Dell PowerProtect Data Manager Reviews

I started as a Storage and Backup Administrator and have been working with Data Protector and Dell PowerProtect Data Manager since approximately 2019 or 2020.

I worked on a project where the client was transforming their current heterogeneous solution to a homogeneous solution. They had multiple NetBackup instances and other solutions, and they were looking for something to consolidate and bring everything into one platform. When we worked on it, we introduced and discussed Dell PowerProtect Data Manager. We identified that Dell PowerProtect Data Manager is a suite of solutions where you have storage, backup manager, and data manager all integrated into one server and one platform, which gave them a consolidated solution. The suite we introduced to the customer covered database backup, application software, and archive to cloud services.

They came with network-attached storage and an accelerator. We had NetApp in place, and we used NetApp and Unity with NFS and SMBs. The way it majorly works is we used to have metadata that would take a backup without going into a read. We chose this one for NAS backup because it really helped us increase the performance of the backup. Dell PowerProtect Data Manager helped us manage centralized management through a controller called the NAS Proxy, which helped us move the data from handling. It was just a VM. Everything worked in a different way, but we were able to take the backup using NDMP with different vendors, especially NetApp, and then we had some of the SMBs and NFS, which we were able to back up.

I worked on DPS, DPA, Avamar, and Data Domain. Those are all part of Dell PowerProtect Data Manager.

Dell PowerProtect Data Manager is majorly centralized management software and it really helped in a cloud-friendly way. Many of the solutions which we currently have are not directly integrated with cloud backup services, but these can be. It is the one platform where you can manage your backup, store the backup, and replicate the backup to other on-premises or cloud locations, and have the centralized management of it.

The snapshot which we used was majorly for the VMs and not for the database because we used that same solution for application-aware backup as well. It started taking a full backup and then created incremental backups. Snapshots allow restoration of everything in one shot, and the capacity consumption compared to other backup solutions is more efficient. Based on deduplication, it really affects the capacity consumption when we create snapshots using this backup solution. Taking a snapshot directly offers more efficiency in capacity consumption.

Anomaly detection is majorly important. When backups were going on, unusual backup activity would indicate that it could be a ransomware attack or an operational issue. We got anomalies with respect to operational issues and data corruption because we did not have much visibility to this backup solution to the internet, where ransomware was very difficult to get into. However, we did understand data corruption situations where sometimes the backup was happening and chains were getting disconnected. We would get alerts that data corruption happened and we would try to take care of it. Sometimes the frequency of backups increased without any manual intervention and we identified and stopped that behavior.

When we used this solution, it was integrated with our storages, and it usually creates snapshots at the storage LUNs level, volume level, or file system level. It used to connect with that and go straight to the long-term retention on Data Domain at DPS or the PowerProtect side. The major benefit was that without creating anything in the storage, Dell PowerProtect Data Manager was directly triggering the snapshot directly on the storages. It majorly supports Dell storage compared to heterogeneous storage, but we understand that there are some features that we can use to protect the others as well.

The majorly needed improvement is that the product should easily simplify the upgrade and installation process. Sometimes Dell support should be more active. They take time for P1 issues. Sometimes it is not a P1 for Dell, but it is P1 for the customer, and the support needs to be very mature. That is a major drawback I see. Otherwise, the product is quite well.

This is an enterprise solution and a bit costlier, but it is a solution where people should be looking into if they want to go into one single umbrella and have the centralized backup solution, which integrates with the cloud and can manage their cloud workload as well as the on-premises workload, and can be managed with one dashboard. In that way, it makes their backup management easier and they can get detected anomalies as soon as possible. This is one of the solutions I would recommend. However, if it is a very small company, they really need to think about the cost, as it is very costlier for them. But as an enterprise solution and a mid-enterprise solution, this is the solution where companies think their data is very critical, in sectors such as financial, banking, and health. This kind of sector should go with that solution because it always gives the compliances of HIPAA, GDPR, and all those things that are really required for them.

From management perspectives and consolidation solution perspective, the integration is quite easy. With respect to the backup administrator and everything, it is quite straightforward. There are some layers that need to be improved and should have the internal feature instead of creating the additional VMs for the NAS backup. It should be internal and directly have the agent base or something that can communicate easily with Dell storage. If it is third-party, I would understand, but it should be able to communicate. The benefit of it is that it is easily understood and you can do knowledge transfer with a lot of documents available. The drawback of it is that when it comes to the installation, Dell always takes a lot of time for all these things with third-party involvement in between Dell and the customer. Support is the major part of it. People need to understand that when a customer raises their ticket for P1, they should treat it as a P1. Instead of by their book being P3 or P2, sometimes they only treat it as such when the complete backup server is down. However, for the customer, if it is not happening with the critical system of backup, then it is a P1 for them. From Dell support, they do not treat it as a P1, or they treat it as a P3 or P2. That kind of understanding and some agreements need to be done between the customer and Dell.

