Commvault Cloud Reviews

We are using it as a backup and recovery solution. 

We have a server on-premises. Our hardware is running on HP devices. We are only using the on-premises solution. In the future, we will use the hybrid or cloud solution. Our management is trying to go for hybrid solutions.

As a company, we faced ransomware attacks twice, and both times, we recovered because of Commvault's backup and recovery solution. 

It helps in protecting our customers' data very easily. Compared to other vendors, Commvault has a lot of features. If something happens, we end up spending a lot of money to recover data, but Commvault protects the data. Considering that, its cost is very low. It has reduced the cost of recovering data. 

It is very easy to isolate and segment storage targets from public networks to mitigate lateral moving threats. 

It helps our admins to minimize the time they spend on backup tasks. They can spend time on other projects. Previously, we had to manually check every weekend whether the backup is okay or not. Now, things are running automatically. Commvault has a good notification system. Altogether, these features reduce a lot of manhours. They have saved 48 hours weekly.

The recovery features are useful. It is easy to recover data. If something happens, we can easily recover data. We have faced ransomware issues twice, and we recovered because of Commvault. 

It provides consistent recovery processes across platforms. In terms of recovery options for our data and workloads, I would give it a 10 out of 10. We can easily recover files and data in case of any issues.

It is user-friendly and easy to use. If you have a technical background, you can easily identify the features and use them. There is nothing complex. 

They can improve the security level for Windows. When mapping to the Windows, Commvault can take full control over data volumes so that the attacker can't delete the volume data, but the Windows admin can access the volumes. It would be great to block access at that level. 

We have been using the Commvault product for more than three years.

We have been using this solution for more than three years, and there have been no major failures. It has been running day-to-day backups without any issues. We have backup scheduled over the weekends, and we also have daily backups. We are running full backups over the weekends and incremental backups on weekdays. 

Their support team is very friendly, and they can easily understand our situation. They are very fast to respond and knowledgeable. They can understand the issues that we are facing, and it is very easy to work with them. They provide good support. I would rate them a 10 out of 10.

We got good training notes from Commvault's side. There are a lot of documents, and if we want to find something, we refer to their documentation, which makes it very easy to use. There are no major issues.

We earlier used Veeam as a backup solution. We were using Veeam's Community Edition. We also used HP data protector previously. We finally tried the Commvault solution.

Commvault people came and gave a presentation to us, and as compared to Veeam, Commvault had many features. It was user-friendly and easy to use, and it also had a lot of features. It had ransomware protection and data recovery. Veeam didn't have protection features. Our management agreed to use Commvault, and they gave their permission.

Initially, it was complex for us to understand things. They gave us training, and since then, we have been using it easily. Now, it is very easy to understand.

We work with a reseller in Sri Lanka.

We have seen an ROI. It is saving a lot of money, but I don't have the number. It is a good solution to recover our data if something happens. We don't need to spend a lot of money. 

It is a bit more than other products, but when you consider the time savings, it is saving money.

We looked at a few other solutions such as Veritas.

Commvault is a good solution, and we would recommend it to others. There are no major issues with Commvault. We have full trust in it when it comes to protection. They have built a good customer reputation when it comes to protection. Our management is also very satisfied with it.

I would rate it a 10 out of 10 in terms of protection and features.

I've been here for 37 years and I've seen all the data challenges there are. The Centers for Disease Control consists of multiple centers that are all under one umbrella of CDC, but each center has its own budget, its own IT, and its own data collection. They were all disparate and they could not be put under one system where we could protect all of them. Everybody had their own protection. Everybody had their own little silos.

Around the time we brought in Commvault, our challenge was to bring those silos together where one larger team could diversify into specific areas. For example, disaster recovery was a whole team of people. That's all they did and they specialized in it. We could develop SMEs in each area of IT, such as disaster recovery, database, and hardware configuration. We had to attempt to bring all these silos together. There's resistance to that to this day, because everybody thinks that they're special and the other people don't matter. Our challenge was centralization at that point. Each area had its own way of backing up and several of them had Commvault already, but it was at that point that we settled on Commvault as our backup solution.

Before Commvault, virus infection was our big problem. If a virus got fished into a system, recovery was disastrous.

Currently, our use case is disaster recovery, pure and simple, including everything from a file restore to a complete system restore.

