System Administrator at a government with 501-1,000 employees
Real User
A seamless and efficient backup solution
Pros and Cons
  • "Commvault is both very stable and scalable."
  • "The initial setup is rather complex, especially when switching versions."

What is our primary use case?

We use Commvault as our main backup solution.

Commvault is also a very reliable backup solution; this is one of our main use cases. There are several other use cases, but backup is the most dominant feature.

Our organization has between 500 to 1,000 employees. The IT department and a few admins use this solution.

What is most valuable?

Commvault has a very extensive report section, at least in the Java console and web console. There is a transition being made from Java to a web console currently, which offers a more sophisticated, more advanced, and more modern interface. 

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Commvault for over eight years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Commvault is both very stable and scalable.

Buyer's Guide
Commvault Cloud
May 2024
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How are customer service and support?

The technical support is very good. We don't get direct support from Commvault as our first line of support; there is an intermediate organization that is very capable, who are masters, the highest degree of admins — they provide us with support. If there's any problem or any advice that we need, they are always available to support us.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is rather complex, especially when switching versions.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The price could always be lower. I do not have the exact pricing information but I know it's not cheap.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We would like to evaluate other options. Other products could be more suited to our needs, but currently, we don't have the time to evaluate other options.

What other advice do I have?

Think about your backup strategy before you begin making a blueprint — that's very important. Do not deploy it and then try to change it. This will only lead to unnecessary difficulties. What are the needs of your organizations? RTO and RPO are also very important. If you want to switch versions or solutions once it has already been deployed, it's not impossible to do so, but it's going to take some serious time and effort.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give this solution a rating of eight.

In every product, there is always a balance between the features and how you use them. This solution provides many options; however, If you want to understand and use all of the features that are available, as there are so many, it's going to be quite difficult. I think that's quite common with every application: you use a specific set of features that you're used to and which are easy to use. There are almost too many features; it's almost too much for an admin to handle — It's just overkill. 

A more simplified interface or front-end would be more preferable. This is not to say that the back-end should be easier, it can be complex. Moreover, it needs to be complex to satisfy demanding customers.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Solutions Architect at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Real User
Their support is very fast when resolving our problems
Pros and Cons
  • "I can collect the target data, then we connect it to Commvault. There is not another system that can connect to our target database or target storage. This is very important for us, because there is the threat of malware right now. This can protect not only the product, but also the backup data from outside threats."
  • "I would like Commvault to have a feature for cybersecurity threats, e.g. securing the target backup repository. Commvault just started testing and releasing this feature, but it needs to be stabilized."

What is our primary use case?

Our customers use Commvault as a backup solution.

I work as a system integrator. We implement and support Commvault in our customers' environments.

We usually deploy the latest major release.

How has it helped my organization?

We can monitor, with normal detection, from the regular backup. We can determine whether it is suspicious if the client suddenly has major changes in their data.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable features are the integration with the storage center and support for most applications, databases, and security system platforms that exist on the market. 

The user interface for Commvault is quite user-friendly. It is easy to manage the Commvault environment using the user interface.

Commvault Command Center is fully supported and has many features for us to manage the environment.

Commvault is able to do the recovery process from their console, so we don't have to actually log into it. Also, Commvault can direct information to another server. The recovery option is a very good feature.

I can collect the target data, then we connect it to Commvault. There is not another system that can connect to our target database or target storage. This is very important for us, because there is the threat of malware right now. This can protect not only the product, but also the backup data from outside threats.

Commvault supports remote office backup. It backs up the local data, then keeps monitoring and managing it.

What needs improvement?

I would like Commvault to have a feature for cybersecurity threats, e.g. securing the target backup repository. Commvault just started testing and releasing this feature, but it needs to be stabilized. 

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been implementing Commvault for our customers for around three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Commvault is very stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Commvault is very scalable in terms of the data that Commvault can maintain.

How are customer service and support?

Commvault support is very good and helpful. We receive a lot of help for our problems.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

How was the initial setup?

The deployment of Commvault is pretty straightforward. Commvault can do remote installation for the client. The deployment time depends on the customer's or user's permissions.

What was our ROI?

One of my customers has seen savings when using Commvault compared to other storage solutions. They compared the price of Commvault with performing maintenance on their backup system, and Commvault's price is competitive versus other backup software.

Commvault helps our customers' admins to minimize the time they spend on backup tasks and other projects. Commvault is very good in terms of performance backup. I think support time has been reduced by around 25% to 30%.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Commvault is quite high in terms of pricing and licensing.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

I have also worked with IBM Spectrum Protect and Veeam. Overall, Commvault has better support than other backups. Their support is very fast when resolving our problems.

My customers use dedupe applications, so we don't use Commvault's feature to reduce storage costs.