It is a costlier solution. Comparatively, other backup solutions make this one of the costlier solutions. However, someone who has their enterprise data or needs protection in a good way can go for it. I could say it is a mid-enterprise or enterprise level solution. Otherwise, people do have the same solution but with differentiated features. However, it is costlier compared to the other.

They have a certain number of limits that you can add this much of disk based on the licenses. If you are okay to purchase the license, they have the feasibility to increase the capacity as well.

When we had the compliances and any of the backups were getting failed or we identified that some of the backups were frequently failing, the system would alert us. There was also a way where it was giving us the alert on the ransomware as well.

Positive

Initially when I started this conversation, the customer had multiple solutions, such as NetBackup, Veeam, and others where they had to have the hardware, maintenance, license maintenance, and everything. It was very not easy to maintain. Some of them, the backup storage or tapes were already outdated, and managing it with additional end-of-support and end-of-life support was too costlier for them. When we moved out of all of this and migrated everything to Dell PowerProtect Data Manager, it reduced their cost by somewhere around 30 percent. They no longer had to manage and maintain multiple customers, multiple OEMs, or hyperscalers and vendors support. It just came down to the one umbrella, which is Dell. It is a new product with all new features and no need to worry about ransomware. Previously they were spending one million dollars, and now they are spending somewhere around 720,000 to 750,000 dollars.

It has the predicted RTO and RPO. It reduced a lot of human errors because it was all automated, and once it is done, then it was working in a very faster way. We had some ransomware scenarios where we achieved faster ransomware recovery. It has DR testing as well. We have the DR setup on one side to another side. We were able to start the DR as well. Compliance was easy to handle with the centralized dashboard because everything is in the centralized location, including how much backup was there and how much backup failed. One of the major things is that the storage had the Data Domain in place. Previously they did not have that much deduplication. After we introduced this solution, previously they had somewhere around 100 TB of capacity for the backup for a few VMs on one side. Now, the overall setup is hardly 80 TB, where they use almost 240 TB of production data into that 80 TB. Still, it is at 60 to 70 percent of utilization.

The RPO that we are looking for and the RTO that we are looking for was working over there. When it came to the capacity and the reporting, we used to have that centralized reporting and the centralized dashboard. Even the validation, regarding what compliance we have at the moment and how much we are secure, we used it in that way. I would rate this solution an 8 out of 10.

I have been working with Dell PowerProtect Data Manager for the last three or four years. We use it for our RMAN or Oracle backups, and we purely use it for RMAN script-based backups. I find Dell PowerProtect Data Manager the most beneficial because we're only using it for RMAN, so when it was initially implemented, it was a better option to run RMAN on it. We purely use it for RMAN environments or Oracle backups.

The best features in Dell PowerProtect Data Manager include the multiple copies and the fact that you can pull it off to an ECH or to a cloud environment.

I have seen main benefits from using Dell PowerProtect Data Manager in terms of how it helps to improve the way the organization functions. I have read up on PPDM and how its Avamar is integrating into it. I am actually looking forward to that because it will give us more access to PPDM. Currently, the way we're using PPDM is not at its ultimate level or what we can still do with it. We just use it at the basics of PPDM currently. There are a lot of features that we don't currently use because we only have five databases on that environment that we're currently running. We're not using PPDM as we should.

I apologize, but I'm not in a position to answer what areas of Dell PowerProtect Data Manager I would like to see improved or enhanced. There is still a lot of features that we haven't tried yet. I can't say whether I can answer that because we basically don't experiment as often as we should on PPDM. I won't be able to answer that.

Based on my use cases with Dell PowerProtect Data Manager, I would like to see alerts improved, as streamlining the alerts could help. The alerts are becoming an issue because we don't always get notified of certain things via the alerts.

I have been working with Dell PowerProtect Data Manager for the last three or four years.

I would recommend it. It's stable, and you don't have downtimes, even with upgrades. It's just now and then that you have to reboot and do maintenance on it. Other than that, it's pretty much stable with no issues.

With Dell PowerProtect Data Manager, today was actually the first time when we had to reboot PPDM. Other than that, the upgrades and everything else we needed to do on it was pretty much straightforward.

Regarding scalability, we haven't scaled out or up yet with Dell PowerProtect Data Manager. However, as per the documentation, that is an easy process, whether you need to scale up or scale out. Obviously, when you have issues, the nice thing is you have Dell to assist online all the time.

My experience with the technical support team of Dell is that they are actually great. Once you get them on the line, they are great. Now and then, the waiting gets frustrating when there's a shift change, and then you have to re-queue the call. But other than that, there are no problems.

On a scale of one to ten, where ten is the best, I would give my experience with the technical support an eight.

Positive

I have worked with NetBackup and NetBackup appliances prior to Dell PowerProtect Data Manager.