It is on-premises and also hosted in the cloud. 

We've had problems in the past where a storage person made an error and actually deleted a large chunk of storage, and we recovered it with Commvault. If we had lost that storage, it would have been a catastrophic loss of scientific data. The value of that is incalculable.

In addition, when we're applying for authority to operate, compliance requires that certain things just have to be backed up. That's a requirement of any system that we allow on our network. It has to be recovery-protected in some way, in the event of an error or a tragedy or an attack.

What is most valuable to me are the search features, where you can search through large backup data sets and find what you're looking for. Our data sets are so big that we're over the petabyte mark. To find a specific file for a specific user out of 10,000 users is a challenge. Sometimes the user doesn't know the file path. If we can glean from them a general description of where it might be, the search feature comes in very handy to actually locate it and restore it for them.

If you compare Commvault's user interface for managing on-prem, cloud, or multi-cloud environments in one place with some of the newer stuff that's coming out, it may seem to be a little too complex. But it's so powerful that I don't think the newer stuff competes with it that well.

And Command Center is helpful for reporting to upper management because they want to know the total figures, like how much we are protecting. They want to know the value of what we're doing compared to the cost of it. With Command Center we can tell them, "Look, we're doing this much and we've had this many restores." I have to do monthly reports to upper management on how successful we are at protection.

The solution also supports a broad coverage of workloads, absolutely. We use the VSA backups which means we don't have to have a client on each server. That, in itself, reduces a lot of the complexity. The broad coverage also means that we don't need as many personnel to administer things. It also helps with productivity. We're able to meet our SLAs for restores much better than we would otherwise.

The main area for improvement is that we sometimes experience negative effects from their updates. If they had a larger test area for their updates, that would help. I'm sure that they test, but our environment is probably 1,000 times bigger than their test environment. There are way more complexities in our environment, things that their updates overlook, and that causes a ripple effect of errors.

I've been using Commvault for about 15 years.

As long as everything functions in our environment, Commvault is very stable, but that's not the case. There are always ripples in the environment and sometimes those ripples can cause dramatic effects in Commvault, such as corrupting DDBs.

It's plenty scalable. That's one of the main reasons that we use Commvault. It gives us scalability and versatility across multiple storage platforms.

Their technical support is excellent. Any issues that we've had have been resolved.

At the time we chose Commvault, it was the best, according to our evaluation. There were three main options: NetApp, Commvault, and one other. There wasn't a lot of competition in that area for enterprise-level organizations.

The initial setup was a long time ago and I don't even know if I was involved in it. My lead engineer was involved in it. I was just an overseer at that point and just moving into that position. 

But I do know there have been a lot of complexities in upgrades from one version to the next. Sometimes we skip a version and go from nine to 11, for example, and there is complexity in that, or there has been in the past.

We had direct support from Commvault.

When it comes to ROI, Commvault is like the return on investment with insurance. When you need it, you see it. But if things are going smoothly you don't see it. However, it has to be there. My favorite saying is, "People really don't care about backups. They only care about restores."

One of the most interesting aspects is that the licensing model can be modified. We're paying for our licensing by the client, as opposed to the size of the footprint of the backup, which decreased our cost by about 20 percent.

There are multiple costs involved. We have the hardware, the tape drives, and the storage that our backup targets use. We use non-recommended storage, which is not as robust as what Commvault recommends, but we're able to make it work. That saves a lot of money on storage and its maintenance.

I've looked at other solutions but to scale them requires multiple devices, dedicated appliances. In our environment, everything has to be security-scanned and remediated on a monthly basis. The more devices we have, the more complex it gets to do that.

If you're a smaller-sized entity, Commvault may be a little bit more than what you need. You get what you pay for. Commvault's scalability and granularity are excellent for a large enterprise, but for a smaller one, some of the alternatives are probably more cost-effective. In this context, a large enterprise is one with storage in the petabyte range. That's where Commvault shines.

Our Commvault partner is KELYN Technologies. They're a very professional support service, as an intermediary between us and Commvault, so that we get really professional and timely support. We even bring them in on our proofs of concept. As new technologies develop, we have to prove that we can back them up or support and protect them. Having their engineers available to help us work through those issues is very valuable. Anything that they can't solve, they escalate directly to Commvault for us. That way, we don't have to be in that exchange with Commvault. If we're doing a proof of concept and get to an area where we just don't know how to deal with it, they go off, find out, and come back and say, "Okay, now we know how to deal with it."

