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Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) vs Rubrik comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 20, 2025

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
7.6
Dell PowerProtect DD offers cost-effective, reliable backup solutions with data compression, deduplication, and improved backup speed and recovery time.
Sentiment score
7.2
Rubrik boosted productivity, reduced errors, and saved costs, despite initial expenses, by replacing legacy systems and automating processes.
Rubrik provides long-term return on investment for my customers, as well as immediate benefits because of deduplication and compression, drastically reducing the cost on the storage side from traditional to Rubrik.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.3
Dell PowerProtect DD's customer service is praised for knowledgeable support and timely assistance, despite occasional regional quality variations.
Sentiment score
8.3
Rubrik is renowned for outstanding customer support, offering quick responses, knowledgeable assistance, and excellent issue resolution and communication.
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.
They offer 24/7 support and even have a dedicated ransomware hotline with a team ready to engage immediately.
Rubrik's support has been good, better than many other vendors like Microsoft, VMware, and Dell.
Rubrik provides excellent customer service and technical support.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
6.8
Dell PowerProtect DD scales effectively, supports petabyte storage, integrates with cloud, and suits various business sizes with minimal maintenance.
Sentiment score
7.9
Rubrik offers efficient scalability, supporting cloud and on-premises growth, with users praising its easy expansion and architecture.
The scalability depends on the IT department's strategy.
By keeping the increasing data in mind, we decided to go for Data Domain.
It can scale out horizontally as well as vertically, and the availability of expansion is very quick.
Azure Backup solution offers faster restoration for data over six terabytes compared to on-premises.
Rubrik is highly scalable, with a rating of nine out of ten based on its seamless integration.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.2
Dell PowerProtect DD is highly stable and reliable, outperforming competitors, with minor software update issues occasionally reported.
Sentiment score
8.1
Rubrik is praised for high reliability, robust performance, and effective support, making it a preferred choice for seamless operations.
Dell is especially more stable in the enterprise product.
Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) is stable in terms of software performance.
Rubrik has been stable, and we have not experienced any downtime.
The prerequisite dependencies with the cost team site, infrastructure, port opening, and adding the complete Rubrik console module take time, depending on the volume of servers and storage occupancy.
 

Room For Improvement

Dell PowerProtect DD needs improved security, integration, deduplication, licensing, and support, with enhanced features for backup and pricing.
Rubrik needs UI improvements, cost efficiency, better integration, enhanced security, multi-tenant support, and more comprehensive backup options.
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.
If I were a manager for this infrastructure, I would look into load balancing for cost, maintenance after sale, and improving Dell PowerProtect DD.
We need more efficient search capabilities that allow searching by last name or login ID.
I need a better output from the existing reports as they currently do not provide comprehensive metrics.
Including packaged training with the product at the time of purchase would be beneficial.
 

Setup Cost

Dell PowerProtect DD is expensive, but valued for performance and reliability, with discounts often available for enterprise customers.
Rubrik is a premium solution with high costs, offering good value and scalability for medium to large enterprises.
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.
Pricing is sometimes reasonable depending on the discounts provided by the company.
Rubrik is considered expensive, with a price rating of three out of ten.
We could mix and match to optimize costs for our needs.
Rubrik is expensive due to its robust hardware.
 

Valuable Features

Dell PowerProtect DD offers powerful deduplication, efficient storage, and seamless cloud integration for reliable, scalable data protection.
Rubrik excels with instant recovery, intuitive interface, strong security, cloud support, and SLA-driven automation for seamless IT operations.
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.
The most valuable feature of Rubrik is its concept of a 'backup airbag', which provides a robust defense against attacks.
Since switching to Rubrik, our backup times have decreased significantly, going from two and a half days to one and a half hours for certain systems.
Even if my network is compromised by ransomware, the file system does not allow overwriting of the backups, ensuring that my backups remain safe.
 

