Commvault Cloud Reviews

We really needed a product where we could extend the Microsoft Office 365 backups and archival process, as well as back up our Office 365 SharePoints and our users' OneDrives. That way we could have a seven-year retention plan and if we need to go back and grab someone's email that they accidentally deleted two years ago, we could. 

We also needed a solution that we didn't have to have onsite storage for, because we had a storage restriction onsite. This product gave me the ability to have everything stored, as a SaaS model. Everything is right there.

We recently had an issue where someone couldn't find an email that they had just recently written. When I went looking inside the backups, I was able to find and restore that email and they were able to continue working. It was very critical for a customer sale, but that email was recovered and it was perfect. Because it was just a single email, it was relatively quick. If I had had to do it another way, it probably would have taken me an hour-and-a-half to two hours longer with our old way of doing it. Before we went with Office 365, we were Exchange on-premises and it would have required me to have pulled out a SAN snapshot to recover the data that way, or go to the tape. Because this is all hosted in the cloud and works in the cloud, I was able to do it in five minutes.

Metallic has helped minimize the time spent on backup tasks, absolutely. It has reduced the time, daily, that I deal with whether the backup is up, and performing backups, by about 50 percent. I have more time to do other things.

I have been able to save on hardware costs at my site due to the low price of the application. I am looking at a reduction in infrastructure costs of at least 25 percent.

The most valuable part of the solution is that it is fire-and-forget. Everything we've programmed into this Metallic SaaS offering is what they claim it to be. It's been just a treat to use it. From starting the trial, to the 15 minutes it took to run my first backup, to the 30-minutes for my first restore of the users' email, it has just been fantastic. It works as advertised.

Since it's built off the regular Commvault product, and I use that Commvault product, the user interface has been very easy for me to get into. It's easy to use and navigate through. I've had no questions on how to find the relevant information, and their documentation has been on-point for helping me find all the hidden features inside their menus.

The Command Center, as far as providing a complete view of data goes, is 100 percent accurate. I found stuff that I didn't know about. I was able to find out that a couple of things are flowing in an odd way and I was able to get those remedied and treated in a way that ended up improving my boss' daily life.

It also provides me with a single platform to move, manage, and recover data across on-premises, hybrid, and cloud locations. It's a single window to see everything I needed to see regarding this level of backup. I really dislike like it when the company purchases multiple products that do similar things and I have to go to different windows to get full insight. This solution gives me the full insight without having to use other products, metrics, or reporting tools.

Since it plugs into my Office 365 tenant, it was literally three clicks. So it supports cloud well. And it's all documented well. They even provided training and onboarding help for that 15-minute process. It was just fantastic.

I would like to see some of the code execute a little bit better when I add new licenses and assign licenses to users. I'd like to see that information update a little quicker. It would also be helpful to be able to run a report on licensing so that I have better visibility into how much licensing I'm using.

I really have no other complaints beyond that. And they were able to get me that information relatively quickly when I submitted a ticket.

I've been using Metallic since day-one of its release in October, 2019.

I would give the stability "five nines." I've not seen it down. I can't say it hasn't been down once, but it's been up the entire time I've used it. There have been no issues. It's snappy and responsive. I'm impressed with the stability of it.

Scaling is amazingly easy. The way they recommend the setup, it is easy to drop a user into one of my security groups and, within 15 minutes, they are in the backup schedule rotation and are being backed up.

I have 75 users enrolled. We may have plans to expand in the future to start taking advantage of their endpoint product through Metallic. We would expand from 75 seats to 200 seats in the Office 365 backup, and would add on another set of 200 seats for their endpoint backup.

Commvault's technical support for the solution is knowledgeable. I haven't been able to stump them. They've been able to answer every single question and help me with any issues I've had. They've just been, bar none, fantastic.

We were using Backup Exec for a lot of stuff and ShadowProtect SPX, a StorageCraft solution. Now that we have this online, it's fantastic. Every product that we use from Commvault, in general, has been fantastic.

We switched to Metallic from our other solutions because they didn't provide the Office 365 backup component we wanted.

We needed a backup solution and I purchased their standard Commvault for our on-premises stuff. When I attended Commvault Go, their customer conference, they debuted Metallic and I said, "That's exactly the product I was looking for, for my 365 backup, and I'm buying it from Commvault." I already knew how their software works and Metallic is same. They're just doing it in a SaaS model for 365, endpoint, and even server backup if you want. I really needed that 365.

