Dell Avamar Reviews

We use Dell Avamar for backing up a VMware environment.

What I found valuable in Dell Avamar is the deduplication feature. I also like that the solution can be integrated with Data Domain.

What would make Dell Avamar better is if it can do faster backups because right now, PowerProtect Data Manager is better in this area with its new UI and a new way to implement backups.

Customers nowadays also expect more up-to-date solutions, and this is another area for improvement in Dell Avamar. It's not as up-to-date, so I'm counting on PowerProtect Data Manager, but customers who have Dell Avamar don't want to switch because you don't have as many backup problems in Dell Avamar compared to other solutions.

What I'd like to see in the next release of Dell Avamar is an updated UI and a different way to manage backups because currently, backup management is a bit heavy for customers using Dell Avamar.

I've been working with Dell Avamar since the EMC days, so since 2008.

Dell Avamar is quite stable as a solution.

My team didn't have an issue in terms of scalability in Dell Avamar because scaling is done on the Data Domain side most of the time.

I've never contacted the technical support team for Dell Avamar. I only contacted Dell support for another product, and I would rate the team four out of five.

The initial setup for Dell Avamar was average. It wasn't the simplest, but it wasn't the most complex.

On a scale of one to five, I would rate the pricing policy of Dell Avamar as five. The solution has a very good price, and a lot of improvements were done to it.

I evaluated a few solutions in comparison with Dell Avamar such as Veeam and Commvault as software-based solutions, then Cohesity and Rubrik as hyper-converged solutions, including hardware. My recommendation would be based on what the customer needs. In terms of functionality and in comparison with other solutions, Dell Avamar is an old product and it needs to be refreshed, which was why I was recommending PowerProtect Data Manager.

My job is to provide solutions to my customers, so I compare different products to have a clear view of the differences between products.

In terms of Dell products, I work mainly with Dell Avamar. My focus is on backup architecture, and I'm an integrator.

Dell Avamar is recommended for midsize and enterprise businesses.

My rating for Dell Avamar is seven out of ten.

It's my day-to-day job to recommend solutions, especially new solutions from Dell, for example, cyber recovery solutions. I would recommend Dell Avamar to others because not much software can work well with CyberSense. Though I find PowerProtect Data Manager to be a good solution, it's not yet at the same level as Dell Avamar on many points. It couldn't back up all that Dell Avamar could back up.

There are two main use case for Dell Avamar in our organization. Firstly, it was used for virtual machines in our virtualization environment, but we replaced it with Veeam as it wasn't working well for us. Secondly, we use Dell Avamar as a backup solution for our clients and employees, and it performs very well in this role.

The function I find most valuable in Dell Avamar is its ability to take differential backups for users. This feature is very effective for both backup and restore operations. We've had multiple cases where we needed to restore files directly from Avamar, and it worked perfectly. The Delta feature, which captures changes in user files, is particularly useful.

Reporting in Dell Avamar needs improvement. The current reporting tool is very basic, and you have to dig deep into each function to get the information you need. For example, getting the status of failed and succeeded backups is very difficult in Avamar compared to Veeam.

As for additional functionality, I would suggest improving WAN optimization. It's very important for getting offline or off-site backups. It should also include a tool to check for ransomware which would be beneficial. If a backup is vulnerable to ransomware, there should be a way to detect it, like using ARR rules to ensure your backup is ransomware-free. I haven't had any experience integrating Dell Avamar with AI solutions. It’s also a good point that Avamar doesn't offer such integrations, which is an area where Dell could improve.

I have been using Dell Avamar for the past three years.

Regarding stability, I would rate Dell Avamar eight out of ten. It is very stable, depending on your infrastructure.

I have had experience with technical support from Dell for Avamar. It's not very good, as it takes a very long time to get what you need. The main issues are with response time and quality. It seems there are no mature or scalable people working in this area. They need to build their own consultants or have better first-line support.

Neutral

We also use Veeam backup along with Avamar. Veeam is used for virtual machines and covers usability, reporting, deduplication, and notifications, which Avamar does not. However, Veeam is not working well for end users, which is why we use both environments. If we had all functionalities in one solution, it would be easier for us, as it currently requires two teams to manage both solutions.

