Commvault could benefit from increased automation to streamline processes and enhance predictability. This includes automating routine tasks where appropriate, which would improve efficiency and reduce the need for support tickets. Additionally, when support is required, automating elements of the process and providing faster data access would enable quicker issue identification and resolution, preventing potential SLAs from being breached.

Commvault should keep and continue to develop the Java GUI. 

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.

Commvault is a behind-the-scenes operation that's working flawlessly. So how do I know what Commvault is doing for me every month? I would like more communication informing us on what Commvault is doing in the background.

As a long-time Commvault customer, we still use the Java console heavily because it is how we learned to do everything. The web-based Command Center is coming along and has most of what we need, but it is a learning process to change our knowledge to the new way of doing things.

As Commvault continues to grow SaaS data protection options, there are some that are on my wish list that have not yet made their roadmap. Knowing what is being worked on for future support would be great we can keep that in mind as we are looking at future technologies to adopt.

We do not use Command Center, but we are using CommCell Console. We're navigating and manipulating the entire environment by using CommCell Console, and we are comfortable with it. We didn't find Command Center user-friendly. We found it a bit difficult to use. It decreases the efficiency of the tasks to be performed. It was probably implemented as a centralized application to manage all environments, but it was probably not a good idea. I and my colleagues across the globe are comfortable with using CommCell Console rather than Command Center.

Commvault is doing releases very often. The services packs and maintenance releases come quite often. They should slow down a little bit because quite often, when we implement a feature release or a bug-fix release, it causes some issues, and some of the options do not work.

It is more expensive than other solutions.

The workflow has room for improvement. 

One of my biggest problems has been the lack of specialized training for things like hyperscale for Commvault customers, especially smaller ones like myself. During COVID, Commvault stopped having their conference, which was a major source of education and information for me as a customer. I needed to learn about new functionalities and how they worked, but there weren't many classes available. It seems like Commvault expects customers to take the responsibility of engaging with them, but it's difficult for smaller customers to do so. I've been advocating for smaller customers, and Commvault has listened and started to include us in their roadmap, just like they do for Fortune 500 companies.

Permissions can be tricky. There is granularity when trying to get people to write permissions to be able to view, backup, and restore. It is just hard to understand that granularity. I can't even 100% say that it is Commvault. I can say it is not super cut-and-dry right out of the gate. However, I would also say it is great because it is granular.

Getting my guys the right access has a learning curve. Sometimes, it is, "Oh, okay. I think I got it for you." Then, they say, "Oh, nope. I logged in but I can't see this." Then, it is, "Okay, hold on. Give me a second. Let me change that. Okay, it's this one." That learning curve has probably taken a little bit longer than some simpler things. So, Metallic has some granularity, and as a systems administrator, I appreciate that. At the same time, I also realize that I have to learn it.

Seven to eight months ago, the documentation needed improvement, but they have caught up on it now.

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 am a consultant. Therefore, I have assessed the product, recommended it, and implemented it. I then hand it over to the BAU guys for the normal business day-to-day, as I work on projects. They do a Daily check. Unless in the last four weeks something has changed, we get four emails. One for each product: Exchange, OneDrive, SharePoint, and Teams. So, we are getting four backup reports. 

It would be nice to have just one email report come in, then we can filter out failures. If everything is backed up, we really don't need to see the report. If it is in a single report. A simpler customised report would be good.  

In the roadmap, they have something around reporting. They are aware that they need to improve it. It might already be there or we haven't set it up. However, in the last four weeks, which was the last time that we checked, we didn't see anything different.

The navigation of it needs improvement in terms of the UX. The product itself, it works as expected. It's all user experience and user interface improvements that could be made and it could be made a little more consumer-friendly. Instead of having one person or a few people that know the system intimately, it gives us the ability for other people that don't have to know the system intimately be able to navigate it.

The product is expensive.

Initially, I spent quite some time understanding the product and how it functions.

While there are newer features on the Command Center, there are still some missing things. I don't use it at all.

For Office 365, they have limited functions and features. 

Commvault could make the product more cost-effective on the public cloud side. We are using this solution to back up whatever is still on-prem. We are not using it to back up what is on the public cloud because we have a native backup solution for that, which is provided by the vendor. As our footprint gets bigger, we will continue to evaluate this, but the last time that we did a cost analysis, the cost was not comparable to the solution that public clouds are offering.

Commvault Cloud, while offering a robust suite of features, could potentially benefit from improvements in certain areas. One area for consideration is user interface and user experience enhancements, aiming to streamline navigation and make the platform more intuitive for users with varying levels of technical expertise. 

Improved documentation and user training resources could also contribute to a smoother onboarding process and more effective utilization of the platform's capabilities. Additionally, ongoing efforts to optimize resource utilization and minimize any potential impact on system performance would be valuable. As for potential features in the next release, integration with emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence for more intelligent data management and analytics could provide valuable insights for organizations. 

