Dell NetWorker Reviews

I use Dell EMC NetWorker for system backups.

The solution is very user-friendly. After setting up five machines for our customers we teach them how to set up the agent and start doing their backups. It is very easy for them once they see how to do it, they like to do it on their own.

Dell EMC NetWorker is a complete solution, providing end-to-end, disk to disk to tape backup features, which makes it more suitable for customers here in Oman.

I have used Dell EMC NetWorker within the last 12 months.

The solution is stable.

The customer support is very good.

I have used Avamar.

The major differentiator between Dell EMC NetWorker Avamar is the Tape Out function, we recommend mostly NetWorker because customers here in Oman have compliance policies to keep the tapes out. Most of my installations are NetWorker and we only have a few on Avamar.

The price of the license could be cheaper and it would be a benefit if they came up with a new pricing model. The competitors here in Oman sell universal licensing where a number of virtual machines are hosted at the customer place which can be licensed, or you can license the CPU sockets in those servers. However, NetWorker offers only CPU sockets or overall storage capacity to backup, but there is no universal licensing where you can provide a number of VMs. They should offer more options to stay competitive with other solutions, such as Veeam.

I have evaluated Veeam solutions.

I would recommend Dell EMC NetWorker to any large enterprise. For entry and mid-size customers, I would recommend it only if it falls within their budget requirements. If they do not have the budget, they can purchase a solution that works with normal storage while purchasing NetWorker or Avamar requires a storage solution also, such as  Dell Data Domain. It works in combination and delivers the best solution, but it is a little expensive. This is why it is best suited for enterprise customers who can afford it.

I rate Dell EMC NetWorker a nine out of ten.

We are customers of Dell and I'm a Data Protection Supervisor Engineer at a Telecommunications company.

Data domain is the best feature in this solution. I think that this application was better when it was a backup window for a huge number of VMs. 

Networker with Data Domain  has a great value in integration with VMware regarding the enhanced backup window and high value of deduplication and capacity saving we can get with this setup especially in case of protecting high number of VMs.

Things could be improved in several areas beginning with support. If you compare it to Commvault or Veritas solutions, their support is better than Networker. In terms of features that are lacking, I think the restore feature is important and it's not available on NetWorker. The other solutions have more programs. 

For additional features, I'd like to see integration with any storage place. NetWorker finance also doesn't enable deduplication, there is no source deduplication while using NetWorker, it's only accessible if it's on a different domain. I hope to see that in the next release. I also think the data protection adviser should be embedded in the NetWorker software so there is no need to install another server to collect logs. Finally, the PMR is no longer supported in Linux. 

I've been using this solution for 5 years. 

We have a few bugs but it's generally a stable solution. 

Technical support really needs improvement. Getting assistance is a long journey starting with collecting logs. If we're lucky, we can have things sorted in a day. If the issue is related to an application or a link or a restore issue, anything regarding the performance, it's very difficult to get assistance. 

The initial setup is easy, it's not complex.

The best feature in NetWorker is the data domain. If you're not using that then you cannot use NetWorker with any media or any storage vendor. There's no protection adviser to get selective reports and the graphs, so you need to get other products for that and it will consume a new server in your infrastructure. If you're providing customer support the solution is limited. I don't recommend this for dealing with customers. I do recommend it for internal use and for data domain only. You can get the best performance and best deduplication value and capacity saving.

I would rate this solution a six out of 10. 

• 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.

NetWorker sometimes has issues with the backup not starting and with connecting to the Oracle servers.

I've been using NetWorker for around three months.

Dell's technical support are quite helpful with straightforward issues, though they can be slow. However, they don't have the deep knowledge to solve complex issues, so our time is wasted.

The initial setup was a little complex, but engineers should find it ok.

I would not recommend NetWorker to other users and would rate it seven out of ten.

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 this solution to protect our numerous file servers. We have SAP HANA servers, some Oracle servers, and we have an eM server. We have several partnerships and Dell is one of them. They are very good. I'm a solution architect and technical team lead. 

This is a very precise and simple solution which is a great feature. It's also very stable and straightforward if you follow the documentation. 

This is a good solution and I can't think of any additional features they could include. I went for NetWorker because it's a good physical as well as virtual environment, and the best possible solution compared to the other products on the market. The others are also good but I like NetWorker better. 

I believe that the reporting could be improved and the report templates should be easier to understand and more comprehensive. I believe they are already working to replace the Java console with the HTML web browser-based administration console which is the other issue. I hope they are able to do this quickly. In terms of my expertise, I can't think of any other issues. 

I've been using this solution for four months. 

The solution is very straightforward and very stable if you follow the documentation properly. When I've been in trouble it's because of my lack of knowledge or not following the instructions. 

We're not such a big organization that we need to scale and it would take a few years before we did that, if at all, so I can't comment on scalability. We have two administrators using the solution. Primarily we just go to the backup console every day to check things are okay. It could be managed by one person but having an extra backup doesn't hurt. 

I'm very satisfied with the support that Dell provides. As soon you create a support ticket, someone immediately contacts you to provide the support. The person might not be an expert, they are generally not techie guys but they are often very helpful. They immediately take the remote of your system to understand the problem and I appreciate that. 

The initial setup was a little complex but that was my issue. It's worth spending a couple of hours to go through everything thoroughly beforehand and take proper notes. If you don't follow the documentation, you can get into problems. Otherwise, it's pretty straightforward.
Deployment time depends on the situation. Implementation probably took three or four hours. Once it's running smoothly there's no maintenance required. 

For anyone planning to implement this solution, it's essential to read the documentation, otherwise you will face a few issues. If you deploy having done all the reading, you won't have any problems. I believe that if something works as expected, it deserves a 10. In my case, it is working as per expectations so I don't have any complaints. 

I would therefore rate this solution a 10 out of 10. 

Dell EMC should be more aggressive with its marketing; such as is done by Commvault.

There should be total integration of the replication and cloud logistic back up on cloud.

The stability has been fine thus far. 

The solution is definitely scalable.

Technical support is good. 

The initial setup is completely easy, not hard at all. 

The pricing is okay.

Commvault does more aggressive marketing than Dell EMC. 

Features are constantly evolving. Initially, I dealt with ERP backup, but we have since moved to the environment. Nowadays, there are cloud-related features. We position ourselves to meet the customer's needs, not just concerning any one given feature. 

My advice is that a person who designs a solution for the backup or backup management, ensure that, in respect of the application, all agents take care not to encounter problems once the solution has been deployed. 

I rate Dell EMC Networker as an eight out of ten. 

Our primary use case for the solution is for backup and recovery in all environments, such as physical and virtual ones.

The solution offers compatibility with many types of database systems. It is one of the largest backup solutions. Additionally, it gives important information about data domain systems with deduplication. 

I have been using the solution for approximately three years. 

The solution is stable.

We have more the five customers using Dell EMC NetWorker.

The technical support was slightly impolite in my experience.

The deployment of the solution is easy when integrated with the data domain systems. Additionally, the documentation is available and it is simple to follow. It took approximately one week to deploy it. 

The implementation of the solution took approximately one week and we used two engineers. 

The pricing of the solution is not the cheapest compared to other similar solutions. The Networker is available as a component of the Dell EMC Data Protection Suite package and it should have the ability to be purchased separately. 

The solution requires a perpetual license. We can upgrade the solution without the need to be renewed at an additional cost. 

I would recommend the solution to others, especially due to the data domain system, as the target of the backup.

I rate Dell EMC NetWorker a nine out of ten.