In terms of comparing Dell PowerProtect Data Manager to NetBackup solutions, they're very similar because PPDM is also now becoming an appliance. I am biased because I mostly work on Dell products, and PPDM is much better for me. Even Avamar and NetWorker are much better if you run them with a Data Domain. I prefer Dell products to Veritas.

The setup process and onboarding process for Dell PowerProtect Data Manager is pretty much straightforward when it's configured by Dell. The configuration from there is easy. It is fairly easy if you know what to do.

When Dell PowerProtect Data Manager arrived to us, it was already configured. Dell or the EMC partner guys usually configure everything, and we don't do our deployment ourselves.

I am currently working with Dell PowerProtect Data Manager, and when you called earlier, I had a problem on PPDM. The issue appears to be resolved. It looked like it was a default certificate that has expired.

My impression of Dell PowerProtect Data Manager's Transparent Snapshots feature in terms of data protection is that we don't use the snapshot features. We still have Avamar as the software on the environment.

We currently do not use the Anomaly Detection feature in Dell PowerProtect Data Manager.

I assess the effectiveness of the Storage Direct Protection in managing our data storage needs by stating that we directly use the Data Domain currently on all PPDM. We just have mount points on the Data Domain for the Oracle RMAN backups via PPDM. We still use Data Domain for it.

We are not using the Dynamic NAS Protection feature in Dell PowerProtect Data Manager.

We have not used Dell PowerProtect Data Manager in the Kubernetes environment.

I do not work with containers.

My experience with the Recovery Orchestration feature, specifically in terms of simplifying the recovery process, is that because we just do Oracle on PPDM, it is more a DBA feature. The DBAs or the Oracle DBAs run the restores. All we provide them is the mount point and the password.

We do not utilize the Dell orchestration feature in the recovery process that I described.

I can't say whether I'm seeing benefits or improvements with the PPDM because I don't have anything to compare to. When I started working on PPDM, we already had the Oracle stuff on there. From what we can see, the backups are obviously much faster than using either Avamar or NetWorker.

We are not using the Unified Dashboards feature, so I can't comment on its impact on our strategic decision-making processes.

I do not know anything about the pricing, setup cost, or licensing cost of Dell PowerProtect Data Manager because I am technical and do not deal with that.

I prefer Dell mainly because when I started my IT career or when I started my backup and storage path, it was Dell. Where I used to work, it was Dell, and I've worked on multiple other recovery or backup and recovery software. Dell always stands out because for me, it's been tested and proven, whereas multiple other software that's coming out hasn't proved itself to some extent.

I purchased Dell PowerProtect Data Manager directly through Dell.

I work with other Dell products at the moment, including Avamar, DPA, DPS, DPC, and ECS.

I have been working in the data protection field for probably about 15 years.

I would give this product an overall review rating of nine out of ten.

In my current role, I mainly help customers build the solution design on Dell PowerProtect Data Manager. This product is a backup and resilience solution. Its goal is to allow customers to back up things that they consider vital and mission-critical. Once the data is backed up, they can be resilient in case of human error or data corruption. They can also work against cybersecurity threats and data center disaster recovery. For example, a couple of months ago in London, we had a fire occur near Heathrow airport. IT systems definitely need resilience and backup. This solution simply protects operations so that when bad things happen, they have backup systems and resilience data to carry on operations.

The strongest point for Dell PowerProtect Data Manager is because of Dell's very broad product portfolio. If the customer has already invested in Dell servers and Dell storage, it certainly makes sense for them to use Dell backup as well with this PowerProtect solution. Definitely, it would synchronize, and in terms of compatibility, their support will be best for the customer. When they do the backup within a Dell environment, it is an integrated experience. Everything is Dell, so definitely there are no issues with connectivity.

When it comes to support, when bad things happen and the customer needs to call for support, they only need to call one number and reach out to one party, which is Dell support. One Dell support team will be able to help figure out what is going on. Because everything is under Dell, the Dell support side will also be able to find the root cause much more easily. That will help as well.

Although Dell has the broadest portfolio in terms of hardware as well as the software side, the customer can enjoy that piece. However, this is a two-sided blade. On the good side, the customer can have the best compatibility. On the bad side, Dell right now is not having the best interest or not having the best investment in the development of this particular product. Dell is not putting much investment in development on the backup piece. I understand this because right now the market has so many buzzwords, including AI. Every customer is more interested in putting their investment into buying new servers, new AI servers, storage, networking, and things of that nature. But on the other side, it is very common that customers are setting a much smaller budget in terms of their data protection as well as their cybersecurity side.

Because they do not have many resources or are not being actively invested in new features, I have a feeling, and this is also from customer feedback, that other vendors and competitors' products, including Veeam, Commvault, and Cohesity, are doing quite well. As a comparison, while Dell is backing up their own system, there is definitely no problem. But when it comes to a mixed environment, if the customer has in use other vendors' solutions, including HP, Cisco, or other Lenovo things, it can be a little hesitant from the customer's side.