And while my staff was mostly pre-trained on Commvault, as new developments and new enhancements come out, KELYN is right on top of them.

The value, for us, of KELYN comes from the following:

1. We have a reduced licensing cost.
2. We have more granular access to engineers to assist with new technology, new concepts. 
3. And sometimes we'll change our methods due to a new enhancement and they're invaluable in getting those things set up and working correctly.

We are a managed service provider, so we offer backup as a service to our customers.

We do a combination of on-prem, cloud, and hybrid Commvault, so we have a little bit of everything. We do a lot with on-prem, but we have a lot of customers that have been moving to the cloud. We also have a number of customers who are exclusively in the cloud and customers who are talking about exclusively going to the cloud. There has been a definite shift to the cloud and using Commvault in the cloud.

We deploy private clouds. We have also done AWS hybrid cloud and Microsoft Azure.

Commvault gives us the ability to manage multiple customers with the same interface. It also gives us the ability to offer enterprise class backup and recovery capabilities as well as DR capabilities to customers who might not otherwise have that accessible to them because maybe they are a small customer or don't have the expertise. What Commvault has allowed us to do is reach a broader audience with the breadth of their product offering.

Commvault absolutely provides a single platform for data management and protection, data security, data compliance, data transformation, and data insights. Customers are moving to the cloud. One feature in particular that we use: When you are using Commvault to backup a virtual environment, then we will use the VMware environment. For example, Commvault allows us to actually migrate on-premise data (backed up using Commvault) and restore a virtual machine into an Amazon or Microsoft Azure environment without doing any kind of conversion ourselves. That is all taken care of behind the scenes by Commvault. That is really a unique feature that allows customers to do their data transformation, their migration from on-premise to the cloud, or a combination of both. That ability is something that Commvault offers that we use quite a bit for this purpose.

One of the things that has become abundantly clear in the cybersecurity threat posture that we have now - you need to really do a good job of backing up your log files. That is something else that Commvault has brought into the world. Additionally, being able to do everything through the Metallic capability has helped us win a few customers. That is a pretty cool feature set that Commvault's brought to bear.

We have a number of co-branded marketing activities going on right now. Recently, we did an executive forum round table. We had our CTO, Ryan Lake, as a part of that. This was in conjunction with Trezza Media. It was about an hour-long conversation, including different CIOs and CTOs from government-level positions. That was really insightful and a good program.

Commvault’s partner program provides deal registration which provides us with support and protection throughout the selling cycle. This is vitally important. The sales cycle on backup and disaster recovery solutions is sometimes a fairly long one, particularly if you are displacing a competitive solution. So, it is critical to know that the registration within Commvault will remain because the sales cycle does take some time to get through.

The backup and restore capabilities are key. The most useful things to us about Commvault, in general, is the breadth of the applications that it can protect as well as the features inside of it, like deduplication and encryption. When people get their data encrypted, Commvault has a way to tell if somebody is being attacked through a cybersecurity threat because their data changes. So, Commvault has what they call honeypot files out there to look to see if anybody is changing these files. Only Commvault knows which files those are, so nobody should be messing with those files. If it changes, then it will alert you to say, "Oh, I potentially have somebody messing with my files." It will alert you to something going on in your environment that probably shouldn't be happening. We deploy that with all our customers so they have this capability as well.

A key aspect of Commvault is having all of these different Cloud Connectors, where you can connect to all these different clouds and applications, managing everything through one pane of glass. We have a number of customers whom we manage through one pane of glass, but then we also have on-prem customers whom we manage that have their installation. We manage that independently because a lot of customers don't yet want all their data 100% through the cloud or managed by a cloud provider. That is why we do a lot of on-prem stuff. Even there, you get a single pane of glass for the entire environment.

Command Center is a great tool because it allows for viewing all of your data in one place. Plus, with the plans, it allows for simple deployments and customers to pick which feature set and capabilities they want. When you have your plans in the Command Center, it really opens up lots of options for customers while keeping everything simplified for us.