What other advice do I have?

Commvault is very feature-rich. Its licensing is quite easy to configure, though we must pick the right size for the backup environment so the customer can have the best price.

I would rate Commvault as eight out of 10.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Integrator
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Commvault Cloud
May 2024
Learn what your peers think about Commvault Cloud. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: May 2024.
771,170 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Diego Torres - PeerSpot reviewer
Founder at AT Vault
Reseller
Top 5Leaderboard
A unique administration platform and interface; its one platform is a key benefit for our customers
Pros and Cons
  • "Commvault has a unique administration platform with more features than its competitors."
  • "Could be easier to implement."

What is our primary use case?

We are the most important communications company in Argentina. We deal with a large variety of customers. We are partners of Commvault and I'm the company founder. Our company provides IT solutions. 

What is most valuable?

Commvault has a unique administration platform and interfaces, providing backup, archive, reporting and replication features. Commvault has more features than its competitors. Net Backup, for example, doesn't integrate a lot. Commvault has only one platform and this is important for the customer. They don't have a large market share in Argentina but whenever we present it to our customers they like the product and want to do a proof of concept.

What needs improvement?

The product could be easier to implement, they could create a new console to configure the solution. I'd like to see improvements on the user interface, support, pricing, and integration with other solutions. They could also improve their marketing of the brand.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been working with this solution for almost seven years. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability is good. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability is good. 

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is easy. Deployment time is dependent on the infrastructure of the customer.

What other advice do I have?

This is a relatively new solution for customers in Argentina, so I go to a lot of effort to know the solution well and to present it to our customers. It's not easy but I think that when the customer becomes familiar with the solution, many want to change to it. The stand out aspect of Commvault is that it supports its clients on a unique platform. Whether it's underlying solutions, cloud solutions, SAP Hana, for example, replication backup, archiving, reporting, all of this is one platform. I would suggest starting with small solutions, to learn the product and see if it's the best option for your needs.

I would rate this solution a nine out of 10. 

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
PeerSpot user
Real User
Has the highest backup/restore granularity that I have seen in any data management tool
Pros and Cons
  • "A very stable and scalable platform (you can backup/restore/protect a couple of MBs or hundred of TBs as well from the same console/platform)."
  • "Reduce the complexity for better understanding of the reports. There are a lot of variables in which you can get confused while elaborating on reports."

How has it helped my organization?

Since our corporation is big, it was really difficult to back up specific data types, manage admin roles, have true visibility of where my data was stored and whether it was effectively being backed up.

Now, I know where my backup data is. I can leverage on cloud storage technologies as well and restore it with granularity level that I have not seen in any other data management tool.

What is most valuable?

There are a lot of good features. Here are some of them:

  • Capacity-based licensing
  • A very stable and scalable platform (you can backup/restore/protect a couple of MBs or hundred of TBs as well from the same console/platform).
  • Relatively easy to use GUI
  • You can protect/backup virtually any kind of data from virtually any corporate type application (in-house or commercial) from one management console.
  • Has the highest backup/restore granularity that I have seen in any data management tool.
  • An extremely fast search engine for restoring and securing data and is hardware agnostic so you do not depend on excessively expensive storage hardware.

What needs improvement?

Reduce the complexity for better understanding of the reports. There are a lot of variables in which you can get confused while elaborating on reports.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

No.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

No.

How are customer service and technical support?

A 10 out of 10.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Yes, we used a different solution. We switched due to consolidation and cost effectiveness.

How was the initial setup?

Straightforward.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Know which type of data you are going to backup/protect and select the most appropriate bundle for you.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Yes. TSM and NetBackup.

What other advice do I have?

Try it. Think in functionality and solution rather than conventional big names believing that there is nothing better.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
PeerSpot user
Solutions Architect with 51-200 employees
Vendor
NetApp E Series and CommVault Simpana

Data protection is a challenge for most organisations and many are very dissatisfied with their current solutions – common issues tend to be:

  • Point solutions are used for VMware/Hyper-V, physical servers, laptops, remote offices and archiving which increases complexity and costs
  • Purpose-Built Backup Appliances (PBBAs) are used, whilst they work well, they further increase the costs
  • Ever increasing amounts of data are becoming difficult to backup in the amount of time available
  • Tape backups can be unreliable, restores are slow and they are expensive to manage

To address the problem NetApp and CommVault have created joint reference architectures that consist of NetApp E-Series storage and CommVault Simpana software – just add virtual or physical servers and away you go.

So how do these joint reference architectures solve these issues?