I have been using this solution for seven to eight years.

For the licensing cost of Dell PowerProtect Data Manager, because it is software, it does not get affected by the skyrocket pricing of things including chips and memory. So it does not get affected that much, which is good. Also, for this data protection portfolio, Dell PowerProtect Data Manager, among the Dell offering portfolio, is considered a lower tier within the whole portfolio. That is also a good thing. But if compared to other competitors including Veeam or Commvault, Veeam is by far offering the most cost-effective solution. Back to the comparison, Dell PowerProtect Data Manager among the Dell side is relatively cheap, but within the market, it is still not as attractive.

The initial setup of Dell PowerProtect Data Manager can be done within half a day, less than four hours. That is what we usually do. Once the system is set up, we will ask the customer to do testing and fine-tuning. Once the backup works, the software will function accordingly. The customer will select which product or which server, for example, PowerStore. With the backup software, they select the servers, the storage, or even the servers that they host. They select those, and then they will run the backup during the scheduled time, for example, over the weekend. Once they set it up, the backup definitely takes time because usually the customer's backup network is not the premier one, not ten gig or twenty gig. Basically, it means it takes time, but the setup time is fine. Everything can be set up within less than four hours. Sometimes, I used to do a two-hour setup, and that is totally fine.

For the deployment of Dell PowerProtect Data Manager, one engineer is fine. One engineer can do it. Because Dell PowerProtect Data Manager is basically a software piece, it does not even require any physical rack-mount hardware. If this involves hardware movement, then you probably need two engineers on-site to do the rack and stack, rack mounting, cabling, and things of that nature. That will help speed things up. But on the software setup side, one person is sufficient to do the setup.

I would say yes, if the customer has already invested a certain amount of money. If they are using a lot of Dell hardware and a lot of Dell kit, and the majority of it is Dell, then it certainly makes sense. Plus, think about it in terms of a meal deal. If the customer buys A, they buy B, and potentially if they buy C as well, they will get an overall discount on everything.

The product is a backup and resilience solution. Its goal is to allow the customer to back up the things that they consider vital and mission-critical, so they can essentially be making backups. My overall review rating for Dell PowerProtect Data Manager is seven out of ten.

In Dell PowerProtect Data Manager, we are using it for retention policies. The retention lock policy is a very important feature for us. We have also achieved a reduction policy of about sixty-five percent reducing capacity. The capacity sizes are very efficient for our needs. We can also use hot-swap operations, which is fantastic for us to make the old product new by just changing the head.

These are very key features for us when telling customers that the total cost of ownership is better than the storage for backup operations.

For Storage Direct Protection, it is a good option for us to tell customers that we have good features for it. We are using a NAS slicing feature that is very efficient in our solution. We are talking to customers about the new catastrophic options available to them.

We are using Dynamic NAS protection.

For the Kubernetes support provided by Dell PowerProtect Data Manager, we are using some additional customers that have been using the Kubernetes solutions. They are using Dell PowerProtect Data Manager for this right now, and it is good. Sometimes we have struggled with some S3 operations, but we can solve all the problems. The customers are satisfied with the Kubernetes solutions for backup in Dell PowerProtect Data Manager.

Regarding the Transparent Snapshots feature, we are talking with the customers about PowerStore and the Data Domain replication, and Power Snaps, or also instant backup and instant recovery operations. We tell the customers that these are very efficient for them.

We are right now using the CRS solutions with Dell PowerProtect Data Manager operations. We have sold twenty petabytes of CRS solution in Turkey. We are also using the CyberSense software for our CRS solutions every time. Data Domain is the heart of our business right now in Turkey, in GlassHouse.

I am using the Dell PowerProtect Data Manager anomaly detection feature. We are publishing to our customers that use it in their environment. We are also making the proof of concept for all customers. We are also using the Dell demo center for our customers, talking about all the experience on the customer side.

About the recovery orchestration feature, sometimes we have a struggle, but we have no problem right now. We can use it, and we are using this feature. It is working correctly.

Improving Dell PowerProtect Data Manager is a difficult question because we are using it for the tape library operation, the cloud customers' cloud operation backups, and client backups. We can make these options much better. These three features must be applied to Dell PowerProtect Data Manager for the future, which can be better for us.

For additional features, we are trying to reach the future for tape library backups. It is very important for us that the feature will come, but we do not know when it will be. Kubernetes backup is very important right now for us.

We had some problems with Kubernetes. Sometimes we are struggling, but we can solve it without problem.

I have been dealing with Dell PowerProtect Data Manager for fifteen years, with NetWorker and also Avamar. It is now working with Dell PowerProtect Data Manager solutions.

I have no idea about the availability of a unified dashboard because I am not familiar with the customer's usage. I am pushing up the customers about using this. I would rate this product an eight out of ten.