One of the biggest things that Commvault does is have the ability to easily restore data. In a disaster recovery scenario, the first thing you have to do is bring up the command and control center of whatever product that you are going to recover with. The initial recovery of Commvault command and control, which they call the CommCell, i.e., CommServe server, is by far the best in the industry. That is where it starts. So if you lose everything, you can start with CommCell. That is the way that they have designed the split indexes of MediaAgent and those types of things. This really sets them apart from any other product out there. 

The most common feedback I get in terms of Commvault is that it can be complex. I always refer my customers back to their own environment. Almost everything that goes into Commvault is a request by a customer. While it can be complex, it can also be very simple. You just need to understand your environment in order to make sure that you really need to turn on that extra feature or thing inside of Commvault. Maybe you don't need those things. It really depends on how simple or complex your environment is, whether you need all of Commvault's features. Though, you have them if you do need them.

We've been supporting and using Commvault for about 10 years.

Commvault is extremely stable. There are really not too many things that knock it down.

We have customers with multiple petabytes of data. There is no issue with the scalability at all.

Commvault is the thought-leader in numerous trade organization reviews. They get top awards all the time based on the completeness of the solution and the ability to execute. For our customers, having that weight behind them and knowing that this isn't a company who was just thought up overnight or solving a single issue. They are looking at large enterprise-level issues with the ability to scale to the largest of enterprises as well as the smallest company. We have customers with one or two computers that they need to protect, and we're protecting them with Commvault. We're bringing that entire Commvault platform with the entire weight of Commvault behind it. Being able to offer that to a customer with one or two computers allows us to really use the entire suite of Commvault to help protect all our customers. That is one of the biggest benefits for us, having the entire weight of Commvault behind us as a service offering.

We have a great relationship with support. In addition to interacting with Commvault support, we also have purchased the enterprise support that Commvault offers. That gives us a greater level of insight into what is going on, not only in our environment, but within Commvault's itself. We have a dedicated Technical Account Manager as well as a dedicated Support Account Manager. Those two folks have been instrumental in helping us achieve greater efficiencies within our Commvault environments.

Commvault is fantastic. We have a bi-weekly call with our partner manager where we discuss what is coming up and where Commvault can help, e.g., how can we execute our marketing strategy? It has all kinds of different things that we just don't get from other vendors. The partnership has been great.

With a very large enterprise (hundreds of terabytes of data), you will need to take a little bit more time and make sure that you have the configuration correct, then go from there. 

For small organizations, the initial setup is very simple. Out-of-the-box, you can set it up in 30 minutes or less.

We start with the requirements for the customer, but then we really hone things down for the deployment. We put things in the right places. We will work with customers to understand what their requirements are, then put together a strategy for deployment that we believe is both the simplest and most effective.

We have seen ROI with Commvault.

Our customers' cost of operations is greatly reduced. The more you simplify, the less manpower things take. The less manpower things take obviously translates immediately to the bottom line. In addition, it gives you a much greater chance of success when you go to do your disaster recovery testing or disaster recovery function in the event something bad does happen.

The solution’s broad coverage of workloads certainly affects IT productivity. When you have a simplified infrastructure, there are a lot less moving parts. Things tend to stay operational longer, reducing downtime types of things. Those are all part of the simplification process.

They have profitability guarantees on registered opportunities. They are not necessarily as high as some of the other partner programs out there, but we stick with Commvault because we believe that they are the best product out there on the market.

The pricing has improved. It is simplified compared to the way that it was a few years ago. It is fairly straightforward and pretty easy to articulate to customers, which is handy. 

Commvault’s key differentiators for its partners is the ability to offer the breadth and depth of its tools. There are other vendors out there who have solutions, and a lot of them do good with certain little aspects of one particular problem in the backup and disaster recovery world. Commvault just doesn't have any weaknesses in their product lineup. So, it is the ability to do everything that really sets Commvault apart.

The amount of labor that it takes to operate a Commvault environment is dramatically lower than their competitors.

You need to understand your entire environment and make sure that you are looking at the entire thing so you can understand the value that Commvault brings. Understand where some of the other products might fall down, in terms of being able to manage your entire environment, and the capabilities that you require.

Take the time to document your requirements and make sure that you get all that information upfront so you know what your goal is in the end. That is where you can go a little haywire with any product, e.g., if you don't really understand what it is that you are trying to accomplish first, then you can get into trouble real quick.

