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Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) vs NetApp FAS Series vs Veritas Backup Exec comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
7.4
Dell PowerProtect DD offers significant financial benefits, enhancing backup efficiency and ROI through rapid restoration and data reduction.
Sentiment score
6.2
NetApp FAS Series offers efficient storage, cost savings, and satisfaction, especially in VMware environments, despite high expansion costs.
Sentiment score
6.5
Veritas Backup Exec offers strong ROI with rapid restoration and cost savings, despite concerns over subscription-based licensing.
If you have the configuration well maintained and configured, you should have good efficiency and compression for the clients and for yourself.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.4
Dell PowerProtect DD support is praised for responsiveness and expertise, despite regional inconsistencies in Bangladesh and Pakistan.
Sentiment score
7.3
NetApp FAS Series customer service is responsive and knowledgeable, though regional availability and resolution streamlining can improve.
Sentiment score
7.2
Veritas Backup Exec support is generally good with responsive staff, but efficiency and consistency vary due to expertise and location.
They respond within 24 hours of case submission, which is crucial for maintaining the solution.
I have dedicated support from Dell for Vietnam, and they are responsive.
I have encountered an issue before with other brands that would not have occurred with Dell.
Sometimes, the support was inadequate because the initial architecture was poorly defined.
We are also using it ourselves for the SAN and CIFS protocol.
They often provide basic solutions, such as suggesting a failover or a power cycle, which are not the sophisticated solutions we expect from a vendor.
I see good technical engineer support resolving issues.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
6.9
Dell PowerProtect DD offers excellent scalability for enterprises, with easy expansion and effective cloud options for large data volumes.
Sentiment score
7.4
NetApp FAS Series offers seamless scalability, integrating old and new components for medium to large enterprises despite potential cost issues.
Sentiment score
8.1
Veritas Backup Exec is scalable for SMBs, but may face challenges with large data volumes and complex environments.
The scalability depends on the IT department's strategy.
By keeping the increasing data in mind, we decided to go for Data Domain.
The solution is scalable to higher models, both vertically and horizontally.
NetApp FAS Series is scalable, and it is possible, but you need to pay.
The NetApp FAS Series is scalable and offers numerous solutions, but only if customers are willing to invest in the shelves.
Now in the current version, I can run more than one process for backup in one job for more virtual machines.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.3
Dell PowerProtect DD is highly reliable, with minimal downtime and robust performance, consistently rated nine or ten for stability.
Sentiment score
8.0
The NetApp FAS Series is praised for stability and reliability, with users noting minimal issues and high performance.
Sentiment score
7.3
Veritas Backup Exec is stable and reliable, with occasional service or configuration issues noted by some users.
Dell is especially more stable in the enterprise product.
Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) is stable in terms of software performance.
When panic occurs on the node, it reboots itself, and we have experienced numerous hardware-related issues.
 

Room For Improvement

Dell PowerProtect DD requires improved processing, security, ease of use, integration, and competitive pricing to meet user demands.
NetApp FAS Series needs enhancements in flexibility, pricing, integration, performance, documentation, support, virtualization, and scalability to address user concerns.
Veritas Backup Exec requires a simpler UI, cost reduction, cloud integration, better performance, and improved support for diverse environments.
The high availability feature is only present in the higher models of Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain).
It is suitable for more customers since it is small, cost-effective, and a good start for any customer to know about Data Domain and DBS solutions.
Medium-level and SME-level businesses can easily utilize this feature, but Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) is a relatively expensive solution to propose to customers.
Nutanix leads the business in this approach, and I feel that NetApp is missing some aspects, such as CPU, GPU, and RAM, in its AI portfolio.
There is an opportunity there for NetApp with Cloud Volumes ONTAP.
It was not possible to have a custom user inside ONTAP without the delete permission to delete the volume.
Some technology improvement is needed to manage my basic business continuity plan.
I aim to monitor the functionality and probably find something this year to monitor logs from our backup system and storage and notify us about any unusual activities.
We need to have a proper image backup with a documented restore procedure, as some users were unable to do the image backup restoration due to driver issues or similar challenges.
 

