

The support of Dell EMC NetWorker is very good.

The initial setup is complicated. It is difficult to implement for clients.

The price of the solution could be lower, it is expensive.

We have evaluated Veeam.

I would not recommend this solution, we are switching to Veeam, and I would recommend it.

I rate Dell EMC NetWorker a seven out of ten.