The main use case for Dell PowerProtect Data Manager is to secure all of my company's critical data and ensure that data can be restored in case of an incident.

Dell PowerProtect Data Manager has drastically improved our backup processes, reducing the time needed for backups from 12 to 15 hours to just an hour and 30 minutes, allowing me to efficiently manage critical data resources.

I have seen a return on investment with Dell PowerProtect Data Manager through reduced time spent managing a backup solution. I set the policies and let it do its job efficiently in the background while being alerted to any issues by reporting.

The feature I like the most about Dell PowerProtect Data Manager is Instant Recovery, which allows me to restore a VM instantly by mounting it directly to the Data Domain and then performing a vMotion directly into my production environment, providing me instant availability and access to a backup that I took place up to seven hours ago.

I have used the Anomaly Detection feature of Dell PowerProtect Data Manager and recently turned it on, as it was not available in the version I was using prior. I upgraded to 19.22, which allowed me to start using Anomaly Detection, and I really appreciate it because it lets me train the data being backed up and provides insight before I ingest it into my Cyber Recovery Vault to be scanned by CyberSense.

Anomaly Detection has given me more awareness as a data administrator backing up all the data in our company because it allows me to see the overall grand scope of all the data being ingested into our organization structure and informs me about anomalies across a broad scope of accessible user data, making me more proactive than reactive.

I do utilize the Transparent Snapshots feature of Dell PowerProtect Data Manager, which is one of the best features, because it communicates with my storage solution, PowerStore, allowing it to take a snapshot at the storage level without quiescing or freezing the VM, thus enabling backups at any time without hindering production.

From a cyber resilience perspective, this means I can take more backups and snapshots quicker and more frequently without fearing the loss of critical services and systems provided to my users.

I have used the Storage Direct protection feature of Dell PowerProtect Data Manager by directly connecting to PowerStore, allowing me to back up my unified file system individually and select different retentions, providing greater granularity.

The availability of the unified dashboard of Dell PowerProtect Data Manager gives me an accurate idea of how much of my data is being protected, allowing me to discover which VMs are not protected and providing visibility into all VMs and their inclusion in a protection policy, ensuring I can restore critical resources.

One improvement I would suggest for Dell PowerProtect Data Manager is the ability to send data not just to a Data Domain but also to a PowerScale, which would provide faster backups for critical VMs, enhancing the Instant Recovery backups' speed.

I have been using Dell PowerProtect Data Manager since September of 2023.

I find Dell PowerProtect customer service to be very good; while Avamar's upgrades could take almost 24 hours, with Dell PowerProtect Data Manager, I complete upgrades in less than an hour with fast support available if needed.

I would rate the technical support from Dell for Dell PowerProtect Data Manager a ten.

In our previous solution, we used what was called Avamar, and how Dell PowerProtect Data Manager and their features helped us drastically was that if we had an outage with the main backup, our data protection application, which we called Avamar, it took me having to contact support and within 25 to 48 hours, I would have to get the unit back up online in case I had to restore critical structures.

Prior to adopting Dell PowerProtect Data Manager, I was using Dell Avamar, which was great at the time but lacked scalability and was complex, requiring support for simple tasks, whereas with Dell PowerProtect Data Manager, I can handle upgrades independently.

My experience deploying Dell PowerProtect Data Manager is straightforward compared to Avamar; with just a single OVF file, I was up and running and backing up within an hour, with the assurance of seamless connection to Data Domain for disaster recovery.

I have seen a return on investment with Dell PowerProtect Data Manager through reduced time spent managing a backup solution. I set the policies and let it do its job efficiently in the background while being alerted to any issues by reporting.

Before selecting Dell PowerProtect Data Manager, I considered a couple of solutions including NetWorker, but my Dell Solutions Engineer encouraged me to try Dell PowerProtect Data Manager, and although it was a gamble, it paid off in dividends.

My advice to organizations considering Dell PowerProtect Data Manager is to take the challenge, deploy it, and they will be amazed.

Overall, I would rate Dell PowerProtect Data Manager a nine; it will not get a ten until another application piece I am waiting for becomes available.

It allows me to sleep much better at night.

Dell PowerProtect Data Manager is a backup and recovery tool created from the ground up by Dell to cover modern workloads, mainly related to containers and Kubernetes, in addition to traditional hypervisors and normal workloads. Dell is moving their backup solutions toward everything being supported on Dell PowerProtect Data Manager, which will be their next offering. Avamar is coming to end of life, and NetWorker is still there mainly for tape output. In general, Dell's approach around tape-out solutions is becoming complex. Before it was simpler with NetWorker only, but I am not sure if Dell PowerProtect Data Manager will support tape-out or if the roadmap will include it. This has made it challenging for us to sell Dell PowerProtect Data Manager on the SMB market, and even some enterprise customers have RFPs that require tape support, which is still necessary.