Regarding pricing, I would say Avamar is slightly expensive compared to its functionalities. It's not high-priced or low-priced but somewhere in between.

I would recommend Dell Avamar for small and medium enterprises. I don't think it would be suitable for large companies.

Overall, I would rate Dell Avamar a seven out of ten. It's not a bad product, but it needs some improvements in functionalities, support services, and overall maturity. If these improvements are made, it could be one of the best backup solutions in the world.

As a user, I would recommend Dell Avamar for backup solutions for end users, but not for VMs, SQL, Oracle, or any application running at the application level. For end users, I would recommend it 100%, but not for backend infrastructure at this time.

My clients use Avamar to back up VM solutions on VMware's infrastructure.

The fast backup and recovery and the Full Backup features are valuable. When our customers have issues with data loss, Avamar helps them recover data within a few minutes.

Some customers need to back up to tape, but Avamar lacks support, so it costs a lot.

I would like to see backup for container-based applications. Avamar doesn't support container-based backup right now. Dell has a new product called PPDM that they just announced last year, and it has a feature for container-based backup solutions. However, PPDM doesn't support legacy applications like Notes and Domino and some of the high-end databases. Avamar supports all these, including Unix and Linux.

I've used the solution for more than five years.

I rate Dell Avamar's stability a ten out of ten.

I rate Dell Avamar's scalability a ten out of ten. There are over 100 servers, and I have ten companies as clients. One is an enterprise-level business, and the rest are medium-sized businesses.

The initial setup is easy. I rate it a ten out of ten. The time taken to deploy the solution depends on the end customer's environment. If it's complex, we'll need about one day to deploy. The price is quite low because right now, most of the Avamar appliances, like the DP4400, which comes together with Avamar, are ready to use. We just need to put the required IP addresses in the initial stages. After that, it's ready to use. We then just add a host to back up to Avamar. In this case, completing the implementations takes about two to three hours.

I rate the pricing a seven out of ten because it is expensive. I don't think small companies would choose Avamar because the price is high but reasonable for medium-sized companies. Normally, there are no additional costs when we choose the DP4400.

If the customer is a small business, I would not recommend Avamar because of the price. If the customer only wants a simple platform for data protection, though, Avamar is a really good option.

I rate Dell Avamar a ten out of ten.

We're a managed services provider, and we've developed a custom version of Avamar. It is intended to be a product for single customers, but we transformed it into a multi-tenant platform. 

Avamar is a hybrid solution. We can deploy Avamar as a direct-to-cloud service, or we can deploy agents onto customers' endpoints at their branches, and they can then back up straight into our mobile attendant platform and update centers. We also offer customers on-premise appliances.

Avamar has long been the best in its class, but that's changing as new solutions emerge. However, Dell has traditionally been a leader in deduplication and compression. Avamar enabled us to shift data from on-premise local appliances to data centers and multi-tenant infrastructure. That's a powerful feature. because customers can back up to the cloud without upgrading o high-capacity links or congesting their backups. 

Another valuable feature is Avamar's support for endpoints and workstations. Businesses want to back up their company laptops, and they can't get that functionality from many solutions. Avamar can provide clients a multi-tenant portal, which isn't something other solutions can do. 

Continuing our long-term relationship with Dell, we will likely switch to Dell PowerProtect, but cybersecurity is one area of improvement for Avamar. Dell should add some more components to its Cyber Recovery vault. 

Avamar is still competitive because of the way we have deployed it, but we need to diversify and shift away from specific technologies. In addition to hypervisors, virtual machines, and bare metal servers, our customers need protection for Microsoft 365, SaaS, and the public cloud, so we need other technologies in the business to cater to those customers' needs. 

Those are the enhancements we would want from the Avamar platform, but that's not likely to happen. Dell has PowerProtect and Apex backup services. There are other Dell solutions that we'll use to fulfill our customers' requirements.

We have used Avamar for more than a decade. 

I rate Dell Avamar nine out of 10 for stability. It's a stable and highly resilient platform. 