Enhanced automation capabilities, including more sophisticated policy-driven automation for data workflows, could further streamline processes and reduce manual intervention. Integration with additional cloud services and platforms, keeping pace with the evolving cloud landscape, would broaden the platform's compatibility and usefulness. 

Lastly, advanced security features, including continuous monitoring, threat intelligence integration, and proactive threat response capabilities, would fortify the product's defense against evolving cyber threats. 

Regular feedback mechanisms from users and staying attuned to industry trends would help guide the development of features that align closely with the evolving needs of organizations in the dynamic landscape of data management and cloud services.

The functional integration could be better. For example, the replication function is not there in the Metallic products and can be complex. We were licensing the functionality in a different tool but not in Metallic's key. So it should be enhanced.

In future releases, I would like to see better VM replication because it's not available today. But there should also be provisions to have more integration.

Metallic is perfect for a customer because it is very easy to use. However, I find it difficult to find some use cases on my own and need to contact Metallic support. Moreover, in a SaaS project, I cannot open or function agents alone and require the support of Metallic.

I would like to have a manager-level dashboard to review the backups. This is not from an administrative perspective where you can see the details of the execution. Rather, it would only show the percentage of completeness for each one.

They need to improve when it comes to large, video file archiving. They're good, but they have not met my expectations as a customer in this area.

Also, HyperScale X does not back up NDMP, or they only use a native file share backup.

They can improve the VMware recovery and VMware backup. There is an improvement area on the VMware infrastructure. They can make available what they call a VSA proxy. They can have an appliance-type setup to deploy VSA backups and help recover quicker. They can have an appliance ready. Instead of having to have a server dedicated to that and installing software on a server, they can just provide an actual appliance for that.

Compared to Rubrik, MongoDB Data Protector, and NetBackup, Commvault is better. The licensing team was quite tricky recently because they stopped the unlimited files for that license. Commvault made a bank of 500GB only, a node-based license can take it, which is disappointing. Reporting needs to be more granular. Also, there should be a showback of data being backed up, and the backup cost to share the cost internally with the department.

Our main pain point is that some of our hardware is old. For example, the SSD disks for our application database are slow. It's hard to avoid a slowdown in our environment because the size of our backups is growing every year. If you're growing and don't upgrade the environment, you will see slower backups and restores. You must enhance the environment if you are growing.

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.

If I were to ask them to work on something, it would be the fidelity of the alerts that occur. They should tell me if it is a real event or not. It is easy for it to identify that something hit it but give me more information. They can build AI into the engine so that I get better output from an alert to tell me if I should really be interested in that or not.

The solution must provide deception files across the network.

The speed of the Office 365 Backup & Recovery feature is adequate. Microsoft controls the amount of bandwidth that people have when they're using Azure and the O365 environment. It's not really a Metallic issue, it's more of a Microsoft limitation. If they could work out something with Microsoft to improve the speed, that would help. But, generally speaking, it's been fine. I don't know of anything else that I'd want to see improved.

We are using a production environment with customer-sensitive data on it. As per our central bank rules and regulations, we can't keep our customer's sensitive data in the cloud. So we are looking forward to having a good solution that can work with us. The Metallic team is working on this and will come up with a better solution in the future. If we can figure out this issue, we won't have future issues relating to our government authorities, and we can also fulfill our company's requirements easily.

The reporting could be improved because the reports we get from our partner aren't sufficient. It isn't very detailed. I'm not sure if it's an issue with our partner or Metallic. They do a full backup on Monday and incremental backups throughout the week. However, we don't get detailed reports about the size of the incremental backups. The report just tells us whether a backup was successful. 

In addition to the core backup features, I would also like to see Metallic add patch management. It's a crucial way to minimize threats against data sources. 

There is room for improvement in the Knowledge Base and error reporting. I would like to see best practices in the Knowledge Base, and have the ability to diagnose errors without contacting support.

Their single pane of glass solution is daunting at first. It's not the easiest interface but, as with anything that you use, eventually you'll get better and better at it. I've worked closely with their user experience team to improve their web-based command tool. 

We try not to use the CommCell tool that is provided, because it's a little old and a little too powerful to give everyone access to it. So we've started using their Command Center tool. At first, it was hard to find things with that, but you end up finding them. Command Center definitely gives us a complete view of our data. But finding some of the granular, very small items that we sometimes have to find, such as auxiliary copies for tapes, I still find that it's easier to navigate and, sometimes, only possible to find them using the CommCell tool. Maybe that's just an area that hasn't been added to the Command Center yet.

Since I only use the backup and recovery, I'm not using Activate or Orchestrate. And I am strictly on-prem so I'm not using any of the Metallic or Hedvig solutions. I can only speak for backup and recovery. I would like to see a little bit more access into the CommCell areas via the Command Center. That would be my only small request.