The initial setup is straightforward. It's 100 percent accurate on their website. From start to finish: 15 minutes and you're running your first backup.

My implementation strategy for this was for the 365, the OneDrive and the SharePoint components. When we brought it online, my goal was to target the 75 most used, customer-facing mailboxes. Within 15 minutes I was able to make sure the product was working and, by the end of that day, I had everyone applied. Compared to other products, that would have taken days.

If you have technical experience it will be straightforward. We walked through their installation script just to confirm I had everything done, because, given how new the product is, they wanted to test their help script. And it was spot-on. They had it perfect. I am fully confident that, even if a person doesn't have great technical knowledge, they would be able to help that person through it.

When I purchased Commvault Metallic, they did have an onboarding process that helped me if I had any questions. It was literally a 15-minute process. I did everything before we even had that phone call, so I got to spend the call asking a few questions. It was really easy. 

I would say we have seen a return on investment, but it's a hard metric to come up with due to DR. We haven't had a DR scenario where it has paid for itself. But I view it like buying car insurance. It's better to have it and not need it, than something happening and needing it and not having it.

We are paying on a yearly basis and it comes out to about $3.80 a user per month.

There are no other costs for the specific features that I have. If I was to use server backups with them, there would be an additional cost per terabyte of storage, based on my storage targets, or an infrastructure cost if I was using it to target on-ground storage stuff. But because I'm using the platform that includes storage for the Office 365 backup exclusively, there is no additional cost.

The other products I was looking at wanted to charge me anywhere between $10 to $15 per person and I would have to do storage on top of that. That means I would be paying by the terabyte if I was putting the storage in the cloud or having to purchase hardware on-premises to do so. With the Office 365 offering from Metallic, at the price point we got it at, it was perfect. They knew exactly what the market needed and they hit their marks.

We really didn't evaluate other vendors because none of them gave me the options that I was looking for and that Metallic was offering: a low price per user, and storage included for the 365 backup. With other products I would have had to purchase cloud storage and pay for additional storage, or the cost per seat was just not something I was willing to pay.

The biggest lesson I've learned is to remind people that they still need to back up Office 365 emails. Just because it's not on their premises, they should still back it up.

Commvault gives you a fantastic 45-day trial. It's worth trying it. They have a really good, long trial period. They will answer any questions you have during that process. I know a lot of people say, "Just try the product." With this one, try the product and you'll see the ease of use.

For deployment and maintenance of the solution, for our size of company, it's just one person, a system administrator who does overall operations support.

I've done almost everything with Commvault, e.g., back and forth centralization for file systems and applications like SQL, Oracle, VMware, and Hyper-V. Commvault does a lot of integration. 

Most of our installations are on-premise, but I remember doing one installation on the cloud.

We always work with the latest version of the solution.

We are not utilizing Commvault as it should be. Most installations are for backup and protecting data. We have it on cloud or on-premise. Most of the customers need only this. So, I haven't given real value other than backup and restore. However, we are working on this with our customers, trying to give them the culture of how to use this data and product with value. For example, using Commvault to migrate your applications. 

You can back up everything from this one backup solution. You can do backups, archives, and replications. You can backup 89 percent of the application.

It can support the backup to and from the cloud. The cloud integration with Commvault is excellent. It can support a lot of cloud vendors, like Amazon, Azure, and Google Cloud Platform.

The endpoint protection for PCs, laptops, and mobile devices is a feature that they have done a lot of hard work with. It can do backups anytime, e.g., when you have a device connected from on-premise, when are you connected through the WAN, and if you didn't do the right setup. This is a good feature.

If you have cloud applications and payment applications, you can migrate from the payment app to the cloud and also migrate from one cloud to another cloud. There is a lot of flexibility on what you can do in Commvault.

In Commvault, they used to use only the CommCell Console for backup and configuration. They have been working on a new console for quite some time now. The last time I installed the solution (maybe last week), I used the Web Console, which is excellent. Commvault can be a bit complex, but on the Web Console, they have done very beautiful work. You can do a lot of things easily and simply with the Web Console. It has 90 percent solved the complexity of Commvault. You sometimes need to log into the complex interface, but almost everything can be done from the web interface.

