Dell NetWorker Reviews

Backup jobs can be scheduled and automated

Monitoring of backups and configuration tasks are centralized

Compatibility of the solution covers large OS/DataBases/Applications

In a large enterprise DataCenter there is traditionally a lot of applications/databases which are owned by different administrators.

Without a centralized backup solution, each application/DB owner has to ensure its backup separately and if a problem occurs, he has to execute recovery tasks. In these conditions, the application rower has to make some extra jobs : backup scripting, verifying backups have finished successfully, recovery jobs... This does impact his efficiency and the global enterprise efficiency.

If a centralized backup solution like Networker is deployed, the backup/recovery tasks will be on the responsibility of only one resource which is the backup administrator. This does directly involve that each application/DB owner can spend more time on his real job: optimizing the platform that he owns.

With Networker 8.0 I had an issue related to VMware VADP backups.
An Image level backup of a RHEL VM finished successfully, but when I tried to restore it the transfer speed was very low, and the restore operation took 20 hours to restore 17 GB which represents 50% of total VM size. I was then obliged to abort the restore operation because there was backup jobs planned and Networker was deployed with only one tape drive in this case (the tape drive can't write backups and perform restores simultaneously).

I contacted the support team to analyze this performance issue. They said that this happened because it was a Linux machine backed up with Windows Vcenter Proxy. For me this is not acceptable... I hope this will be resolved in the 8.2 version of Networker, because restore speed is important (RTO)

4 years

Deployment tasks are not really hard. Networker is well documented.

7/10

Initial setup was complex because I had to integrate Exchange Server and I had no knowledge on how it works.

I asked to the Exchange administrator to assist me on the deployment and together we setup up the Exchange backup job.

IBM TSM; HP data protector; Symantec Netbackup/Backupexec are main competitor to Networker.

I remember a customer asked me to advise him between deploying Networker or TSM. The customer wanted to integrate a Data Domain device to his backup solution. I advised him to use Networker because TSM is not compatible with DDBoost protocol which improves DataDomain performance: Deploying TSM in this case was a limitation!

The full backup is a great feature. Restoration is also good and very quick. 

The UI needs some enhancement to be more user-friendly.

I've been using this solution for over a year. 

Once it's deployed, the solution is very stable. 

Both Veeam and Veritas are similar solutions. I went with Dell NetWorker because my hardware is Dell, so it's one call for support.

The initial setup doesn't take very long. It's only used by the backup admin.

Licensing is moderately expensive.

For anyone using Dell products, it's important to have a backup software like NetWorker in the same ecosystem.

I rate the solution seven out of 10. 

NetWorker is for backing up large files and data banks. 

NetWorker is fast and reliable. 

The price could be cheaper. 

I've been using NetWorker for a long time. I've been a Dell reseller in Brazil for 10 years. 

NetWorker is scalable. 

Dell EMC support is good. 

Installing NetWorker is somewhat complicated. You need people with some technical expertise to do it. It takes one or two Dell-certified engineers to deploy and maintain it. 

I rate NetWorker seven out of 10. Dell EMC needs to update NetWorker to stay competitive in the niche market for backup structures.

We use this solution for backup and recovery.

It is the best umbrella, serving the best applications.

The user interface needs some work.

It would be beneficial to have a single user interface for all of the features.

I have been using Dell EMC NetWorker for 10 years.

There are no issues with the stability of this solution. Dell EMC NetWorker is a stable product.

Dell EMC NetWorker is a scalable solution.

I have contacted technical support. As a percentage, I would rate them 70%.

The initial setup is moderate.  It's not easy but it is not complex.

I would rate Dell EMC NetWorker a seven out of ten.