In 2019 there was a flaw with their Active Directory plan which didn't actually allow you to recover the full Active Directory properly. I brought that to their attention and they made the change and fixed it. That was the only area that needed to be fixed.

When you deploy Complete Data Protection for past services, it's more complicated because you cannot directly back up from the previous service host. We have to build a proxy server, like a middleware, to directly access the past database server. It's complex and hard for beginners to figure out.

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.

It's tough to understand if you're really maximizing the features of such a large platform without engaging other services that Commvault offers to help you understand and leverage the data warehouse.

It's a little challenging because of the way Commvault communicates and works with third-party solutions. Right now, we're using Commvault to back up Office 365 mailboxes, so we have to work with Microsoft and Azure. There's a lot of handshaking in the background that the customer can be impacted by. For instance, Commvault can say, "Hey, we can back up a thousand mailboxes in two days, providing Microsoft lets us." "Microsoft letting you" means that Microsoft will throttle you at certain times, and there are also certain restrictions Microsoft has with how fast you're doing something, or how many you're doing. We, as a customer, are impacted from that perspective. Although Microsoft welcomes Commvault, there's always the strain of how these two platforms work together. So it's a little challenging when it crosses different platforms into other environments that Commvault doesn't have total control of.

Also, Commvault likes to be ahead of the game when it comes to merging with other platforms, but sometimes it's before they have the solution truly baked in. Office 365 is an example. I feel that my company might be a litmus test for their solution, because we have such a large environment. Some of the promised solutions that we received from Commvault were more like testing solutions. They weren't really validated, meaning they were possibilities. There have been a lot of hot fixes for the solution that we're using right now, more than we expected. It wasn't a simple, turnkey solution when we decided to use them. They could do a little bit more due diligence before they jump into a space to get some of that market share.

One particular issue we found was when we were trying to open up ports for communication. They had listed a couple of ports that we needed and we found out there were a lot more communication ports that they had already assumed we were aware of or already had in place. As we were doing our deployment, we had a lot of network communication issues when we were trying to communicate between resources on-prem and off-prem, due to different ports that were identified as being blocked.

They have to be willing to admit that, "Hey, we don't have this quite worked out yet, but we're working on it." I got to learn Commvault by implementing this Office 365 solution. That's my go-to for examples. There have been a lot of "gotchas" in performance. Commvault says, "Go to this SP, go to that SP," but you're talking about changing your whole service pack level in your environment, and you just can't do that overnight. You can't move as fast as they want you to move, business-wise, to take advantage of new releases and new features. They have to be more realistic that the customer can't keep up with their pace.

In addition, there are two of us who do all the maintenance, but we definitely make use of Commvault resources. They kind of make you dependent on utilizing their resources, which is not such a bad thing. But sometimes you may want to learn to manage your own environment completely, without engaging the vendor as much. Commvault finds a way to keep themselves engaged with what you're doing. You almost have to reach out to them to say, "How does this work? What's the best way to use this? I don't see any information on how to leverage this feature."

The documentation is lacking. You'll find some general stuff, but it's hard to find actual use cases. You also want to know who has tried a solution out, who is it working for, who can you talk to to get some pros and cons? They could do a little bit better with their documentation and not just have basic guidelines that you have to customize to follow.

In GUI, some of the features have been divided. So one is the browser-based command center, and then the old interface with CommCell browser. They have to add more features and functions that are the same as whatever is there in the command center. We prefer that because, otherwise, we have to do two different interfaces for different kinds of jobs. We cannot do some jobs in the old interface with CommCell browser since we have to go into the command center.

Whatever Commvault Complete Data Protection has, they need to improve. Sometimes, we have a performance issue with the backup speed. So, that has to be rectified and improved.

There is a lack of marketing in our region so there needs to be a focus on improving the solution's reputation. We believe in the solution but competitors like VIN have an edge in the market. 

The network and service need to cover more regions than just the Middle East. 

The solution should provide virtual updates on Linux OS via a host address or in utilities instead of via a secret database. 

When we started using Commvault, we felt that there were some technical issues with managing it, but we are comfortable enough with managing it now. There were many issues, like index corrupting, when we first started, but all those issues were resolved by the Commvault tech team.

Its major disadvantage is it's expensive. Otherwise, the solution is good.

For simpler environments, they have some templates for startups. Possibly for a smaller environment, they need to do more automatic configuration and selections of users who want to do backups. This is mainly for smaller environments. I would like them to have the same system fit for all environments: small and big environments. Currently, we have to do a lot of configuration of the layout, which takes time. This solution is appropriate for enterprise-level enterprise, but I would like it to be easier to use for SMB environments.

The price of Commvault HyperScale X could improve.

The setup is complex. It's not simple to install the machine and start a backup. 

Commvault is software based, unlike hardware-type devices.