Avamar wouldn't be as scalable the way it is traditionally deployed, but we are using it as a multi-tenant platform, ensuring that capacity is always available. The platform is fairly elastic for us. Typically, you would deploy infrastructure for the customer and allocate storage, so your ability to increase that storage would be limited by infrastructure procurement and deployment within a data center. It isn't a cloud-native or software-based solution. It doesn't have out-of-the-box scalability. 

We regularly contact Dell for remote technical support and to replace hardware in our data centers or customer sites. We're Dell Titanium partners, so we get top-tier support. 

I am not directly involved in deployment, but we've used Avamar for so long that it's likely effortless for our engineers to deploy it. The infrastructure is already there. 

We don't have dedicated engineers for the Avamar platform, but we have a team of 15 to 20 administrators who manage and maintain our backup technologies.

I rate Dell Avamar seven out of 10. It's fantastic for on-prem infrastructure workloads, but it doesn't cover the SaaS, Microsoft 365 and the public cloud infrastructure that many customers are using. While we benefit a lot from Avamar as a managed service provider because of our unique deployment, I would recommend Dell PowerProtect for most use cases today.

We're using Dell Avamar for data and endpoint protection.

Dell Avamar has many features, and I like that it meets my company's requirements.

I also like that you can use it for client servicing and transmission, plus it has a push upgrade feature that lets you simultaneously push updates to thousands of clients.

I also found the self-service part of Dell Avamar helpful.

Dell Avamar needs improvement on its remote configuration and the recommended action for a particular endpoint, particularly when it has no protection for X number of days.

I want to see a more user-friendly and administrator-friendly Dell Avamar. The solution also needs a better UI and dashboard.

I've been using Dell Avamar for almost seven years.

Dell Avamar has ninety-nine percent stability and reliability. It's the most reliable solution, and I rate its stability as eight out of ten.

Dell Avamar is scalable, so I rate its scalability as eight out of ten.

Dell Avamar provides good technical support, so it's a nine on a scale of one to ten.

Positive

The initial setup for Dell Avamar in terms of complexity is fifty-fifty. The process is not so easy, and it's not so tough. It's a six out of ten, setup-wise.

Deploying the solution took seventy-two hours.

The contract with Dell Avamar included implementation, so my company implemented the solution with the vendor's help.

Dell Avamar, including its virtual add-ons and cloud-based offerings, is cheaper than other solutions, but in the end, the price still depends on your use case.

Price-wise, I'm rating Dell Avamar as six out of ten.

We evaluated NetBackup, Commvault, and Barracuda, but we can't compare Dell Avamar with those other three solutions because we use them for protecting different workloads. For example, we use Dell Avamar for endpoint protection, while NetBackup and Commvault are for server protection.

I'm using Dell Avamar version 19.2.

Four to five people deployed the solution.

Dell Avamar requires regular maintenance. My company has a dedicated team for maintaining the solution daily.

My company has more than sixty thousand Dell Avamar users.

I recommend Dell Avamar to businesses and teams with smaller workloads and accounts. You can use the solution to protect endpoints and servers. Still, Dell Avamar works well on small to midsized environments rather than environments with heavy workloads and complex infrastructure where using it would become more challenging. Dell Avamar now has cloud-based offerings, but I have yet to test the solution on heavy workloads. I'd recommend Dell Avamar for small to midsized environments.

I'd rate Dell Avamar as seven out of ten.

My company is a Dell customer.

Mainly we suggest it to our users, to our clients, when it comes to a fully virtualized environment of VMware.

The global duplication is great. The combination of those features with DD Boost from Data Domain, are the main features we suggest to our clients.

It is a very complete product.

The interface is fine.

We find the configuration capabilities okay.

It offers an easy initial setup. 

I don't have any notes for areas of improvement. 

We'd like to see something that could also work with Unix servers and physical servers to have a unified solution that works with everything. The use cases we have are sometimes a fully virtualized environment and sometimes a mixed environment. When it comes to mixed environments, we have to suggest NetWorker and with NetWorker, the way it works is it's a very legacy-oriented solution. It is not very cloud-oriented. It does not have many features that are the equivalent to Veeam, for example. Avamar is limiting due to the fact that it only works with virtualized environments such as VMware.

I've used the solution for less than a year. 

The solution is relatively stable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. I'd rate stability eight out of ten. 