Some of the advantages are the way it handles VMware backups with much superior performance and being lightweight, with something called Transparent Snapshots that creates almost very little overhead on the compute of the customer infrastructure. The way it introduces NAS backups is very competitive compared to traditional backup tools. Dell PowerProtect Data Manager integration with Data Domain and PowerStore makes it run as an orchestrator for backups to push backups from PowerStore to Data Domain. It has application-aware backup capabilities, which is not easy to find in the market with our competition. The integration with Cyber Vault and Cyber Resiliency, all these features, and AI workloads protection by supporting containers allows it to discover unprotected containers and include them in the backup policy. As a product, if customers are accepting Dell PowerProtect Data Manager with Data Domain as a target, we can easily sell it to them. However, when targeting Veeam customers who are more focused on simplicity, even though Dell PowerProtect Data Manager is very simple to manage, it is not easy to make satisfied customers change.

Dell PowerProtect Data Manager works only with Data Domain in the backend, and both products work very well together as a very powerful solution. As Data Domain has a very tight integration with Dell PowerProtect Data Manager, we have a whole solution with 65 to one data reduction guaranteed from Dell, which is something very significant compared to other competition as no one else can give this kind of guarantee.

Dell PowerProtect Data Manager has tight integration with Data Domain, which is very well known for the speed of backups and restoration of backup recovery. There is even the possibility to boot the VM directly from Data Domain without needing to restore it, as we can run it directly on the backup target. This gives customers less RTO. For example, in the case of a VM failure, we do not need to restore the full VM to production but can just boot it directly from the appliance.

The potential improvements are uncertain. The tape-out support and tight integration with Data Domain are advantages, but they can be treated as disadvantages because Dell PowerProtect Data Manager only supports Data Domain as a backup target. If a customer is looking for a cheap solution with backup to local disk, cheap SAN drives, or cheap storage, we cannot proceed with Dell PowerProtect Data Manager because it supports only Data Domain as a backup target.

Dell PowerProtect Data Manager can scale to nine on a rating scale.

I would say support is seven points out of ten for Dell PowerProtect Data Manager, though others rate it as eight.

The deployment procedure is quite easy and manageable for Dell PowerProtect Data Manager.

Dell PowerProtect Data Manager is supported to run on the cloud as well, and it is available in the marketplace on Azure and AWS.

It is very important to have these kinds of features because there are different kinds of people to access the application. Sometimes we can have access to an application admin, so we will have an administrator to give users some backup admin access with full visibility in the full infrastructure. There is even integration with Oracle and direct integration with some applications like SAP HANA. These application admins have their own control over backups and need to make sure they can see their backups in case they are running test and dev environments where some batches are not going well, so they need to roll back to the previous version. They need to have the right access to give them this flexibility in their own backup policies.

The price for the software itself is very competitive. However, because it comes with Data Domain as a whole solution, the price will increase. From a license perspective, it is a cheaper option, and there is a subscription license as well. The way use cases are supported in the single licensing is something we can quote for each use case separately or through unified licensing. The unified licensing has flexible options to license based on source capacity in terabytes, frontend or backend, or socket-based. This depends on the customer side. If there is a customer with small two or three servers with a large amount of data, socket-based licensing will be more cost-effective rather than frontend capacity which can be very expensive. If there are a lot of servers with less capacity, frontend capacity will be more cost-effective.

The way Dell PowerProtect Data Manager handles VMware backups is very good compared to the competition. The way it handles NAS backups is very good. The way it has direct integration with storage direct backups adds value as well.

The dashboard interface is quite simplistic and quite easy to use. Dell PowerProtect Data Manager can be deployed on-premises, and it can also be deployed in mixed environments with some projects running on the cloud through partner deployment. My overall review rating for Dell PowerProtect Data Manager is eight out of ten.

A few use cases for Dell PowerProtect Data Manager include VM protection, mostly focused on VMware protection, which is the major use case here.

The key differences between Dell PowerProtect Data Manager and its competitors in the market include that it is easy to use, very well integrated, and has decent cybersecurity features. The integration with workloads, particularly VMware, is very good. However, the reporting is not as good as I would like; I need more reports, and support could see further improvement.

The specific features and functionalities I find most beneficial in Dell PowerProtect Data Manager include good integration with other Dell products, such as Dell Data Domain, which makes it a very good use case for environments that already have Dell Data Domain or any other Dell products.

My impression of Dell PowerProtect Data Manager's dashboard interface is that it is good, easy to use, and quite interactive, so there are no major issues there.

The deduplication feature of Dell PowerProtect Data Manager has allowed me to reduce or save some 15% of storage compared to what I was using earlier.

Specific features missing in Dell PowerProtect Data Manager that I would like to see in the future include Active Directory Forest Recovery and ADFR recovery; they need to work on that. Additionally, other SaaS protection is required, as there are many SaaS applications these days, such as Salesforce, which need protection.