You can manage everything from two interfaces. There is a Java console (CommCell), but in the near future that will be fully replaced by the Command Center, the HTML5 interface. The Java interface is not great. The Command Center interface is far better and it looks nicer, but it doesn't have all the powerful features available in the Java console. The place to improve the product is on the management interface level because that's the point where it's not perfect.

Today, to manage the product, you just have to use both interfaces. The Java interface is basically for the admin because it has all the powerful features in it. The HTML5 interface is mainly used by end-users, and by admins when they just need to generate a report or see something graphically to help with the management of Commvault.

One other note. I would rate the ransomware feature at about eight out of 10. There are different processes for enabling ransomware protection on Windows versus Linux systems. In the current version, there is no ransomware for HyperScale X. That feature has been released in CV SP 24.

With any product, there could be improvements made. 

I can't think of exact features that are lacking.

It's been a while, however, it's my understanding that they have new features coming out. 

Our cloud is still pretty old-school, I continue to use the console as the traditional admin tool for daily troubleshooting. In a newer version, they're using something called Command Center. I haven't played around with that yet. I heard that it's very sleek. At this point, the console is pretty dated, so it's good they're doing an update.

The Chargeback feature has recently changed as well. I haven't had a chance to explore it, however, I believe they've improved on it quite a bit.

The solution can be a bit complex for new users.

The solution needs better Office 365 data backup management.

As a government office, we think about protecting personal data. Serbia is part of an open government partnership, which is a global project. Commvault should think about protecting open data, especially if there is personal data involved. Perhaps they could divide the data and say, "In this database is personal data and you cannot use it in an open data format."

And they can always improve the interface design to make it easier. Sometimes, you need to click two or three times to do something. They should look at what tabs are used most and make them more accessible, to cut the time it takes to get to that information.

The product must improve Oracle client configuration. It is difficult to configure clients of Oracle and SaaS. The solution must also improve bare metal restore for Oracle and Active Directory. Active Directory is not fully protected with bare metal restore. The tool must improve the 1-Touch recovery of Oracle and Active Directory.

The product must provide features for converting VM to physical and physical to VM.

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.

You can't change Metallic's retention policies without contacting the Commvault support team. We can only change the scheduling within a certain window, like four hours. Restoration also takes a long time. The hypervisor capabilities are also limited in terms of backing up across cloud platforms. For example, if we are taking a backup in Azure and want to switch the backup to AWS, it will take some time. 

There are still a lot of ways to improve the recruitment process. Commvault deployment is executed remotely, but managing their support on time is difficult. They reply to the support portal weekly, but there are some delays.

I don't have any notes for improvements. 

The price could always be lower. 

We'd like to have local support in Germany.

The POC is only 30 days, and it really should be 90 days. 

I haven't had any challenges with the solution. 

The pricing could be more flexible in terms of licensing. It would help attract more customers. 

The interface could be improved because it has two different consoles. The first console is Java, and it is a little complex, but you can do 100% of the operation. But now, there is an alternative console of HTML 5. It is trendy and simple, but you can only do 70% of your operation. The HTML console is perfect for a client or a partner.

You have all the information centralized with the Java console, and I believe they plan to transition to the HTML console fully.

HyperScale X is not user-friendly. There are many settings that have to be done on your own. It would benefit from a better interface. 

Commvault has a command center that is easy to use, but it does not have the functionality you need, so you have to switch to the Java GUI.

Its dashboard could be improved to provide a summarized version of all the jobs instead of having to go through each one of them. We should easily be able to glance at all issues. If I had not gone with the on-premise version, I would have had regular reports with the cloud version. 

It would be an advantage if they increase the compression rate of the backup. I am keeping it on-prem, so I'll need more disks depending on the policies that I have in the retention period. 

Its price could also be lower. If a good solution can be cheaper, it is always an advantage.

Data center backup must be improved. We also want the product to provide us with a cloud-based backup. If we use Microsoft Exchange Online for email services, we want to know how to get a backup in Commvault.

I really struggled to configure HyperScale X as there was a lack of detailed documentation. In the next release, I would like to see increased capacity and automated solutions for backup.

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.

Adding new users who are non-technical can be a little challenging. You can push the software out through SCCM and install it that way, and that works great, but it would be nice to have another option where somebody could download an executable and run it and it would work. It's a little challenging to get it on other systems. I work from home but I have to go and help them because sometimes they don't know. I might send them the authentication code and they'll try to install it... I'm still working out the details, trying to figure out where they went wrong, but I've had several users try to do it and it hasn't worked.

I would like to see more customizable reports. I have reports going right now, but the daily report, for example, shows something like 40 jobs that ran when there are just a few endpoints on there. I'd like to just know if the endpoint was successfully backed up, not how many times. More customizable reports would be nice to have.

The solution’s user interface for managing on-prem, cloud, or multi-cloud environments in one place is not the best. There are discrepancies between Java GUI plus HTML5. While additional improvements are coming soon, the lack of CLI makes administration tedious and time consuming.

