Dell Avamar Reviews

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.

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.

The solution's performance is between satisfactory and good.

It's a stable product.

The solution scales well. 

The performance takes up a lot of resources, unfortunately. We'd like it to be less heavy.

I've been using the solution for four years. 

The performance has been okay. It's pretty stable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

The solution scales well. That's not an issue for us.

We have five to seven users on the solution currently.

We do not have plans to increase usage.

We haven't contacted technical support recently. We want it decommissioned right now. 

We are using Microsoft Escort Server for the applications we try to develop. For the active directories and for SharePoint, for those solutions, we are using Microsoft Escort Server.

We are planning to bring on a new solution to replace Avamar.

Before, Dell Avamar, we did not use anything.

Compared to the solution we are looking at now, it seems pretty straightforward to implement. 

It doesn't take such a long time. Within an average amount of time, after you have the product, you can finalize everything within five working days.

Since we are a government institution, commonly, the setup process is actually done by the supplier.

You can get a three-year license if you like. You can subscribe for three years, and if you want a 30-month subscription for the support and service, you can also do that.

It can be expensive. 

We are not using the latest version of the solution right now. 

I would not advise people to use this product. 

Maybe it depends on the case of the organization. The performance is a big issue for us and maybe the support service. If the supplier is enough to provide support to the end user, I might maybe recommend to others, however, it needs a capacity built internally and maybe in the market. That's the big issue with it. Otherwise, if any users have skills to manipulate using it, utilize the resource, I would recommend it. 

I'd rate the solution five out of ten.

When Avamar started out, it used to be for a small to medium environment, but now it's done a lot of changes and it's a good backup solution, especially within your VMware environment.

The most valuable feature is the integration with Data Domain and your VM stacks. One of the good new features is that it integrates with Azure and AWS, and it has the potential to scale out into multiple cloud platforms.

If you don't have DPA, the reporting features are not as user-friendly, so reporting is something that they can improve on.

I've been working with Avamar for close to ten years. 

The solution is very stable. 

If you have Data Domain integrated, the solution is scalable. 

I would rate the tech support for Avamar as a nine out of ten. 

The initial setup is a bit complex, especially if it's a new installation, but once you get the hang of it, it's pretty smooth. 

The length of the deployment depends on your plan, what you need to back up, and if you order Oracle and whatever else you need beforehand. Worst case scenario, it would probably take a week to set up, but if you have all your ducks in a row, it'll be maybe two days, max.

It is not difficult at all to maintain. 

I have previously worked with Networker and Data Domain. I also worked with PPDM. When I logged calls with PPDM, there was always an issue and it would take a day or two for support to come. I don't know if it was a skill issue, but the guy would usually take the information and go and discuss it with guys at a higher level and then come back to me a day or two later.

This is a great product and the integration is easy with other solutions, like the cloud or Data Domain, and it's scalable. I think to some extent Networker used to be the big brother, but now Avamar is taking over that space.

I would rate this solution as a nine out of ten. 

My primary use case is backend storage for our VMs. We are fully virtualized, using VMware for our virtualization layer, and we use multiple VMs for our applications, so we have multiple workloads for the education school information systems. Then we have our ERP and HR systems, and our infrastructure monitoring the networking solutions, and so on. All these VMs are backed up using Avamar.

By bringing in Avamar and keeping the repository on the data domain, we got a very high DDU and high compression and reduction in data size.

The most valuable features are data deduplication and compression, backup and replication, and instant backup, which allows us to restore our data at any given point in time.

There are two areas for improvement I would suggest. First, some integrations are not in place, such as the email alerts, which are not compatible with Office 365 SMTP gateway. Secondly, Avamar has no APS for monitoring or alerting.

I've been using this solution for three years.

Avamar is very stable - we've hardly seen any issues with it. We have had some problems with the virtualization layer but not with the product itself.

It's very scalable. We did face some issues with using multiple applications, but we added a couple of proxies, and it's gone very well since then.

Dell's support is excellent - if any issues occur, we open the case, and the maintenance gets done. The only problem is that sometimes they can be slow to respond.

I previously used Veeam Backup & Replication, but it wasn't very reliable or cost-efficient because there was no deduplication or compression, so we switched to Avamar.

The initial setup was very straightforward and took about a week.

I used a partner involved by the principal vendor, from a company called MDS. They were really professional and were experts on the product.

We have seen huge data reduction and data deduplication and compression, which is very cost-effective and cost-reducing for the company. Overall we've saved around $200,000 when it comes to storage.

Avamar's pricing is quite competitive compared to other vendors. We don't pay any costs in addition to the standard licensing fees.

We evaluated Veritas and had previously used Veaam, but when we compared overall cost, integration, stability, and agility, we found Avamar was one of the best.

Before choosing any backup solution, run a use case so that you can evaluate the product and have proof of concept. I would rate Avamar as nine out of ten.

Centralization is Avamar's biggest advantage. It moves data to a central location from various geographical locations. 

Avamar needs a greater emphasis on storage targets. If it's going to keep pace with the times, it needs more ability to leverage cloud storage.

We've been using Dell EMC Avamar for 10 years or more.

Avamar is stable.

Avamar is scalable.

Dell EMC support used to be outstanding, but lately, they seem to have dropped the focus, I've noticed. In the past year, the support hasn't been quite the same. I think they're focusing more on other products. In my opinion, they're not giving the same level of focus in terms of support and development to the Avamar-type products.

Installing Avamar is complex. It is complicated to install, configure, and get it working in a complex network. However, it's the same with most data protection products. 

Avamar is expensive.

I would rate Avamar five out of 10 because it lacks cloud capabilities. Two years ago, I would've rated it nine, but these days, I give it a five. Avamar is a good product with a lot of potential, but if Dell isn't willing to put more effort into developing it, my advice would be to look elsewhere. Look at Veeam, Rubrik, or other products in the industry. There are products more suitable for enterprises, especially if they're migrating to the cloud. If they're traditional and have their own data center, I would recommend Avamar. Avamar is a stable, good product if you can justify the cost. If they need something that integrates with the cloud, they should look elsewhere.

I'd recommend Veeam, which does a better job of integrating cloud assets with native storage. It isn't locked into its own specific storage, like your data domain or that sort of thing. The configuration is more straightforward, and it's more cost-effective. Still, the primary reason is that Veeam is ahead of Dell products in the cloud space. These days, most organizations are moving to the cloud, and Veeam seems to be ahead of the game in that space. Dell EMC needs to lower Avamar's price and add more features to stay competitive.