I have been working with Dell PowerProtect Data Manager for some time now.

I assess the efficiency of Dell PowerProtect Data Manager in managing data recovery processes as efficient for VM restores; it works fine, and there are no issues with that.

I would assess the stability and reliability of Dell PowerProtect Data Manager as quite stable; there are no issues with the workloads I am using.

Dell PowerProtect Data Manager does not scale with the growing needs of my organization yet.

I would evaluate the technical support and customer service teams of Dell as adequate; I cannot say outstanding, but there is obviously some room for improvement there. It is not as good as some other products in the market, so there is room for improvement.

I have worked with other solutions for backup and recovery, and deduplication apart from Dell, including Veeam, Commvault, NetBackup, and Rubrik.

My experience with deploying Dell PowerProtect Data Manager is that the deployment was not problematic, thanks to Dell support, so it was adequate to do. It did not take too much effort to deploy it, and overall, it went well with no problems onboarding the workflows or starting the backups.

The use of Dell PowerProtect Data Manager certainly improves the speed of my data recovery efforts compared to the previous Dell products because it is easier to use and much faster; the compression and deduplication are also good, which helps in recovery. I would estimate that it is at least 20-30% to 40% better than the previous ones.

I do find that with Dell PowerProtect Data Manager, the ROI is good when compared to other Dell products, but when compared to others in the current market, such as Cohesity or Veeam, it is not as good.

Regarding the pricing aspect of Dell PowerProtect Data Manager, I am not very happy with that; compared to some other products, it is a bit more costly, and there are definitely areas for improvement.

Dell PowerProtect Data Manager's role-based access control impacts security management within my IT operations by connecting with LDAP or Active Directory, providing access only to certain users, and there are no issues with that.

My advice for organizations considering Dell PowerProtect Data Manager for their environment is that if the environment has other Dell infrastructure and tools, Dell PowerProtect Data Manager will make sense. For a hybrid environment, particularly, it goes well with the Dell infrastructure, and the easy setup is a plus, so I would recommend it for such organizations.

I would rate this review an 8 out of 10.

I am currently working with both Dell products and HP products. By Dell, I mean Dell PowerProtect Data Manager. I have been dealing with Dell PowerProtect Data Manager for around four to five years, approximately, and before that, it was coming with a different name.

Currently it is coming as Dell PowerProtect Data Manager, which includes the Dell PowerProtect Data Manager Data Domain systems I am dealing with along with its Dell PowerProtect Data Manager backup solution, that is PPPDM.

That environment for Kubernetes support by Dell PowerProtect Data Manager is available, but because I am using it for my on-premise solution, not in the cloud, and my on-premise solutions do not have that type of setup, we are normally using the hypervisor options or a hypervisor integrated with my backup solution, which is why it is not explored much by me.

In PPPDM, I find the centralized console for managing all sets of applications the most valuable feature, as it gives us the feasibility to perform backup operations for physical as well as virtual applications, and all of them can be managed through the central GUI console, which is a good thing.

Overall, regarding the Transparent Snapshots feature in terms of data protection, it is reducing the workload setup by utilizing this Transparent Snapshot mechanism, and with that, the additional proxy VM requirement is reduced, meaning the ESXi host can directly send the data to the Data Domain system, thus reducing one overlapping or dependency prospect to the proxy system.

The availability of a unified dashboard is significant for my strategic decision-making processes, as it is providing a single glance of the backup status jobs and a view of the existing storage provisioned for the solution, enabling me to see prospects for growth, reduction, data compression, and deduplication, which enhances my strategic point of view to decide when and how to get it extended based on daily growth rates.

In my opinion, what can be improved about PPPDM is that for the reporting perspective, we need to install an additional reporting component. If it gets added in-built in the PPPDM solution itself without the added requirement of this reporting utility, it would make our life a little easier, especially since I have around 13 to 15 PPPDM infrastructures running, and installing additional overhead for reporting all locations complicates things. We need to improve the reporting functionality.

I would like to see additional features regarding reporting in the future, as the additional component makes it a little difficult, and the reporting is very critical right now, with different sets of reporting requested by customers, but we are not getting that much exploration regarding the reports.

I have been using Dell PowerProtect Data Manager for around four to five years, approximately, and before that, it was coming with a different name.

Currently it is coming as Dell PowerProtect Data Manager, which includes the Dell PowerProtect Data Manager Data Domain systems I am dealing with along with its Dell PowerProtect Data Manager backup solution, that is PPPDM.

The product has been stable and scalable.

The product has been stable and scalable.

I would rate the technical support by Dell as excellent, you can give it a ten out of ten.

It is easy to deploy PPPDM.

I may have gone on the portal for knowledge perspective, but as a consultant working for a different set of organizations, that is probably why I cross-checked it.

Regarding the price, I think it is reasonable and competitive. While it does not come to my head, the support for licensing and getting the license file for implementation is okay, but I am still not aware of the costing, as the costing part is managed by a different team, so I am not much aware of that.