The Command Center is decent. It does require major improvements for usability. SP19 will provide many desired features. It would be optimal to have CommServe running on Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

The solution requires constant attention. Commvault is very complex. We are constantly making adjustments and working through hotfixes, updates, and issues. 

There is a steep learning curve. Training is essential.

The solution requires improvement with its connection and bandwidth.

Commvault tries to integrate with every new product that's coming out on the market. Sometimes it makes everyone's life easier if it works well. If not, we don't know where the error is coming from, and it has a lot of bugs.

Another issue is with the eDiscovery platform, Activate, where they profile data. It has a lot of issues with the indexing.

Commvault also has something called a file-level on detection. On the production server, if it finds any anomalies on the files, it sends an alert. It runs every five minutes, so admins can get an email alert. That's very good, but it's a reactive alert, we only get it when there's a backup happening. If they can improve that and make it a proactive alert, to identify and send anomalies to admins, that would really help any companies out there go against malware.

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. 

What I need is deeper CLI documentation for both QCommand and SQL queries.

They could work on the implementation of the features.

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.

The only problem is that some of what we snap most of is the VMs. We found about 10% of the VMs that we can't snap because they're too interactive. It actually causes the application to crash.

It would be ideal if there was usable file states. Live sync is not live sync. It's not really live, it's live to the back it up, however, it's not keeping it up to date within seconds. We have an environment that is very transaction heavy, and the lowest we can get to is about 15 minutes. However, we need second RPOs. 5 second RPOs, 10 second RPOs.

The solution's pricing could be better.

Sometimes for customers, it is difficult because you can see all the features. Sometimes, it is difficult for them to use or understand it. Once they have had some training from Commvault or us, they are really happy with the solution.

I would assess the Command Center as a very useful but sometimes difficult tool. It is multipurpose. It has all the features of logging and monitoring, especially for the actual setup. For us, it is easy because we work daily with it, but for customers who only use it once a week, they sometimes have some difficulties. Command Center is not user-friendly for beginners.

This is also the reason why we propose to customers to use the Web Console. I know that some older customers are not yet really aware of this tool. However, from the moment that they start using the tool and search possibilities, they will then go to that Web Console instead of the Command Center.

Ransomware is a major problem these days, and whatever improvements they can make to be more secure on this is always good. At this moment, they have a large install base and a very broad package for backup of applications, for OSs and Hyper-V, with a cloud integration. This will be a major part of their growth and change in the future. 

We would like the ability to restore to and from the cloud to on-prem. While they are already very big in this aspect, this could be an improvement over the next few years.

Commvault's interface has a lot of sub-menus, and sometimes it's hard to find the information you need. You have to click a few times before finding the right window. The overview could be better.

Commvault works quite well as it is. But we are an MSP, so for us it's fairly hard to customize it for branding it.

There is also room for improvement in the multi-tenancy and security. That's been a hard thing for us and for Commvault as a vendor. Sometimes it's hard to implement new features in multi-tenancy environments. The new features are great, and it's good that they are there, but they are not always usable in an MSP environment.

The solution's breadth and depth of cloud support are good but could be better. Some cloud features that are common-sense, especially on AWS, are not completely integrated yet in the product. They are a work-in-progress. Overall, cloud is moving and innovating also very fast. That also makes it very hard for Commvault to comply with all the new features. Sometimes a cloud provider like Microsoft changes something and a feature is broken in Commvault.

The product does not provide an option to save a copy of data on-premises.

My customers are not satisfied with the tool because there is a little trouble with the throughput of Metallic. If you go very large, you run into some problems, especially when moving things into the cloud and out of the cloud. This is not a problem of Metallic but a cloud provider problem. However, that's a normal thing we have with the cloud providers.

I wouldn't want any more features since, at the moment, it's very simple to do a SaaS backup and so on while doing more complex things since it is on-premises.

There are two ways to use it and I prefer the web-based one over the app. I wish they were a little bit more matched in what they offer because the features aren't as available in the web-based interface as they are in the app.

They should move the CommServe outside of Windows machines and the database should be distributed among servers. It's still a single point of failure.

Also, I work a lot with workflows, which means a combination of XML files and commands. It would be helpful if they unified the use of workflows.

The new HTML5-based management portals are very nice, but do not yet have all of the features of the Java-based client. I’d like to see all of the features move over to HTML5 so that we do not have to use Java ideally.

There are some features that need general improvement. 

With respect to the cloud, they need to offer more integrations.

We'd like to see the administration be a bit easier with respect to the command center in the future.

We've run into some issues when attempting to restore very large numbers of files. Of course, that's more of a design issue. For example, if you have, say, 10 million small files with added encryption, and you want to restore them, it can end up taking days to restore them. That is a file-level restoring operation. One option is to go for Image Level backup and restore the entire image, which is much faster. Then you can extract whatever data you want from that image.

