Commvault Complete Data Protection vs Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) comparison

Commvault^® Complete Data Protection is a data protection and information management solution that runs on a single platform with a unified code base. Commvault enables companies worldwide to protect, access, and use all their data, anywhere and anytime, turning data into a powerful strategic asset. Commvault provides the resources and expertise to accelerate the return to normal business operations after a data loss event or an attack.

After installing the Commvault software, the data is processed by the agent software on client computers and backed up through the “MediaAgent” (Commvault’s data manager) to a hard disk or to cloud storage. All activity in the environment is backed up by a centralized server. Commvault users can then access the protected data using web browsers from desktop or mobile devices. The Commvault software is available across both cloud and on-premises environments.

Commvault Complete Data Protection Features:

With Commvault, users can easily back up, restore, archive, replicate, transfer, and search data. Commvault offers its customers:

• Data protection and security: Commvault protects and rapidly recovers data from ransomware attacks and other security breaches.
  
• Data transformation: Commvault effectively moves and repurposes data across environments, enabling flexible data usage for management, testing, and other IT needs.
  
• Data insights: Commvault provides its users with insights that can be used to apply machine learning and artificial intelligence to optimize and automate IT processes. Data insights can be applied to data protection to mitigate security breaches.
  
• Manageable data environment: Commvault Command Center offers a dashboard for management of the entire data environment. Users can identify data for protection, monitor backups and restorations, and view analytics. Saved configurations and procedures reduce the load on IT staff.

Reviews from Real Users

Commvault stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Some of the major ones are its backup, recovery, and data protection features as well as its centralized management.

Sheron B. a systems engineer at PAREXEL International Corporation writes, “I like that you have complete hooks into and total control of your data. The data is well-protected. It doesn't age off until it's copied. That's a big feature right there. When you reach the end of your retention, it does not expire until the secondary copy is completed. That allows you to hold onto data that otherwise would have aged off by retention. I like that feature. It's hard to just delete or lose data using the Commvault platform.

PeerSpot users note the effectiveness of Commvault. An engineer at a tech services company writes, "When it comes to recovery, Commvault is undeniably one of the best technologies out there. It's got all the different granularity levels that a business requires to get your information back to production. For example, we have their commission discovery, individual items recovery, mailbox recovery, databases, and different tables. Some databases can be recovered individually. This level of granularity enables us to get the most value out of the product."

DD series enables your organization to protect, manage and recover data at scale. As the next generation of Dell Data Domain appliances, DD series sets the bar for efficient data management from edge to core to cloud and includes the ecosystem support and comprehensive data protection that customers have come to appreciate from Data Domain. The DD series offers a super-fast, secure, and an efficient solution that is built for multi-cloud data protection and to keep up with future demands. The DD series consists of the DD9900, DD9400, DD6900, DD6400, DD3300, and a software-defined option, PowerProtect DD Virtual Edition (DDVE).

DD series empowers organizations to protect, manage and recover data at scale across their entire diverse ecosystems. DD series provides broad ecosystem support, efficiency, powerful data protection, cloud-enabled capabilities, and the cyber resiliency that our customers demand.

The DD Operating System (DDOS) is the brilliance that drives the DD series. DDOS contributes the agility, security, and reliability that pushes DD series to deliver high-speed, scalable, and standard-setting protection storage for backup, archive, and disaster recovery. DDOS integrates seamlessly with many existing infrastructures, permitting ease-of-use with leading backup and archiving applications, and provides superior performance in conjunction with Dell PowerProtect Data Manager and Data Protection Suite. When you decide to purchase a new DD series appliance you can easily consume DDOS as a subscription providing greater flexibility for deployment while minimizing your overall upfront costs.

DD series does a great job to minimize the threat of data loss and adds to the value of protected data while meeting ever-increasing demands of SLAs and increasing ROI. DDOS drives DD series to deliver up to 38% faster backups and up to 45% faster restores at significantly higher compression levels.

DD series supports high availability within the single rack. Additionally, DD series can greatly reduce the total cost of ownership (TCO) by minimizing downtime in the unlikely event of a hardware failure. DD series delivers amazing high-speed networking connectivity with support for 25GbE and 100GbE network adapters.

Benefits of Dell PowerProtect DD

Fast, secure, efficient data protection:

• Provide 1.5PB usable capacity in a single rack
• Allow for Up to 3PB capacity for long-term retention
• Logical capacity is increased by up to 30% per TB when compared to the previous generation
• Allow for instant access and instant restore of up to 64VMs and 100k IOPS
• High-speed network connectivity – 10GbE, 25GbE and 100GbE
• Seamless fast integration and outstanding performance with PowerProtect Data Manager and Data Protection Suite
• Supports many of the leading enterprise backup and archive applications

Industry-leading multi-cloud protection:

• Provides software-defined protection storage on-premises and in-cloud with PowerProtect DD Virtual Edition (DDVE).
• DDVE scales up to 256TB in-cloud (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and others).
• Greatly improves in-cloud restore performance by as much as 10x when compared to previous versions.
• Cloud Tier delivers super simple and value-added long-term retention to public, private, or hybrid clouds
• Cost-efficient disaster recovery to the cloud

Operational simplicity:

• Enhanced DD System Manager supports a complete chassis view
• Significantly lower administrative costs
• Grants a single point of management for all DD series by PowerProtect DD Management Center
• Deploy Smart Scale for PowerProtect appliances directly from PowerProtect DD Management Center. Smart Scale helps drive down management complexities while increasing storage efficiencies. 

Reviews from Real Users

One user, who is an enterprise IT architect at a tech service company, says that “Dell PowerProtect DD is highly stable and reliable. I have not had a time when the system did not work and in an emergency this is critical.” He rates the ROI it has brought his company a five out of five.

A pre-sales and technical manager at a tech services company says that "The features that I have found most valuable with Dell PowerProtect DD are its deduplication feature and its DD Boost protocol for fast transfer, which is amazing."

Chris C., lead infrastructure architect at ThinkON, relates that Dell PowerProtect DD “allows our organization to send more data to this device compared to others. It also allows us a fast recovery of files or Virtual Machines if needed being on-premise.”