I am not dealing with the competitors of Dell PowerProtect Data Manager, and I think it is the best option on the market at the moment.

I tried to use the anomaly detection feature, but I think somehow it got stuck. However, it is already on my agenda to get it added into our existing one, so it is still pending for me.

I am not very clear on assessing the effectiveness of Storage Direct protection in managing my data storage needs, and I may have to do some more fine-tuning or research on that.

I have tried the recovery orchestration feature, but only for testing perspective.

I would rate this review overall as an eight out of ten.

Dell PowerProtect Data Manager serves as our main infrastructure backup solution, especially for virtual machines.

The features I appreciate most about Dell PowerProtect Data Manager are its comprehensive VM capabilities, particularly its VM backup functionality. The snapshot method is more efficient compared to other vendors and tools, including Oracle. I have observed measurable cost-saving benefits with Dell PowerProtect Data Manager. Compared to other products such as Veritas, Dell offers more competitive pricing while other vendors charge significantly more.

Regarding data recovery improvements in Dell PowerProtect Data Manager, there are challenges with data sets larger than one terabyte that are not related to VM. While VM recovery functions adequately, the system does not display data progress properly. Additionally, from a policy perspective, the interface does not allow visibility of clients at the policy level. Users must search and navigate through multiple screens to find this information. In comparison, solutions like Veritas display policy and client configurations directly in the console menu. I would like to see improvements that include bare metal restore capabilities and enhanced data restore features in Dell PowerProtect Data Manager.

I have been working with Dell PowerProtect Data Manager for approximately one and a half to two years.

During version upgrades, I experienced some bug issues that required hotfixes for database and Oracle database functionality. Overall, I would rate the stability of Dell PowerProtect Data Manager an eight point five out of ten.

Dell PowerProtect Data Manager performs well from a scalability perspective and is functioning properly with our current implementation. We are actively working to expand our usage and scale the solution up and out.

Organizations considering Dell PowerProtect Data Manager should be aware that customer support responsiveness could be improved, and database-level backup support requires enhancement. I would rate Dell's customer support a seven out of ten.

Positive

Before implementing Dell PowerProtect Data Manager, I was using traditional backup solutions such as Veritas. We are now migrating to Dell PowerProtect Data Manager based on this transition.

I would recommend Dell PowerProtect Data Manager to other organizations because it is cost-effective and delivers good performance compared to alternative solutions.

My impression of Dell PowerProtect Data Manager's dashboard interface and user experience is that it is user-friendly, straightforward, and simple with an easy design that anyone can understand and use effectively. I assess the efficiency of Dell PowerProtect Data Manager in managing data recovery processes at a VM-level snapshot to be a ten out of ten, while for remaining database recoveries, I would rate it an eight out of ten. I have utilized the solution's deduplication feature through Dell EMC with three hundred configuration. Both deduplication and compression are available based on operating system settings. Regarding role-based access control and its impact on security management within our operations, we are currently not utilizing role-based access and instead maintain common credentials only, though such role-based access control is available in solutions like Veritas. My overall review rating for Dell PowerProtect Data Manager is eight point five out of ten.

My main application is backup for the data center. Dell innovated significantly in the GUI of the product, making it very easy to use. I think it may lack some features like desktop backups, but for data center backups and enterprise applications, it is more than enough.

It supports new applications like Kubernetes and virtualized environments, and it excels in this part of the data center.

I believe it covers both operational facilitation and eases the backup process for the data center administrators. It covers the full range of data center requirements.

I work with Dell PowerProtect Data Manager and Dell PowerProtect Data Domain, which are the most common products in the PowerProtect family that I use regularly.

I cover the full portfolio of Dell, including PowerEdge, PowerStore, Dell PowerProtect Data Manager, PowerScale, and PowerFlex.

I would suggest adding a desktop backup feature, which would be a valuable option for customers. It also lacks tape library support and does not back up tapes. Although tape is somewhat outdated technology, customers still have use cases where they maintain backups on tapes. Dell PowerProtect Data Manager does not have tape support. These two features would make it a complete solution.

I have been using this solution since its release, approximately two years ago.

The support is acceptable but not great. The teams are capable enough and can solve problems, but they take some time to do so.

The setup process is very straightforward and simple, taking only minutes to complete.

We primarily offer the implementation ourselves, configuring and implementing the solution for our customers. Rarely does a customer choose to implement the solution independently.

Veeam is the most comparable solution in terms of price and features.

Dell PowerProtect Data Manager has full support and a comprehensive ecosystem, supporting many third-party solutions and non-Dell products.

We typically sell Dell PowerProtect Data Manager with other products like Data Domain as part of a larger solution. Customers benefit from the tight integration of Dell PowerProtect Data Manager with other Dell products.

I would rate this product an 8 out of 10.