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Commvault Cloud vs Microsoft DPM comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 6, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Commvault Cloud
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
3rd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
110
Ranking in other categories
eDiscovery (3rd), Cloud Backup (2nd), Disaster Recovery as a Service (2nd), File Archiving (1st), Disaster Recovery (DR) Software (3rd), SaaS Backup (1st), Threat Deception Platforms (1st), Container Backup Software (1st)
Microsoft DPM
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
26th
Average Rating
7.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Backup and Recovery category, the mindshare of Commvault Cloud is 7.5%, up from 5.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft DPM is 1.1%, down from 1.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Backup and Recovery
 

Featured Reviews

Matt Reller - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides extremely fast backup, is easy to manage, and is flexible
Commvault Cloud's automated policies provide the notification we need to ensure our data is secure and managed correctly. Commvault Cloud provides excellent visibility across all of our organization's data. It is extremely important to our organization that Commvault has a unified platform that offers recovery across cloud, on-prem, and SaaS workloads. It has helped our organization improve by simplifying the way we manage our environment. We could not manage the same environment with only half of our current staff. We have yet to find anything in our environment that Commvault does not support. Commvault Cloud's Risk Analysis helps us identify, categorize, and classify sensitive data enabling us to take the appropriate actions to protect it. Commvault does a good job helping us limit our exposure and ensure compliance. Commvault has helped us reduce our data management costs significantly. Compared to Dell Avamar, the costs are vastly different. Commvault is much more cost-effective. We are licensed by capacity, so we don't have to worry about licensing different features. We have all the features that are licensed by capacity. And as far as ongoing support costs and other expenses, they are much lower than what they were with Dell Avamar. Commvault also gives us the flexibility to use any storage we want, while Avamar is tied to the Data Domain, which is not cheap to support. It has helped us reduce our backup time unless we are using Data Domain. This is because we can perform deduplication and compression on the client layer, which reduces the load on the network. We cannot do this with Data Domain. In fact, if we even attempt to perform a quick progress check before sending data to the Data Domain, the system fails completely. We learned this the hard way. We are using many more advanced features in Commvault Cloud than we ever did in Dell Avamar, simply because we had to license each feature separately in Avamar. As a result, we did not perform many backups in Avamar, such as all database backups (DB2, SAP HANA, Oracle, and SQL). These backups were performed outside of Avamar. We are now using Direct Connect agents for all of our databases. This allows us to perform incremental backups, which we could not do with the previous method. As a result, we have reduced our backup times by two-thirds, or even more in some cases. Compared to when we were backing up directly to Data Domain, Commvault is now running our backups ten times faster. This has resulted in a significant reduction in our backup times. Commvault has helped us reduce the RPO. Even in Data Domain, it has reduced our storage times by about half. It has also helped us reduce the threat detection time. We reduced the RTO significantly with Commvault. Commvault has helped us reduce downtime primarily due to the increase in the performance of resources.
Arthur Fan - PeerSpot reviewer
Scales well, free to use, and simple setup
The support from Microsoft DPM is good but we have to pay for the answers. We have to purchase points and when we need to use the support we have to use some of the points that we purchased. The support does not cost very much and we pay for each problem we have.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Scalability, as well as stability, are a couple of important parts of this solution."
"The most valuable feature of Metallic is its flexibility and user-friendly."
"Commvault is an all-in-one product that is very simple and operational for business use."
"Commvault software is a single platform where you can enable whatever you want to use, like endpoint protection. You can enable those licenses on a single platform screen. This is where I see the value ad. This is a single management tool."
"We use Commvault Command Center for backups and restores and for the creation of new clients. We use it for other functionalities as well. In terms of VMware, I can go directly to the Command Center, enter VMware, and I can search it directly. Command Center is very useful and it can be used for more advanced techniques."
"I'm a big fan of the reporting. You can build your own reports; it's very customizable. You can have individual reports going to groups of people or individuals. You can have them go out multiple times a day. It's basically a free-for-all as far as reporting goes. If anybody wants a specific job report every day, you can build it, schedule it, and have it go out and never touched it again. It's pretty nice."
"The product has the best features for scaling up and administering all the solutions from a single platform."
"Real-time synchronization is a good feature."
"It is almost perfect for Microsoft products. It is not a very powerful tool, but it is okay for small sites and small businesses with Microsoft products. It is easy to use for backup and restore. It is good for backing up Microsoft servers such as Exchange and SharePoint servers."
"Microsoft DPM is scalable."
"I could back up all the stuff we had, even the VMs we have for Hyper V."
"The most valuable feature is that DPM has an index so individual files can be searched."
"One of the most effective features of Microsoft DPM is its integration with the entire Microsoft ecosystem."
"The automated procedure is quite good for us, as it is able to capture all of the information that we require."
"I like the core backup feature. I also like the file server backup feature. I find Microsoft DPM interesting because it has fantastic integration with Microsoft products. For example, in Exchange and SharePoint, DPM is excellent when it comes to backing up data. It also does a decent job with open-source products."
"It has an application backup, a file backup, a system backup and a hypervisor."
 