IntelliSnap is a storage snapshot application for storage snapshots. The tool is very good but we could not use it because we didn't have compatible storage. That would've helped us a lot because that's one of the very few tools which integrates with lots of storage products out there. It's very flexible, very easy-to-use. We had the VMware vSAN version which is not supported by Commvault IntelliSnap. 

The thing about Commvault is there are a lot of moving parts. You have to design it properly for resources, hardware and software, and licensing because you can install it on any of your Intel servers and then you can use any other storage as the destination. It just comes down to proper lower-level design in sizing.

It is a little more complicated than it really needs to be.

Reporting could definitely be improved.

I need documentation for Azure backups. One expectation that I have is regarding PDF documentation. When I was trying to browse the documentation, I could not locate that. The documentation should be in PDF format where it can be downloaded easily.

The product's migration process and stability need improvement.

Commvault Complete Data Protection meets market standards, but an area for improvement is its licensing model because everyone else offers the subscription-based model nowadays. At the same time, Commvault still has the traditional license model, where you must buy a set of licenses.

For example, you must purchase one hundred licenses if you're backing up one hundred virtual machines. At the same time, other players offer a pay-as-you-go subscription model, which means if you use one hundred this month, you'll pay for one hundred, and if you use thirty next month, you'll pay for thirty. With Commvault Complete Data Protection, on the other hand, you pay for one hundred licenses even if you only use fifty virtual machines, so the licensing model needs improvement.

Commvault HyperScale X could improve by allowing backups of the storage area network (SAN).

It takes a lot of steps to implement backups. We have to do a lot of planning to make the solution work properly. It takes some time to create every policy. It's an easy task, but there are many steps. It's not as easy as using Veeam. 

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.

The deployment process should be simplified because it is not something that just anybody can do. 

One of my colleagues in Australia is using Commvault and has told me that the solution does not yet have complete support for integrating with cloud providers. Specifically, it is not integrated with Amazon services. In the future, I would like to see better integration with cloud environments.

Commvault is only installed in our Windows environment, on Windows server, and I prefer to use Linux because I find the environment simpler to use. In a Windows environment, it is not easy to use command-line-based products.

There are two people on my team that manage Commvault for my customers. It is supposed to be one of the least time-consuming solutions but in reality, it consumes 60% of their time. Compared to other backup solutions, it takes more time to manage and operate.

Commvault doesn't support container-based systems and does not offer agentless backup.

We've had issues with the solution not restoring certain environments. There also issues we find when we want to restore, for example, a cloud environment.

The product could be more convenient in terms of working with different solutions and having more integration between the different products in the market. It really should integrate better with, for example, VMware or Nutanix or Hyper-V. It would be really, really helpful if that were the case.

From the perspective of the enterprise cloud archiving software, it does not resolve all of the data solutions that the customers are expecting. It works, but it is not up to the mark. They still need some time to improve the archiving and offer it within the single console management. We do not pitch the Commvault archiving solution to our customers. If they ask for it due to reasons of legality or compliance then we can supply it, but we prefer not to offer the Commvault archiving solution.

We did a POC with one of our customers who is archiving more than fifty thousand email accounts, all over the world, on a daily basis, and Commvault failed miserably. It was not able to provide that kind of performance. It can be good for up to three hundred user mailboxes, but not more than that.

The stability of this product, as a whole, needs to be improved to compete with archiving solutions such as Enterprise Vault.

Support for this product needs to be improved because I have seen a couple of cases where it is taking more than the required time to solve issues.

The documentation is not up to the mark. They need to improve their support documentation because it is a little bit weak.

They need to expand more into private, hybrid, and public cloud systems. They need to be even more open than they are now with respect to integrating with public cloud systems. Cloud is the platform that system integrators are now selling, so it is important to have that support.

The stability of the tool could be improved. We were not able to take a secondary copy in Metallic on-premise. Some pharmaceutical customers keep their data on-premise so that they can maintain a copy on-premise if something happens to the cloud. Metallic does not provide an option to save a copy of data on-premises.

This is not a very high standard product. 

I have written a lot of different reviews about the product and every time I have mentioned the user interface is not user-friendly, e.g., the admin portal is not user-friendly. It definitely takes a lot of understanding to get familiar with the portal. However, once you are completely familiar with it, then it is pretty easy to manage. It's not something that you can jump in right away and start, knowing what exactly is going on. There are a lot of places that you need to look around to understand how the backups are configured.

The administration of the solution could be simplified. This would really make the administrator's life easier.

I think the one thing that could be improved is the customer experience. The interface should be more user friendly.

The price could perhaps be lower as well.

Bare-metal restore needs some work. It's not intuitive and seems to have been an afterthought.

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.

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.

We've faced problems backing up our virtual machines. A few of them, at least. However, we opened a ticket, and then we found out how to troubleshoot this issue and how to do a snapshot backup. We were able to understand exactly what was the root cause of the issue and a solution was provided to us.