Complexity is one of the things that everybody has in their environment and every production environment has some level of complexity. One of the things that I like to talk about when I talk to our customers about Commvault is that your backup and disaster recovery solution is basically a mirror image of your operating environment. So, if you want to reduce the complexity of your disaster recovery environment, then what you really need to do is think about how to reduce the complexity in your production environment. When you utilize a product like Commvault, you can make Commvault do all kinds of things that will help you backup your existing environment. However, when you translate that into a disaster recovery scenario, you need to basically reverse engineer and put everything back the way that it was. Therefore, complexity is a mirror of your production environment. We try to simplify all of our customer's environments as much as we possibly can, including their production environment, in order to make them more sustainable in a disaster recovery scenario.

Commvault is a thought-leader in intelligent data management. For example: 

1. The breadth of the Commvault suite, where it is backing up and restoring containers. 
2. A lot of people are moving to containerization as a way of doing DevOps, and having a faster time to market for their products. Commvault is able to back VMs up and transition those VMs. 
3. This is along with Cloud Connectors adopting the capability of doing backup and disaster recovery in the cloud. Commvault was at the forefront of that entire movement. 

Those are all unique capabilities that Commvault really spearheaded. I don't think there is any slowing that down. They can really crank out some really cool solutions in a pretty quick timeframe.

I have taken a number of management courses with Commvault University, including the Foundations course and some of the advanced courses. It is very good training. The instructors are very helpful. When we were going through training, one of the things that they suggested was, "Work with the product a little bit before you go to the training course so you know which questions to ask." This is really important because then you can ask the instructor specific questions that directly impact your environment, which are the most useful questions that you can ask.

I would rate Commvault as 10 out of 10.

We do a lot of backups daily, and mainly we just keep the operating system images. We do take database and active directory backups as well. We handle all types of backups using this product.

The user interface is very easy to navigate. The interface itself is very simple.

Overall, it is doing the job we need it to do. 

It supports whatever line types and support types and systems we have. It supports all types of backup systems quite easily.

The stability has been very good so far. We haven't had any problems with it.

The product is easy to manage.

The local support could be improved. Right now, it's something about the solution that is lacking.

They should offer better partners that can help us implement the solution in a better way.

It would be ideal if they offered editing or activating options. 

I don't know how good it is with the virtual environment. I have not tried the product with VMware, for example.

I've been using the solution for about six years at this point. It's been a while.

We've never had any issues with stability. It doesn't crash or freeze. There are no bugs or glitches. It's pretty reliable. 

We are still running with a single server, and it's a per server per instance-based license model. If we need to add our first storage-based model or another division, we cannot support both. It's a licensing model issue. 

The local support is lacking overall. It's something they need to really work on improving.

We have worked with Veritas and IBM in the past, however, that was a very long time ago. I wouldn't be able to compare them to this solution as too much time has passed and much has changed. We used those solutions maybe ten or so years ago now.

The initial setup is not easy or difficult. It's moderate, or somewhere in the middle. I wouldn't describe the implementation as complex, however. 

The deployment too more than expected, as the vendor involved was having some staffing issues. The engineers were changing and we had some technical requirements which we realized at a later stage.

Maintenance isn't required very often, however, we have to ensure it is up-to-date. We also have to ensure whenever anything changes, we have to properly add them to the Commvault - whether they are new servers or new clients. Whenever we change our backup library or the memory storage, we have to reconfigure things. In that regard, there is occasional maintenance, depending on our background changes.

We only need one person to manage the solution. It doesn't take a lot of staff. Typically, they are an administrator and they handle everything that needs to be done as it's required.

We are integrators and therefore we are able to implement the solution ourselves.

The pricing falls somewhere in the middle of what the market offers. It's not overly expensive. The licensing model is quite good. Everything is included under it.

We are just a customer and an end-user.

We're using the latest version of the solution. We always use the latest version.

I'd recommend the solution.

I'd rate it at a seven out of ten.

We used Commvault HyperScale X to increase the security of datasets, to be sure that all data and all backups that we have are secure, and that we have them in another place, such as disaster recovery. The idea is to always have a third copy somewhere else. The initial idea was to have a third copy of that backup sets to be in the state government data center. However, before they finish, I left Ministry, and they have not finished that job.