The Command Center is provided from the web interface. You can back up the data for everybody, but also you can give everybody the ability to view and restore their data. For example, if a laptop, machine, or environment is owned by X, then X can look in and see the environment and data that he has backed up. He can see everything that he owns and can manage the environment as he wishes. It gives him an excellent view of his environment and infrastructure. Also, if you are a service provider, you can back up data for multiple companies and give everyone an interface for their environment to manage, backup, and restore data. Commvault has done excellent work in this area. 

I would like them to keep working on the new web interface to migrate out of the old interface because the old interface is a bit complex. It was driving customers away because of the complexity. If they migrate everything (100 percent of the features), this would make the product be perfect.

We have been using the solution for two years.

The stability is excellent. Once you install and configure everything the right way, there is only the infrastructure. If there is a problem with the infrastructure, it will reflect on your backup. If there are no problems with the infrastructure, then there will be no problems. I have been working with Commvault for two years and don't remember opening more than 10 cases for a lot of customers.

It is easily scalable. You may need to add a gateway, proxy, or media server to the environment before adding more data to the environment. 

Something that is not commonly used is that you can use Appian as a backup storage solution in one integrated package. 

I rarely use the technical support because of the stability. The technical support is very good. Once you have a case, depending on the severity, there is an engineer who will connect with you. That's the most important thing when you have a problem. They will connect with you and solve your problem on spot. Commvault has a built-in feature that if it's connected to the Internet with one click you can upload all the logs. Then, the Commvault engineer can see all the logs he needs. Most of the time, it takes one hour for a problem to be solved as they have excellent support.

It's an excellent solution for cloud support. One of the important features that I am selling and trying to convince customers to use is the backup for Office 365, SharePoint, and OneDrive from Microsoft. Microsoft can be in your environment with high availability and everything will be good, but if you delete it by mistake, then for a short period Microsoft can't restore anything. Also, the way Chromebooks integrates with the cloud services is excellent.

I started my experience with HPE Data Protector, which I now hate, because it's now Micro Focus and it's killing me.

I have worked with Dell EMC. Their solution does the work, but there are a lot of the problems with the ESXi.

I have worked with NetBackup. NetBackup is good, but I haven't seen the new feature like they have in Commvault for integration.

I have also worked with Veritas Backup Exec.

With Commvault, if you need basic integration and configuration but no advanced features, then you can do the setup in maximum three to four hours. However, if you need to do everything, you will need everything to be organized for you to work.

For the backup specifically, you have to implement the basic design with every client. It then depends on their needs, environment, and how we can make their life easier. Every time, we have to change something in order to give our customers the best experience.

The solution enables our customers to save on infrastructure costs by being able to manage what were disparate data management solutions in one place. It is one of the most important features: You can do backup for almost everything from one platform. Plus, you can reduce costs by using any cheap storage and still have the deduplication feature. You can present any cheap storage for the backup and not have to worry about the B2B high cost appliances, like HPE, Dell EMC Data Domain, etc. When you can do everything from one place, it's always better. It will reduce cost on the infrastructure and human resources who manage the environment.

It was not very popular because of its previous cost, but they have been working on the pricing, and now anyone can afford to use Commvault. They changed the modeling criteria for their pricing. Previously, there was only the capacity modeling based on your content capacity. In this case, they would give you a license and you would have to pay it. Now, most of the environment is virtualized so you can have the best CPU, VMs, etc. You buy whatever you need and pay for what you need.

The most important feature that other backup solutions in the enterprise field are missing is a built-in feature for deduplication. It has a buildt-in deduplication engine and database. Therefore, you don't need another B2B vendor, like Appian, in order to do the deduplication. This is the most important feature that other solutions don't have. Most of them need another solution, like Appian or B2B storage. Also, the integration with storage and the snapshots (taken from the storage) have a lot of variety. 

I'm a fan of Commvault. I have worked with a lot of backup solutions for about eight years. Commvault is the best until now that I have worked with.

Commvault is the best for cloud integration. I tried VMware where you can back up to the cloud, but it's not easy. With CommVault, you can see the cloud environment, cloud machines and virtual machines (such as on-premises virtual machines). With other solutions, there are a few limitations.

I am still working with Veeam. 

There is also another solution, Cohesity. It is a good solution but it still has a lot to do.