We have already submitted a feature enhancement request to Commvault. They are working on it. That's in relation to the Commvault Metallic and is related to the workflow approval. We requested they implement workflow approval, just in case you want to allow, for example, general users to access the Commvault Metallic and browse what mailboxes they need to check if it is approved by the legal department. We can run them independently, this access without even referring back again to the IT division, however, we requested the workflow has to be based on approved access.

We get an alarm if a lot of files are deleted, for example. That could look like ransomware, even if it is not.

There is room for improvement in terms of data security.

The user interface is a bit tough, to be honest, but once you get the hang of it, it's okay. In the beginning it was tough, but now I know what I'm doing. We had free training but after that, just to learn the interface took me four to six months. There are still things to learn because with every service pack there are changes. Service Pack 18 was recently released and there are some features that I haven't even seen yet.

I would like them not to push Command Center. It is good, but I would like them to enable all the features for the Java console. Some things are not in the Java console, like Office 365 agents. In fact, they are there, but one of the engineers had to show me how to configure it. It's not done the same as in the Command Center.

Commvault HyperScale X is more expensive for hybrid environments than traditional solutions.

They should provide more integration with OpenShift for the solution. Also, its support could be better.

The price should be reduced because it is too expensive for our customers.

I would like to see a more user-friendly GUI.

They don't market their products well. They don't do a lot of marketing to enable them to move forward. 

It's a very good product. It works. If their marketing was great, the product would sell itself. It's harder because their competitors have much better marketing. Everybody knows Veritas and Veeam because they market well. If a customer chooses Commvault, it would be the first time they've heard of it. 

The setup is not that straightforward or easy. Even the documentation is not generic or public like other products. You have to be a partner or you have to have a specific account and download it from the vendor themselves. 

The pricing of the solution can be improved and made cheaper.

There is room for improvement in the data center application running on the cloud for the platform.

The tool should revise its licensing. 

The price could be lower.

When I compare it with Dell EMC Networker, they have a feature called persistent binding, which means that the backup would be going through the fiber channels instead of the network. Commvault relies on the compression and deduplication ratio, although they could also utilize the fiber channels. Persistent binding is a feature that I would like to see in the next release of Commvault.

It takes a lot of technical expertise to implement. Commvault could increase the training it provides to customers and partners.

Also, with technology changing, it could use more features. Maybe they could include artificial intelligence.

We have never managed to use it to full potential because we don't have a dedicated team to take care of Commvault, so we barely keep it running. It takes a lot of our time when we have ten other systems to take care of. That's why I'm not the biggest fan of this. Just to keep it running is time-consuming. There are five people on my team. Commvault was supposed to be one of the less time-consuming solutions, but in reality it takes 60 percent of our time just to keep it running, and that's not even fine-tuning it; that's just to keep it running. It's a pain.

It constantly breaks and then we spend three or four days trying to fix the issue, working with support, going back and forth. When we finally resolve something, another issue pops up. Then we spend another three or four days trying to make it work. I'm not saying it's the product's fault. Maybe we didn't implement it correctly in the first place. I don't know, I wasn't here. But it takes a lot of time, and every issue is different so I cannot build experience. With another system, I know if I do this, this, and this then it breaks, and I know that I have to do this, this, and this to fix it. But every time Commvault breaks, it's something different, so it takes us a lot of time to fix it. It is frustrating.

Another thing I find frustrating is that when it fails and it says something like "Error code 19: etc., etc... Click here for more information," when I click I get an error page. Having the error codes documented in the Commvault Knowledge Base would help us a lot.

When I came to the role, they said, "Oh yeah, you're going to be doing this, this, and this, and maybe a little bit of Commvault. In reality, 60 to 70 percent of my day is just tinkering with Commvault.

The user interface is complicated for users, but for an engineer or backup operator, it is useful. Still, sometimes users feel that the management dashboard is complicated because they see all the features in the one dashboard. Sometimes users need a simple dashboard to manage the whole environment.

Commvault has two management dashboards. The first is the CommCell Console, which is Java-based, and the second is Command Center. We don't always find all the features we need in the Command Center and we need to go through the Java console, and sometimes features are only on the Java console. Sometimes we don't see what we need on both consoles. For example, we have to use Command Center to back up Oracle EBS, because it's not on the Java console. It would be useful if we had all the configuration features for setting things up in the Command Center, rather than having to go to the CommCell Console.

Also, sometimes, when restoring across platforms, we need more documentation from Commvault.

Commvault is complex even if the product has comprehensive solutions and covers pretty much every technology out there. There's no unified way to manage all of the products on one single console. There are different things that you need to look for to have comprehensive management of the whole environment. I think that's not one of Commvault's strong suits. 

Also, even though I think the user interface might improve the manageability of the solution, it can be complex in some cases. You need a lot of experience and different touchpoints to get through environmental management, and it's not a comprehensive or unified solution for that. 

