What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell EMC Avamar?

The pricing is not competitive enough.

The pricing from Dell Avamar and Dell NetWorker side has been based predominantly on front-end terabytes. That is the option that we have been dealing with, and the front-end terabytes basically said the maximum backup capacity per client would last 65 days, and that was what the tool based the billing against. In an environment where you're using deduplication of what you are backing up, there are continuous changes based on the activity of the data. The deduplication part will depend on the consistency of your data changes. You could back up something on a particular day, and then you can back up something else on another day. Out of the front-end terabyte readings, your backup from the client side is taken because the front-end terabyte is based on your operating system capacity, and it is not how much data you have written into Data Domain. There had been a debate and disparity about how we are actually backing up only maybe one gigabyte out of ten gigabytes because of deduplication. We would rather want to be built on the one gigabyte than the ten gigabytes because the ten gigabytes is a fictitious number at the end of the day, whereas the real number is one gigabyte. Obviously, the front-end terabyte keeps on going up and down based on whatever the customer does at any point in time. We predominantly make databases. One day, the database was big. The next day, they shrank it down because they had archived some files already. Then, tomorrow, there might be a big index change. So it's bad decompression, bad deduplication. Suddenly, you're writing more data in the data domain than what you've done before. So, it is not a static front-end terabyte capacity that you use. Every day you run it, that figure is different. At the same time, we argue that we want static numbers to be charged against. We went through an RFI, RFP where we had to decide on replacing Dell NetWorker. We had a tender open where Dell NetWorker pricing was compared with Data Domain against another competitive product, and Dell's pricing was way off target. In this case, it was about three times more expensive than the contender. I cannot say that the pricing is good. I rate the tool's price as a three out of ten if one means expensive and ten means it is a cheaply priced tool.

Regarding pricing, I would say Avamar is slightly expensive compared to its functionalities. It's not high-priced or low-priced but somewhere in between.

The solution is costly. Competitors are less expensive. However, Dell Avamar is the right tool if we want to protect our critical systems and receive proper engineering support.

It's an expensive tool.

The solution is expensive. I rate the pricing a six to seven out of ten.

The product’s pricing is a bit high.

Dell Avamar is a moderately priced solution.

Dell's pricing structure is not overly expensive. It operates on a frame-based license system, primarily utilizing front-end capacity or CPU-based models. Currently, there are no core-based licensing options available.

I am highly satisfied with the pricing structure provided and the discounts we get. The overall cooperation with Dell has been exceptional; they consistently go above and beyond to align with our budgets. The global transition and the impact of exchange rates, particularly the fluctuation between the South African Rand and the U.S. Dollar, have introduced some complexities, but nothing major. The current pricing is generally satisfactory. I would rate it nine out of ten.

Dell Avamar is expensive.

I rate the pricing a seven out of ten because it is expensive. I don't think small companies would choose Avamar because the price is high but reasonable for medium-sized companies. Normally, there are no additional costs when we choose the DP4400.

My impression – and that of some other people – is that this solution is expensive.

Regarding other people trying to use this solution, I'd say that it all depends on their budget as it's too expensive for small environments.

I'm not involved in its pricing. My involvement is purely technical.

Dell Avamar, including its virtual add-ons and cloud-based offerings, is cheaper than other solutions, but in the end, the price still depends on your use case. Price-wise, I'm rating Dell Avamar as six out of ten.

The solution costs approximately 20,000 annually.

Dell Avamar is free when we deploy the data protection. When we order data protection, this software is included in the hardware.

You can get a three-year license if you like. You can subscribe for three years, and if you want a 30-month subscription for the support and service, you can also do that. It can be expensive.

This is a fairly expensive solution. It cost approximately 21,000 each year.

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

The cost is high.

Licensing fees are paid annually. I am not sure if the fees are comparable; I would like to compare them to other solutions.

While I didn't directly purchase it myself and was not involved in the licensing process, it's my understanding that the cost is reasonable and the pricing is good.

The pricing of the solution is okay.

The solution is not expensive for the value one gets. The most expensive thing involves one's data. Should a person's data be compromised, he would be willing to pay a million dollars to retrieve it. This makes the payment of an additional premium for its protection worthwhile. The licensing capabilities are limitless.

It's a very high-end solution and comparable to Rubrik and Cohesity.

Its licensing is weird. It is not just the licenses; we also purchase hardware. With most software products, such as Veeam, Commvault, and Data Protector, there is no hardware purchase at the same time. Because Avamar and Data Domain are tied together, they have an integrated pipe. You can separate them, but basically, they're designed to work as a couple. Because the Data Domain backend is designed to do dedupe and compression, we get 60:1. When you count it, you count it as a straight compression, but of course, that's with dedupe and some other stuff. You have to buy the hardware, the licensing, and the software at the same time. So, it's not just software. It is expensive. The maintenance comes with it for five years. So, you buy the whole thing for five years, and your maintenance is included with it, but it's a big chunk of change upfront. We like capital expenses because we can CapEx them. We pay once every five years, so we spend a big chunk of change. You'd have to divide that out by the five years to come up with how much it costs. It's just about three-quarters of a million dollars for five years.

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.

The solution is a bit expensive.

Data Protection Suite has Avamar as one of its components and comes with a license that covers a limited number of virtual machines, capacity, and end points. It's not sold as a separate product. I believe $1000 may cover a single socket and covers the whole data center including the endpoint, the replication, the CD and data protection. It's very cost effective and affordable when compared to other solutions.

The price of this product should be cheaper.

The cost of the solution is very expensive.

It was very expensive before, but after integrating it with Dell EMC Avamar Data Protection suite licensing, we are getting better discounts.

The price of the product could be lower. It's actually probably one of the more expensive products, at least in the enterprise-class. Other technologies are cheaper, and other vendors are adding more features. Therefore, it's falling behind a bit in what other vendors are doing. They need to catch up.

When it comes to competition the price is not what is important, it's not the problem.

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'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.

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 initial licensing is usually for two or three years. After that they can buy a yearly license.

It was approximately $70-80,000 when it was under support, but right now EMC has not been supporting this product for two years.

We were lucky to receive the solution as part of a bundle. It was actually a relatively good price, but there are better solutions, like Veem. However, they can be expensive.

I'm not sure, but perhaps the pricing could be done better at the moment.

The licensing model is not very flexible. Every time we upgrade our storage size, we need to upgrade the Avamar license.

This solution is less expensive than Veeam for us, although it depends on the customer because we get a great discount.

The set up is really easy. They have a virtual edition for smaller environments, and the documentation for doing the install is really good. For larger environments, the PS group works directly with you on the install and setup for new customers. The cost was actually cheaper than any of the other solutions we looked at.