Buy Commvault. It is an excellent backup solution. I would recommend the solution.

What is important to Commvault is the flexibility. E.g., if you have a new application that you want to integrate, but it's not supported, they can help you with that. They will start immediately working on it with the development. We have talked with Commvault many times, and this was one of the things that they are proud of. They can give you an integration, even if it's not integrated yet. In addition, Commvault has done a partnership with HPE, which helps with integrations.

I would rate the solution as a 10 (out of 10).

We use the solution for backup and recovery.

The solution's most valuable features are compression and duplication ratio.

The solution's pricing could be better.

I have been using the solution since 2020.

It is a stable solution. I rate its stability as an eight.

It is a scalable solution, and I rate its scalability as an eight. Currently, we have three solution users in our organization.

The solution's initial setup was complex. Our team contacted the vendor for assistance. They logged in remotely with us and solved the issue.

We implemented the solution with the help of our in-house team.

The solution is highly-priced.

I recommend the solution to others and rate it as a nine.

Our primary use case is for backups. We are customers of Commvault and I'm a senior IT administrator.

Real-time synchronization is a good feature.

This is not a very high standard product. 

I've been using this solution for three years. 

The solution is not very stable. 

The technical support is below average. 

We had many issues so the deployment took around three months. We had two IT admins carrying out the implementation. 

I rate this solution four out of 10. 

Commvault Complete Data Protection has scale-out hardware. It allows you to build hardware when running out of capacity or performance is degraded. You can scale the entire hardware by adding servers. The data can be distributed across all these nodes and is resilient across single or multiple node failures. In comparison, Dell EMC does not have a scale-up platform for the backup.

With Commvault Complete Data Protection, we have a scale of backup positions because we don't know if our backups or workloads may increase. With Commvault Complete Data Protection, we don't have to worry about running out of capacity or buying other hardware. The solution also has active applications between two sites that the Dell EMC network does not have. With Commvault Complete Data Protection, you can have a high-level backup server down on one site, all your backup catalogues can be replicated to another site, and you can bring the backup server from the second site in just a few seconds.

The Commvault Complete Data Protection interface is straightforward to use.

There could be improvements to the backup failures. The backup is critical because if we lose even one day of backup, it is not good. Backup failures typically happen because all end devices are prone to failures. But when failures occur, we have a long window to fix them. We usually don't need support to fix it, but I engage support if required. I can fix about eighty percent of the failures.

Commvault should implement documentation or knowledge-based articles to assist. Customers can then efficiently utilize them and fix the failures themselves. Calling support takes time, and we don't know if the SLA will be breached while waiting. So vendors should document the failures for visibility, and we can quickly fix them ourselves.

They can also improve the bugs. They have security measures for ransomware, but the bugs should be fixed. In addition, before getting a new product, the area managers always sell their product and treat us with respect and dignity, but when the product is onboarded and live, they do not engage with us in the same way. They only engage with us when there is a problem.

We have been using this solution for eight months. We've moved 65 Microsoft workload backups to Commvault Metallic from Commvault Complete Data Protection. Still, Commvault Metallic is inconsistent because they are working on optimizing it and enhancing it monthly. We haven't had exposure for on-premises, but we'll get it in eight to ten months for Commvault Complete Data Protection.

We were doing a comparative study on Veritas, Commvault and Veeam, the leading enterprise backup solution providers. They have a single panel interface where you can manage both the on-premises workflows and the cloud, and you can migrate between them and vice versa to any storage. In comparison, Dell EMC networks are lacking, and they are still legacy solutions. They don't have the integration of their on-premise workloads to the cloud or send the cloud workloads to on-premises. They also can't manage them through a single interface. Based on this study, Commvault Complete Data Protection is the best.

I rate this solution a nine out of ten. The product is really good. Commvault has wonderful security features like backup and recovery features. Other solutions have their methodology for backing up and storing data in the target disk. Commvault is very good; in most cases, they are better than Veeam. There are similarities regarding backup, recording methodology, incorporating cloud workloads and integrating cloud with on-premises but storage matters with these solutions. If you prioritize your hardware, Commvault is a good choice.

Our primary use case for this solution is for backups and restoration, and we deploy the solution on-premises.

The solution has provided our organization with a better security posture.

The convenience of backing up and restoring simultaneously is very valuable.