Generally, the idea is to have a possibility, for all backup data, after some time, to be saved in another place. For now, everything is still inside the Ministry. 

Commvault HyperScale X has increased the way our organization functions by adding more security to the backup sets. In case the primary location is disabled, or there is some problem with the primary location, the second one will continue to work. The idea is to always have a working backup.

The most valuable feature of Commvault HyperScale X is the automatic nature of its operation. We don't need to worry about sets of documents. It worked automatically, we don't need to think about it. When you set the solution up in a good way, you don't need to worry.

The price of Commvault HyperScale X could improve.

I have been using Commvault HyperScale X for approximately one year.

Commvault HyperScale X is highly stable.

The scalability of Commvault HyperScale X is good. It is simple to add more systems or server storage.

We have approximately 400 endpoint users and 40 terabytes of data being used. 

We had to use the support and they were responsive and quick. They fixed the problem, not immediately, but the timeframe was dependent on the ticket type. They were always there to help. They did regular call checks until everything was resolved. 

We used many different solutions previously. When we had some large issues in 2015, I decided to buy a professional corporate solution for all the systems. We did test some other solutions, but with Commvault HyperScale X, we received what we needed and much more. Additionally, Commvault HyperScale X was easy to maintain and use.

The solution was easy for us to implement because we have been working with Commvault for many years, and we know what to do. The initial setup alone will that approximately two weeks. The longer portion is buying the hardware and setting it up.

I rate the initial setup of Commvault HyperScale X a three out of five.

We did the implementation of Commvault HyperScale X with a local partner. They installed it and did the setup. For us, it was easy to add new features to the Commvault HyperScale X backup.

The company that has the solution is managing the solution.

We have seen a large return on investment by using Commvault HyperScale X.

The price of Commvault HyperScale X is a lot higher than competitors. As a government institution, we have annual costs. We made a budget for one year in advance. It was difficult to calculate the other solution's costs because each solution has another way of licensing. The solution is expensive but it is very good and we know the good quality we will be receiving.

There were not any additional costs. The new storage, software, and support were inside the price.

We did evaluate other solutions before choosing Commvault HyperScale X.

The solution has changed since I have used it but what I know is the solution offers companies the possibility to have their own backup storage.

I rate Commvault HyperScale X a ten out of ten.

We now have the capability to recover a virtual machine without relying on the NFS system, but instead are able to use certain features provided by Commvault. This is why we've opted for Commvault over other technologies.

They could work on the implementation of the features.

We will be using Commvault Backup & Recovery for the next 3 years.

Every three years, we require server updates to either embrace new technologies or enhance our existing technology stack. Therefore, our approach involves reevaluating and refreshing our infrastructure every three years, so we can’t comment on this solution as we have started fresh.

We usually interact with integrators, however if the issue is complex, we refer to technicians for further support and guidance

We are consistently exploring new solutions for our systems, and each solution must align with our server requirements and other objectives. Our timing is also a key consideration, as we operate on a three-year cycle. We have worked with SAP, Oracle, and Cisco.

The installation is complex.

I can’t fully endorse it, because it depends on the final use of the customer. I would conservatively, rate it an eight out of ten. 

The solution is used as a backup for Office 365 workloads.

Pricing and functionality can be improved. The way to configure is not as simple as the configuration itself, nor is adding users within the backup scope.

I have been using Metallic for more than three years. I am an end user. I am using the solution's latest version of the solution in my organization.

The solution's stability is excellent.

The solution is scalable. 

Also, it is used by 380 users.

I rate the solution's scalability a nine out of ten.

The customer support is not good. There should be fast responsiveness and more proficiency when solving the issues or when helping solve any issues. I rate customer support a six out of ten.

Neutral

Some configurations could have been simpler, and the recommendations could have been more precise in allowing only certain users to be included in the backup scope. We could use group membership. Based on the user's group membership, they would be included in the backup scope. It's pretty simple, so if a user belongs to Group A, they will be included in the backup scope, and if not, then they won't be.

The deployment took two days, and one engineer was required for it. If you refer to maintenance as the procedures to test the restore and the options or directions, there's something else.

The solution is expensive. The subscription is based on a monthly basis. There are additional costs that vary depending on the size of the backup.