The main problem with scalability is the inability of the solution to perform backups on physical servers and cloud-oriented servers.

I'd rate the general ability to scale three out of ten. 

This solution does work for companies of all sizes. The solution is very versatile in that sense.

While I don't deal with technical support, the feedback from our deployment team is that they are pretty good. 

Positive

We've used Veritas, Dell NetWotker, and Veeam. Networker works well with legacy solutions, and Veeam does it all, including UNIX, Linux, virtualized, et cetera. 

Avamar only works with virtualized environments such as VMware.

There are also price differences.

Veeam is cheaper and more complete as a solution. It is not the most expensive. Veeam is very affordable for benchmarking financial solutions. It sits in the middle of all the other solutions. It is not very affordable when it comes to small to medium-sized enterprises, however. 

In terms of simplicity of use, I would rate Veeam as the most simple and most user-friendly when it comes to simplicity of use. It has a unique interface that can allow administrators to administer a very large scale of environments - including physical, virtual, and cloud, on the same plane. That's not the case for Dell EMC's solutions.

The solution is simple to set up. As long as an administrator has some knowledge, it's not too difficult. I'd rate the solution five or six out of ten in terms of ease of setup. 

You can deploy the solution in about half a day. 

I'm not really into deployment. We have a team that does deployment - a pre-sales team. I have very limited knowledge when it comes to deployment. That said, my understanding is only one person really needs to handle the deployment process. 

Jobs have to be set in the initial deployment, which is straightforward for recovering from older backups. After that, not much maintenance is required. 

The product is licensed by CPU. When it comes to Veeam, they switch from CPU to something they call universal licenses, which are instances. An instance can cover a VM, or an instance can cover a physical server, for example. It's a different model from CPU based licensing, and it has started to become a trend in Morocco especially.

I can't speak to the exact price of Avamar.

We sell the Dell EMC portfolio to others. We're a Dell partner. 

We're mainly using the latest version of the solution. 

I would advise potential new users to consider their environment before picking a solution. 

I'd rate the solution six out of ten. 

We use the tool to create backups of every system we have in the infrastructure.

The solution works well. The tool’s ability to restore files discretely is useful. We can restore specific files of a specific server. We do not have to restore everything.

The licensing price must be reduced.

I have been using the solution for more than five years.

The tool is stable.

We have never had any problem with scalability. We have backed up many terabytes of data. We have more than 1000 users. We have a lot of servers and VMs in the company.

When we have any issues, we receive professional support. We get the optimal level of engineering support we require.

Positive

When we moved to PowerProtect, we were very pleased with the performance of the backups of the VMware infrastructure. It was disappointing when we faced difficulties using PowerProtect with SQL. We also faced problems with the infrastructure. We had a lot of files, and PowerProtect could not handle it. So, we switched to Dell Avamar.

The solution is costly. Competitors are less expensive. However, Dell Avamar is the right tool if we want to protect our critical systems and receive proper engineering support.

I will recommend the product to organizations that are providing critical services. The solution requires maintenance. The maintenance is not complex, but we must apply all the required fixes. We must follow the things recommended by the vendor to guarantee that we are aligned with the service provider's guidelines.

People who want to use the solution must find a good partner. The product is good. It must be implemented well. The tool protects us against risks that could cost us millions if we have a problem. Overall, I rate the product a nine out of ten.

Dell Avamar is a source-based backup solution. It is the best backup solution for people with laptops and desktops from various offices with a small bandwidth. We also use it for remote office backup tasks.

It is one of the best solutions for backing up Oracle and other servers. Our virtual environment backup experience has been good. One of the best features of the solution is that we can integrate it with Data Domain. We can store backups in Data Domain and replicate the data from one Avamar box to another. If one appliance fails, we can get the data from the other Avamar box. The product provides in-line deduplication at the source level. It is very good. I have used the product on VMware and Hyper-V. The tool integrates well with other solutions.

The recovery is a bit slow. There are some security gaps when we take backups of the client machines through the internet in cloud environments. The gaps must be fixed. If I use the tool to take backups through the internet, I have to open ports. It makes the entire IT environment vulnerable.

I have been using the solution for 11 years.

The stability is good.