  • NetApp E-Series provides:
    • Huge amounts of high-throughput and easy to expand storage, at a cost per TB way lower than PBBAs, that either negates the need for tape or keeps its use to an absolute minimum
  • CommVault Simpana provides:
    • A single solution to address all the above data protection use cases – managed from one console
    • An advanced software based de-duplication engine, similar to that found in PBBAs, tightly integrated with the data protection application
    • Advanced techniques for reducing backup times (i.e. source-based de-duplication, archiving, incrementals forever and array snapshots)

So we know it is good, but how much does it all cost?

  Hypervisor licenses Non-hypervisor licenses Replicated Disk Libraries Price
Small 6 CPUs 1 Tb 2x31 TB NL-SAS usable £23,000
Medium 12 CPUs 2Tb 2x103 TB NL-SAS usable £63,000
Large 24 CPUs 4Tb 2x181 TB NL-SAS usable £85,000

The beauty of this solution is that it includes two disk libraries therefore backing up to tape will often not be required, unless very long term retention is needed and even then it is likely to be very infrequent.

The above table is designed to demonstrate the affordability of the solution, in reality most organisations would want to customise both the software licenses and the amount of storage capacity to meet their exact needs.

Download the NetApp E-Series & CommVault Simpana datasheet to learn more.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: We are Partners with EMC and CommVault.
PeerSpot user
Karabo  Molema - PeerSpot reviewer
Founder and Director at BMBE SOLUTIONS
Real User
Flexible, affordable, and scalable
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable feature of Metallic is its flexibility and user-friendly."
  • "The integration of Metallic could improve. It would be a benefit if Metallic could integrate with multiple applications or platforms."

What is our primary use case?

I am using Metallic for backing up Microsoft 365.

How has it helped my organization?

The solution has helped our business.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature of Metallic is its flexibility and user-friendly.

What needs improvement?

The integration of Metallic could improve. It would be a benefit if Metallic could integrate with multiple applications or platforms.

In the future, the solution could add more features to help end-users be efficient.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Metallic for a few weeks.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Metallic is a stable solution.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I have found the scalability of Metallic to be good.

I found the solution best suited for small businesses.

How was the initial setup?

I found the implementation of Metallic to be simple, I come from a technical background.

What about the implementation team?

I had some assistance from our local reseller for the implementation of the solution.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Metallic is an affordable solution.

What other advice do I have?

I rate Metallic an eight out of ten.

I have not used the solution enough to give it a higher rating.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: reseller
PeerSpot user
System Engineer at Darva
Real User
Easy to use, easy to deploy, and easy to update
Pros and Cons
  • "Commvault is a very stable product."
  • "I think there is room for improvement with the reports. They are a little poor."

What is most valuable?

Commvault is easy to use, easy to deploy, and easy to update.

What needs improvement?

I think there is room for improvement with the reports. They are a little poor. There is a lot of room for customization with Commvault, but we have not done that, so the reports do not work the best for us.

We have virtualization, but sometimes some virtual machines are not backed up.

For us, a system ransomware scenario would be a good solution. This would help us not be nervous about our backup solution if we experience a ransomware attack. 

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using Commvault for seven years, since 2014. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Commvault is a very stable product. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We are using VMware for virtualization every day. The issue with scalability that Commvault has is that any modifications in virtualization that we make have a direct impact on it.

We do not have a problem with scalability, but I think if we had to restore a large scale of information, it would be a problem because of the time we would have to spend restoring all of our virtual machines. However, we could backup as many as a 1,000 virtual machines very easily. 

How are customer service and technical support?

Commvault's technical support is good. However, because I am French and not a native speaker, I have a hard time understanding tech support specialists that are from India.  

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Before Commvault, we used a French solution. It had issues with backups and was very bad. We had to migrate before we encountered a bigger problem. 

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is straightforward. 

What about the implementation team?

Commvault helped us with the migration. A two-person team was involved in the deployment from our end, a system engineer and a hardware engineer. 

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Commvault is too expensive. 

What other advice do I have?

I would recommend this solution. It is a good solution for cloud backup. 

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Senior Manager Infra/Workplace/Cloud Platform at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Support for on-premises and cloud deployments, reasonable cost, stable, and easy to scale
Pros and Cons
  • "We can use it on-premises and in the cloud."
  • "The retention log feature could be an issue for us and can be improved. The backup schedule can also be better in terms of how you set it up."

What is most valuable?

We can use it on-premises and in the cloud. 

What needs improvement?

The retention log feature could be an issue for us and can be improved. The backup schedule can also be better in terms of how you set it up.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using this solution for a year.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It is stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is easy to scale.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was straightforward. The deployment took a couple of weeks. The biggest challenge is about the equipment.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Its cost is reasonable, but anybody else can do better benchmarking.

What other advice do I have?

You need to look at the cost as compared to other similar products.

I would rate Commvault an eight out of ten.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Commvault Cloud Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
Updated: May 2024
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Commvault Cloud Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.