Setup Cost

Dell PowerProtect DD is costly but valued for deduplication and support, despite competition from Veritas and Commvault.
NetApp FAS Series is pricey but offers good ROI and savings through bundled licensing, with support impacting overall costs.
Veritas Backup Exec provides flexible licensing with reasonable pricing, though advanced setups and technical support may incur additional costs.
The pricing has become higher since July, and the license costs are more expensive compared to the past.
The price for PowerProtect DD is not suitable for my customers. It is very high.
The backup solution cost is higher than the actual solution.
The pricing of NetApp FAS Series is not cheap, but in comparison to other vendors, NetApp FAS Series is affordable.
When I compare it with others, it is twice or three times cheaper.
The setup is a bit expensive at a corporate price
 

Valuable Features

Dell PowerProtect DD offers deduplication, compression, and seamless integration, praised for scalability, security, reliability, and cost-effectiveness in data management.
NetApp FAS Series excels in high availability, integration, and efficient storage solutions, featuring robust disaster recovery and unified storage.
Veritas Backup Exec is praised for its user-friendly interface, fast backups, stability, and versatile platform compatibility with strong support.
The most valuable feature of Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) is its deduplication capability.
By using Data Domain, we get the advantage of data deduplication, reducing data size.
Retention for data, deduplication, and replication between sites are valuable features.
While NVMe disks are expensive and require three disks for parity calculations, hard drives in NetApp FAS Series are inexpensive, making it more cost-efficient per GB, even with RAID tech implementation.
One important feature for customers is its ease of use and continuity, enabling seamless usage across on-premise and cloud environments.
At this moment, autonomous ransomware protection is the key feature.
Veritas has technical compatibility with my hardware and other systems.
It has a lot of functions and security measures, which ensure our backups are secure.
My customers find the normal file system backup features of Veritas Backup Exec effective and valuable.
 

Mindshare comparison

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Backup and Recovery
 

Featured Reviews

Faisal_Zia - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers efficient data management with robust features and reliable performance
Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) can be improved in terms of price. While Dell is providing a proper device, other solutions, such as Symantec, can replicate their data through any NAS storage. Although their deduplication and compression might not be as effective, they can still accomplish the task. Medium-level and SME-level businesses can easily utilize this feature, but Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) is a relatively expensive solution to propose to customers.
Arnaud Salmon - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers good performance and
Once, I've been in a program, but they stopped supporting protocols like HTTP, STP, and that kind of stuff. All of the DIP supports at the beginning were kind of support when it was just Python and just five storage. And it happened a few times that the customer required the STP and HTTP protocol for storage. And I was surprised I couldn't do it anymore with NetApp. So, it would be beneficial for them to support both kinds of protocols. The only little black points that I would put on top of NetApp FAS Series. There is room for improvement in deployment and configuration processes. The thing with ONTAP is that we have a lot of layers, from the raw disks to the volumes we present to servers and configure. There are quite a lot of things to configure. Probably NetApp should ease the way to install that. In NetApp products, such as ONTAP and FAS, a solid understanding of storage is still necessary to handle configurations in larger systems. It's not the same with Pure Storage or Huawei. Even someone less familiar with storage could manage it, making it more accessible.
Pawel Augustyn - PeerSpot reviewer
Simplified interface with good performance but needs monitoring
I need to use PowerStore and Veritas Backup Exec. It is a direct backup to types, and it is supported by my backup. It offers good performance and stability, and it works properly. I am happy with this program. It is still working on aligning with security requirements and data encryption for Amazon or ATAC. It has a lot of functions and security measures, which ensure our backups are secure.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
Educational Organization
17%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Computer Software Company
17%
Manufacturing Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What is your primary use case for Dell EMC PowerProtect DD (Data Domain)?
The typical use case for Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) is for backup purposes; it is disk-based backup, which pr...
What do you like most about Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain)?
The product, a disk backup solution, improves our data application tasks. We used tape libraries with Dev drives in l...
Which SAN product would you choose: IBM FlashSystem (FS9500) vs PureFlash Array/X NVMe vs PureFlash Array/XL NVMe?
Have you considered a NetApp FAS Storage for your NAS needs? I am sure it fits very well.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetApp FAS Series?
The pricing of NetApp FAS Series is not cheap, but in comparison to other vendors, NetApp FAS Series is affordable be...
How do the backup solutions of Veeam and Veritas compare?
Technically, Veeam is best for hyper-v & VMWare replications, snapshots, HA failover, also support for file syste...
What do you like most about Veritas Backup Exec?
The most important feature is the variety of backup applications it supports, including ERP systems and most other pr...
 

Also Known As

DataDomain, Dell EMC Data Domain, PowerProtect Data Domain
No data available
Backup Exec, Symantec Backup Exec
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

The US Army, City of Houston, Lloyds TSB, TiVo, Teck, Ingram Entertainment, The New York Mets
Children's Hospital Central California, Plex Systems, PDF PNI Digital Media, Denver Broncos, PDF KSM Legal, Clayton Companies, Virginia Community College
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Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, NetApp and others in Deduplication Software. Updated: July 2025.
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