What we had before was that each user needs to be licensed. We purchase the required number of licenses and are priced accordingly per license. This pricing is independent of the backup data. Now, Metallic has changed, and the pricing is either per user or per license, in addition to the amount of backed-up data.

It supports SharePoint Online, OneDrive, and other services.

Overall, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.

The primary use case is as a backup and recovery solution. We have two data centers and we have a Commvault server for replication in both. We back up all our infrastructure with this solution, from Active Directory to SQL, web servers, file servers, databases, et cetera.

Commvault helps to ensure broad coverage with the discovery of unprotected workloads. The Discovery feature lists all the resources that we have, all the virtual servers and all the physical servers. You can also automatically deploy agents or set up schedules. At first, we did some manual tuning to customize it before deployment. Now, the virtual infrastructure administrator just has to add the VM tag on the virtual machine and that machine will automatically be backed up in the next schedule. It's a good automation feature.

It also helps by minimizing the time our admins spend on backup tasks so that they can spend time on other projects. Before Commvault, we had two backup administrators who were using a backup and restore application to restore every test that we had to do. It was a full-time job just monitoring the backups and doing the restores. With our new solution from Commvault, we have successfully implemented web-based backup and restore management for our different teams, including our file server, database, and Exchange teams. We split operations among those teams and each one has access to the backup Web Console. This console from Commvault is very useful for segmenting the restore options. That way, the database backup administrator only has access to the database servers and can only do backups and restores of databases and does not have access to Active Directory or file servers. The web-based backup and restore is a really great option.

Whereas before, we had one full-time engineer doing backups and restores, now that engineer is only working on it for two to four hours per week. Across our four teams, it's saving us about 10 to 12 hours a week.

The solution has helped to reduce storage costs as well. Commvault has an option to move data from primary storage. When you do a backup, it scans all the files from the file server and you can set a policy to remove all files that are more than, say, three years old from the primary storage. And on the primary storage, there is only a link that connects to the backup source. When a user needs a file on secondary storage, there is no problem because it only reads the file. When the user opens that old file, it's automatically restored and the user can access it. For our IT team, it has saved us between 5 and 10 percent of storage. It depends on how widely you implement the solution and the policies you set. You could save 50 percent if you have a broader policy.

We have also saved on infrastructure costs because Commvault takes less time to do the backup jobs, due to the deduplication. Also, the background tasks that are used to copy the backup jobs to tape are deduplicated. The full backup of our infrastructure can now be done in a couple of hours during the night. Before, some backup tasks would take more than a day, on the weekend. There has been a reduction of 80 or 90 percent in the backup window.

Commvault's most valuable features are its 

• deduplication
• encryption
• support for many OSs
• support for different infrastructures. 

We have VMware, Hyper-V, Oracle, and Microsoft SQL. We have a lot of different systems, and all of them are supported under one licensing agreement. That's one of the benefits.

We use two user interfaces on a regular basis. One is the Web Console, which is simple and has all the necessary functionality. You can add servers, back up servers, and restore. We also have a replication solution implemented and we use the Web Console for that as well. But for the initial configuration and for some deeper configurations, we also use the Commvault application. It's big and has all the fine-tuning options.

The solution's Command Center is very straightforward. It has an intuitive user interface with graphs, tables, alerts, as well as many options for alerting and messaging. Of course, you have to get used to the environment, but it's easy to use.

It is also important that Commvault provides a single platform to move, manage, and recover data across on-premises locations. That's because we have different storage and virtualization platforms. We have no problem if the file resides, say, on NetApp storage and we have to restore data to a workstation or some kind of Windows Server. Also, when we did some migrations from our old Hyper-V cluster to the new VMware cluster, those integrations between different infrastructures were successfully accomplished with the Commvault solution. We have no issues with different types of resources we need to back up.

In addition, the recovery options are pretty straightforward. For example, if you choose a virtual machine, you can restore the full virtual machine, you can restore the virtual machine on a different platform, you can restore just a virtual disk, or you can restore just a file within the virtual machine. You have all the options. In the web-based user interface, you can also restore using download options. You can browse through the files or virtual machines and download the file from the backup. They have a great range of restore options.

We had some small issues with the reporting, but that was just a matter of fine-tuning the kinds of messages we receive by email. It was a little overwhelming in the initial configuration. So we reviewed our configuration with our partner and customized the reports so that we only get the important reports. I haven't seen any big issues or things that the solution is missing.