I rate the product's scalability a five or six out of ten. I bought a license for 1 TB. The pricing was very high when I wanted to expand it to 2 TB or 3 TB. I had to consider alternate solutions to meet my requirements. The scalability is a challenge because of the price. Our clients are medium and enterprise-level businesses.

The support was very good when Avamar was handled by EMC. Since Dell acquired EMC, the support has been very bad.

Neutral

I rate the ease of setup an eight out of ten. For an experienced person, the deployment takes a few hours.

The solution is expensive. I rate the pricing a six to seven out of ten.

I will recommend the solution to others. The appliance is good. There are hardly any solutions that can match up to Avamar. It has always stood up to the test whenever we have used it. Overall, I rate the tool a ten out of ten.

Our primary use case for Dell Avamar is for backup purposes.

The most valuable feature for me in Dell Avamar is the automation, which is good for completion.

In my opinion, the user interface and the user friendliness could be improved. The specific thing I have in mind are the graphics, which are not quite user-friendly.

I have been using this solution for about five years.

My impression is that this product is quite stable.

I think this is not an easily scalable solution as it's on-premises for us and adding more space would cost a lot of money.

I would rate the technical support of this solution an eight, on a scale from one to 10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best.

Positive

My impression is that the initial setup process is difficult.

We had people from Dell do the installation for us.

Regarding other people trying to use this solution, I'd say that it all depends on their budget as it's too expensive for small environments.

Overall, I would rate this solution a seven, on a scale from one to 10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best.

We are using Avamar as support for the VMware Virtual Machine Backup. The chain blocking is very good. With Dell Avamar, we have integrated with Dell EMC Data Domain. It has a 97% completion ratio. That's the reason we are using Dell EMC Avamar.

The most valuable feature is the disaster recovery. 

Instant recovery is there and it is quite useful. If anything goes wrong, we can initiate troubleshooting within our end, our area, and use it instantly. 

The SQL and Oracle database backup is very user-friendly with the Dell Avamar backup.

It has lots of features, and it's very easy to use.

The setup is very easy.

All of the features we need are there. I don't have a point of contention with the solution. 

That said, the log analysis facilities are very, very bad in Avamar. The backup log analyzer gives us issues. If any backup fails, we can't analyze through logs. The log reading is very difficult with Dell Avamar. Only Dell, their support guys, can access and read the logs. We really need them to add a log analyzer. 

The support is very bad.

We've used the solution for four or five years.

The solution is extremely stable and reliable. There are no bugs or glitches, and it doesn't crash or freeze. 

I'd rate the solution ten out of ten in terms of scalability and reliability.

Right now, we have 250 customers on the solution, and they have been using it for the last ten to 12 years. 

We have two techs here, however, in a year, if you calculate 365 days in a year, we've hardly had one or two times where we needed support. The product is very stable.

The support is not good at all. It really needs to be better. When you actually need help, they are very poor at assisting. 

Negative

Currently, we are using Commvault and looking at Avamar for clients.

We have experience in Commvault, Veritas, Avamar, Net Protector, and Networker, among others.

The initial setup is very easy. I have had a lot of experience in Avamar, so it is very, very easy to set up for me. If you are a beginner, you may need to take some training first. Once you understand it, then you can install it easily.

The deployment is quick and easy. It's a one-click installation and it only takes two hours. 

Maintenance is easy since no physical presence is required. This setup can be built remotely also.

The solution is expensive. However, there is not any real competitor with the Dell Avamar Data Domain storage type of a feature. It's very unique. Competitors cannot make the same claims about their products.

While it is costly, it's good value and worth the price. 

We are proposing Avamar to our customers and looking for other solutions to compare it to build the case for it. Currently, customers are using Commvault, and we are pushing to Avamar.

We are users and have recommended the solution to clients. We're also a partner and in sales. 

We use both on-premises and public cloud deployments. Depending on the customer's requirements, we can deploy either option. We can use various clouds, including Google, AWS, and Azure. We can use the Dell EMC cloud as well. However, it is more costly.

We wouldn't recommend the solution to everyone since it is pricey. A small or beginner-level customer likely wouldn't be able to afford this type of solution. It's not an entry-level solution. 

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. I would rate them higher if the log analyzer and customer service were better.