Cons

"The new HTML5-based management portals are very nice, but do not yet have all of the features of the Java-based client."
"We've faced problems backing up our virtual machines."
"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 product does not provide an option to save a copy of data on-premises."
"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."
"Commvault Complete Data Protection meets market standards, but an area for improvement is its licensing model. It would be good if it could use the subscription-based model rather than the traditional licensing model."
"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."
"We previously had difficulty with the support being foreign."
"Compatibility and integration with other products needs improvement."
"It needs portability for other vendors. It is good for backing up Microsoft servers, but it doesn't support third-party solutions such as Oracle Database. It depends on Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy, especially for Hyper-V, which has a lot of problems. They should enhance the Volume Shadow Copy functionality. Its reporting should also be better. Reporting is too weak in DPM."
"You have only a few settings and if you change them for some special configurations, it's very difficult."
"Management reporting could be improved."
"The user interface can be improved quite a bit."
"There is a very poor online user community in terms of people blogging about their experiences with DPM."
"The problem lies with the 2019 version, it's the file system they’re using."
"Microsoft DPM could improve if it was available in a public or private cloud."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It was not very popular because of its previous cost, but they have been working on the pricing, and now anyone can afford to use Commvault. They changed the modeling criteria for their pricing. Previously, there was only the capacity modeling based on your content capacity. In this case, they would give you a license and you would have to pay it. Now, most of the environment is virtualized so you can have the best CPU, VMs, etc. You buy whatever you need and pay for what you need."
"Commvault Backup & Recovery is priced fairly, and its performance-to-cost ratio is also better than fair."
"Using a subscription-based license has been advantageous."
"Commvault's license fee is per server-based."
"The license is paid on an annual basis and the price is reasonable."
"The tool is cost-effective."
"The price is a little bit high."
"The complete license gives us options for all the features. Commvault does not license based on storage or the management components. It can integrate with any storage vendor. That means that when we are out of storage and need more, we can integrate without additional licensing. In my opinion, Commvault needs to reduce the licensing cost by 20 to 40 percent to make it cost-efficient."
"Microsoft DPM can be considered as an expensive solution for smaller or medium enterprises, but we have been satisfied with the price structure as it is fixed and it offers a variety of useful features"
"I think Microsoft DPM pricing is reasonable. The additional costs are related to storage and technical support."
"Microsoft DPM is a free solution. However, we pay approximately $3,000 annually for support."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
15%
Government
10%
Educational Organization
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Commvault?
The tool is affordable. I rate the pricing a six out of ten. Implementation requires additional costs because we need Commvault Professional Services.
What needs improvement with Commvault?
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...
What do you like most about Commvault Complete Data Protection?
IntelliSnap and file system backups are valuable features.
What do you like most about Microsoft DPM?
This solution helps us to manage all of the operations across servers and different workstations.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft DPM?
Microsoft licensing is complex, especially for enterprise or data center solutions. However, it's not more complicated compared to other competitors and the market is well balanced.
What needs improvement with Microsoft DPM?
I am not sure if I am competent enough to address areas for improvement in Microsoft DPM.
 

Also Known As

Commvault Complete Data Protection, Commvault Backup & Recovery, Commvault HyperScale X, Metallic, ThreatWise
DPM, Data Protection Manager, MS DPM
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Aberdeenshire Council, Acxiom, BAM Group Ireland, Catholic Education Diocese of Parramatta, CI Investments, Clifford Chance, American Municipal Power, American Pacific Mortgage, AstraZeneca, Dongbu Steel, Denver Health, Dow Jones, Emirates Steel, Penn State Health, Prime Healthcare, Sonic Healthcare, Sony Network Communications, TiVO, UCONN Health, The Weitz Company
Medical Park, Centropol Energy, a.s., NCFE, D & H Distributing, Metalor, Colosseum, a.s., Sanitas S.A., Icebreaker
Find out what your peers are saying about Commvault Cloud vs. Microsoft DPM and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.