We implemented Commvault at the start of 2021, so we have been using it for almost a year now.

We had one issue. The Commvault server is an Active-Passive cluster and the Active node had some hiccups. It wasn't something serious, but the Commvault server was unable to connect to one of the agents. I believe our partner discovered it because they also receive messages from our Commvault solution. They just informed us that the Commvault server had to be restarted. We did so during working hours because backups are done at night, and there were no issues. It was a standard procedure and we have had no other big issues.

At the start of the Commvault project, we put together a list of all the resources that we have. They counted our resources and gave us the exact number of clients we needed to buy to cover all of our infrastructure and we had no issue there. Of course, we also have some plans for the growth of our infrastructure. If we have any big upgrades, we will also upgrade the Commvault infrastructure.

We have a lot of Commvault's features implemented. We're also in the process of testing the backup of endpoints, such as laptops and devices from end-users. There are just a few features from Commvault that we don't use.

We use technical support through our partner because our partner has a lot of inside knowledge. For the majority of issues our partner gives us the solution, but they have had to report some small issues to Commvault support. They spoke directly with Commvault support and the solution was available in a few days. It was a very good troubleshooting experience.

Positive

We used NetWorker and Veeam. The NetWorker solution was the older solution and, in some very old clusters, we also used TSM (Tivoli Storage Manager) from IBM. The TSM solution was no longer supported and the Dell EMC NetWorker solution, which we used for our physical servers, was difficult to maintain. Veeam was a good solution for our VMware infrastructure, but we needed a solution with support for a wider variety of infrastructure types. One of our major goals was to eliminate our multiple backup solutions by going with Commvault.

If we had to do the initial setup ourselves, it would be complex, of course, because we have a big infrastructure with different types of targets. But our partners helped and they managed to cover all the tests that we implemented at the start of the project. So, overall, the setup went really well. It took just a few days, maybe a week, to add our agents. After the initial configuration, it was really easy to roll out the solution to our entire infrastructure.

Our partners, called Our Space Appliances, are system integrators in backup and storage solutions. They know our infrastructure.

We had a process for choosing a vendor. We called a number of vendors and had proposals from the Veeam, NetWorker, Cohesity, and Commvault.

The big pro for Commvault was that it was a single solution for our entire infrastructure. The licensing model was also an advantage and the experience of the partner was also a big plus. Some of the other solutions we evaluated did not make it to the second round because they did not support all the infrastructure we have in our environment. In the last round, the battle came down to pricing, as well as some small features, and Commvault was the best in all the criteria.

Commvault is a pretty comprehensive but, maybe, complex solution when you first start with it. But that's why it is a perfect match for complex infrastructure, as it supports all types of infrastructure. Commvault is not appropriate for small businesses with just one type of virtual environment. There are different vendors that may be better for that use case. But when looking at enterprise backup and recovery options, Commvault is the easiest to use, and it has the widest range of features.

We are currently moving to Exchange Online. We have between 1,500 and 2,000 users. We have already deployed Teams on the cloud, and now we are migrating user mailboxes to cloud. Our next step, in the following month, will be a backup of Microsoft cloud solutions through Commvault.

In terms of the coverage of Commvault, we have a big Oracle Database and the Oracle administrators are a separate team. They do their own backups using RMAN. They then move the backup to the separate Sun ZFS  storage. We also tried that backup with Commvault, using the Commvault agent to run RMAN. The test went well, the backup was good, but the database team was used to their old solution. So we agreed to implement a backup of the ZFS file server.

Ours is an all-on-prem solution so we don't have any other networks being backed up. We do have a DMZ with different VLANs and so there were some problems. We had to install an agent on the DMZ zone, an agent that has access to resources in the demilitarized network. But it's a no-brainer. We just have to open a specific port so that the backup agent can communicate with the CommCell server, and the resources are backed up successfully.

In addition, to protect against ransomware we use Commvault's alert options because Commvault can predict big changes in the network with its AI solution. This is the first line of defense. The second line of defense is that we are now in the process of implementing secondary, offline storage to ensure an air gap between the primary backup, the replicated backup, and the offline backup storage. In case of a ransomware attack we will have off-site backup storage.