Commvault is also a solution that requires a lot of time. It demands a lot of time from administrators and requires an administrator to manage it almost full-time. But in this case, it's not a hindrance. While it isn't the easiest product to use, it's one of the most likable ones. It offers a lot of different options and the breadth of support that it has. I think it's just a compromise that you make. In this case, you get flexibility, great support, and a high-quality product, but you lose some in terms of administration. 

The implementation is very difficult and should be improved and made easier. There are many features to explore to create more value from more solutions.

We want to do a course and explore the possibility of obtaining certification. This will help us gain a more comprehensive understanding to create solutions more efficiently. The most important thing for me is to have more courses and more possibilities to receive online certifications.

This product is overly complex to operate and run.

The price of this solution could be lower.

You need quite a lot of human resources to maintain a Commvault environment, to keep it operational. Also, it would be nice to if there were an easier way set up some Commvault components.

I don't know exactly when they came out with the new HTML interface because, until then, the interface was a based on Java. The HTML interface is a remarkable improvement. However, there are still some features that are not available in that interface that are available in the Java console, but I'm sure that will come with time.

Another issue that comes to mind, that we have to pay attention to is, when a new service pack or hotfix comes out, it can happen that something that was working before does not work anymore. We really have to test it in our lab, before we are 100 percent sure we can introduce it in production and be 100 percent sure that everything still works that was working before.

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.

The Command Center is pretty good. It provides us with a view of the main features and main areas, but they might be able to do things better. For example, are there any particular issues on a backup — to get everything on one tab. At the moment, we have to go to different tabs. It would be helpful to get the main notifications in a single dashboard.

Also, in the restore field, I couldn't find a separate option to restore the permissions only. I have to restore the complete data. Suppose I am restoring a particular file. If I want to restore the permissions only from that particular folder, that is not possible. I have to restore all the data for that particular folder. If there was an option to just restore the permissions, that would be better.

The back of virtual machines needs improvement. I know they're working on it. They're always doing new things but I think they still have a little bit more to do.

In the next release, I would like to see disaster recovery options for the cloud. It was always off the scope because they're not really meant to be a disaster recovery solution but now they're getting there. From what I see, that there's no reason why they can't do disaster recovery, they have everything they need for it. They're beginning to do things but I'd like to see them delve more into that.

In an upcoming release, the reports could be better.

One issue we face is the complexity of the console. That could be improved on. It takes users time to get familiar with Commvault. On average, it takes our customers between one and three months to learn it. The console and the way you configure Commvault have very advanced settings. It takes time to understand how it works. 

After a customer understands it, he can improve and add to the configuration.

There is room for improvement in its user interface and web console, called Command Center. They are improving it every year so if they continue in that direction, I think it will be a very reliable console.

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. 

It would be a bit unfair to say that it's complex, due to the fact that it supports so many different workloads, however, if there's anything that is a bit of a shortcoming, then it's the fact that there's a bit of complexity involved when dealing with the product.

It should be easier to implement for tech people. Right now, it's quite difficult.

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.

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.

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. 

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.

The solution could improve its security.

Our customers complain that this is a difficult product to manage.

The reporting is complicated and should be simplified in an upcoming release.

There is a bit of an overkill in functionality, especially in the interface, when you decide to deploy all of the software. I'm talking specifically about the Java console, which is the one we are using because it has all of the features that Commvault has in it. With so many features, sometimes you cannot find what you are looking for in the interface and you have to dig into books online to find out how to solve an issue.

The web console is more organized than the Java console, although it lacks some features.

In the next release, I would like to see different options made available for hot versus cold data.

Commvault Complete Data Protection would benefit from improving their training resources. Some of the topics are very complex and are difficult to explain to our customers. The configurations are complex for users compared to other solutions. 

This is a very technical solution that I would like to see Commvault offer customer support and marketing development resources in India. To my understanding, there is no marketing development team in India and we face problems when we speak with Commvault about these things.

When we send a query to Commvault, they take a long time to answer our questions. It can be very difficult to contact the Commvault team. Whenever we try to contact them, we are transferred to other distributors.

Virtual machines backup window in GUI is not user friendly. Some improvements should be done to better user experience.

The solution needs higher availability.

Its competitor, Veeam, includes backup and replication in the same product. I don't know if Commvault has it or not, but they should if they don't.

Also, they should have a module for reporting and supervising, like Veeam. 

Training.

Licensing could be better explained. Sometimes, it's unclear what features are available in different licensing models.

Mostly controls, visibility, cost allocation. Other general features like backup protection (via multiple copies), storage optimization (like compression/deduplication, tape refresh etc.) were in place before we switched to CommVault.

Actually Commvault is good software. I just wanted to compare the features, which are there in EMC NetWorker, which are not available in Commvault. We have things using Networker, I just wanted to see what is the advantage over Commvault.

Endpoint backup.