Categories and Ranking

Dell PowerProtect DD (Data ...
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
74
Ranking in other categories
Deduplication Software (1st), Disk Based Backup Systems (1st)
Rubrik
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
95
Ranking in other categories
Backup and Recovery (4th), Cloud Backup (4th), Disaster Recovery (DR) Software (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Backup and Replication solutions, they serve different purposes. Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) is designed for Deduplication Software and holds a mindshare of 28.3%, down 30.0% compared to last year.
Rubrik, on the other hand, focuses on Backup and Recovery, holds 7.7% mindshare, up 7.3% since last year.
Deduplication Software
Backup and Recovery
 

Q&A Highlights

Miriam Tover - PeerSpot reviewer
Apr 02, 2020
 

Featured Reviews

GopalSetia - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides backups, including long-term retention with increased uptime and compatibility
I was looking for a virtual edition, and that is now available. Many customers struggle to find a solution for ransomware protection, but we can set up an enterprise recovery vault for that purpose. These features are now part of Dell's overall offering. The solution has matured, and while I don't criticize technology, most of our technical and business requirements are met with the Data Domain storage solution. We can meet customer requirements easily with Data Domain. Some feedback has been received from our operations team. There’s always room for improvement. For instance, there may be suggestions regarding enhancements to the reporting dashboard
AmarpreetSingh - PeerSpot reviewer
Optimal data security and management achieved with smooth deployment and strong support
I plan to expand the number of users for Rubrik in the future. Currently, I have approximately 10 to 12 customers on Rubrik, as we are partners to Rubrik and a service provider, SIS. I am working with large to medium organizations, not small ones. Regarding Artificial Intelligence, Rubrik is in the initial phase, and I am expecting more from them. I can give them seven out of ten for their improvements in that area. I would recommend Rubrik to other organizations because it is easy to install, easy to manage, and very compact in terms of a solution, with good support from Rubrik. These features allow it to match from small scale to large scale customers very easily. The number of people who usually take part in maintenance from my side depends on the customer size. For large customers, we involve four to five people, but for small customers, one person is enough. I rate Rubrik eight out of ten.
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Answers from the Community

Miriam Tover - PeerSpot reviewer
Apr 2, 2020
Apr 2, 2020
As Neil Mistry said, they are quite different products: Rubrik is a complete solution where Data Domain is deduplicating storage that requires software to drive. I used to manage a B&R for a company that had a Data Domain in each data center which supported 4, Tivoli Storage Manager instances at each site and the Data Domain replicated all data cross-site. It was a simple setup but we did r...
2 out of 3 answers
NM
Jul 9, 2019
The biggest difference is Rubrik has native software and hardware on one platform. Data Domain is only a disk target and a very good one but you still need backup software such as Networker, Veritas, Commvault, etc. That software requires both a master and media server which drives a lot of complexity. Rubrik is hyperconverged data management, there is not software licensing, end of year true-ups or additional infrastructure. Policy-based backup and restore functions with cloud archiving integration. It’s also really fast! Finally, if you’re running Nutanix and its native hypervisor AHV then Rubrik can protect that hypervisor and VMware.
SR
Jul 9, 2019
As Neil Mistry said, they are quite different products: Rubrik is a complete solution where Data Domain is deduplicating storage that requires software to drive. I used to manage a B&R for a company that had a Data Domain in each data center which supported 4, Tivoli Storage Manager instances at each site and the Data Domain replicated all data cross-site. It was a simple setup but we did run into some performance issues since our TSM servers were all VMs and networking inside VMware is hard to determine performance. In the end, the customer didn't like the cost of DD disk and our devices ran out of capacity. Turns out only database full backups deduplicate well. All else, including transaction logs, can go to much less expensive disk and simply be compressed.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
 

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)?
My use case for this solution is for protecting or backing up data to safeguard against hacking or for disaster recovery. I utilize it in more projects on the governmental side, the non-governmenta...
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 legacy architectures, resulting in slow backups compared to modern drives like NV...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain)?
The price is also a disadvantage. Price is a disadvantage with the PowerProtect as it needs to be cheaper. The cheaper device costs around $70,000, which is a big sum to pay for a device like this.
Which would you choose - Rubrik or Veeam Backup & Replication?
Veeam Backup & Replication provides an easy-to-set-up solution to the issue of data storage and recovery. Setting it up is a relatively simple affair. For the most part it prompts you from scre...
What do you like most about Rubrik?
It's easy to manage and has an innovated solution.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Rubrik?
There are no extra expansions or expenses after purchasing the product. They use storage-based licensing, which is good without anything extra.
 

Also Known As

DataDomain, Dell EMC Data Domain, PowerProtect Data Domain
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

The US Army, City of Houston, Lloyds TSB, TiVo, Teck, Ingram Entertainment, The New York Mets
Driscoll's, Red Hawk Casino, Davies Ward Phillips & Vineberg LLP, Wabash National, Chateau Ste. Michelle Wine Estates, Galliker Transport & Logistics
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, NetApp and others in Deduplication Software. Updated: June 2025.
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