We have been using this solution for five years.

The solution is stable.

The solution is scalable, and the entire organization is currently using this solution.

I rate the technical support team as six out of ten.

Neutral

We previously used Veeam.

The initial setup was complex.

Implementation was done in-house with a team of approximately ten people.

I don't recall the exact cost of licensing. However, I rate the prices a ten out of ten.

I rate this solution ten out of ten. It is a great tool which is easy to use, and I am satisfied with the product.

We primarily use the solution for ransomware protection.

It is a very stable product. It's reliable.

The product is scalable. 

It's great for getting data back.

The product is a bit complex. 

The price should be reduced more. We'd like to see improvement in the appliances, the OEMs. They have to increase the number of OEMs. 

Normally it's available with HP or Lenovo, yet very limited. We are expecting with open-source, with Supermicro, that those kinds of appliances will support as necessary.

I've been using the solution for four years, since 2018.

The solution is very stable and reliable. The performance is good. There are no bugs or glitches, and it doesn't crash or freeze. 

We can scale the solution as we need to. The hardware supports any kind of storage. 

Everyone is using Commvault. It takes a backup of their endpoint devices, and mostly it's used by the admins to restore, schedule backups, and other things.

We have maybe 700 people on the solution right now. 

Technical support is okay. We are mostly satisfied with the level of support.

Positive

I cannot say that the solution is straightforward. It's a little complex.

Normally, if it is the on-prem edition of Commvault, you need the expertise to handle the implementation. When it is the cloud, Commvault Metallic, it's very easy.

We handle implementations for clients. 

I'm purely technical. I don't deal with the licensing aspect of the product.

I'd rate the product four out of five in terms of affordability. From what I understand, it's not overly expensive. 

We are a partner of Commvault. We are an implementation partner. 

If a user decides to implement Comvault on-prem, they should select a partner who can support them better with the coordination of Commvault.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. I like the scalability, steadiness, and reliability of the product. We can rely on Commvault for the data. 100%, you will get your data back. That's why we use it.

We are a customer service provider. The implementation that we carried out is for a client that wanted to support all the operating systems, applications, and services in the cloud that it has but only with a centralized product, which would additionally allow having Snapshot within the platform in order to speed up the RPO and RTO times that are currently available. 

Version 11 was implemented with capacity licensing that allows the integration of an innumerable number of products, limiting only the use of the license.

It helped us reduce the number of servers that are required for a stable operation. Since previously there were different solutions depending on the product, operating system, application, or database it is within the client and thus able to ensure critical information for the company, derived from that, Commvault allows us to centralize the administration of the data since it has a wide range of products that must support the different critical mission systems that must be protected to offer security.

The initial analysis for which the test of the Commvault product was carried out, is derived from the client's need. It had different applications and environments, where, in other circumstances, two or more products of other brands would be implemented depending on the environment (Virtualization, Databases, Public Clouds, and private clouds).

With Commvault the integration of the different products is centralized. Additionally, you can also control storages that are responsible for generating snapshots and control them from the same data management tool, as well as replication and in its latest benefits, security protection against ransomware.

So far, the only improvement that has been identified is to keep its documentation updated.

They need to integrate configuration screens or videos (free training courses, webinars, demos) so that engineers with little experience can fully exploit the features that are offered or managed within the license that was acquired, and thus have better quality and completely satisfactory experience, in addition to integrating more products derived from the result of the integration of the first product or license.

I've used the solution for six years. 

The stability is very good and derived from the fact that in all the points of contact that make up the backup environment, there is the possibility of configuring the High Availability of the platform.

It is a good solution that can grow horizontally to a large number of nodes.

The support is extremely good as they have it separated by levels and types of service with dedicated engineers with advanced knowledge about Commvault and the different applications or products.

Positive

Previously, different products were used depending on the product or brand, however, it meant having a dedicated specialist for each product as well as more space in the data center, greater use of servers, storage, networks, etc.

The initial setup was very simple. Due to the fact that each of the installation phases provides detailed information on the information required to configure or gives you the option to request help, it sends you to the official documentation page to follow up on the Wizard.

We implemented using the in-house team.

Within the analysis carried out, it is estimated that in one year the investment generated will be recovered.

It may be a high price, however, the quality of the product gives it an acceptable value.

We also looked into Veeam and Veritas.