Dell PowerProtect Data Manager Reviews

I started as a Storage and Backup Administrator and have been working with Data Protector and Dell PowerProtect Data Manager since approximately 2019 or 2020.

I worked on a project where the client was transforming their current heterogeneous solution to a homogeneous solution. They had multiple NetBackup instances and other solutions, and they were looking for something to consolidate and bring everything into one platform. When we worked on it, we introduced and discussed Dell PowerProtect Data Manager. We identified that Dell PowerProtect Data Manager is a suite of solutions where you have storage, backup manager, and data manager all integrated into one server and one platform, which gave them a consolidated solution. The suite we introduced to the customer covered database backup, application software, and archive to cloud services.

They came with network-attached storage and an accelerator. We had NetApp in place, and we used NetApp and Unity with NFS and SMBs. The way it majorly works is we used to have metadata that would take a backup without going into a read. We chose this one for NAS backup because it really helped us increase the performance of the backup. Dell PowerProtect Data Manager helped us manage centralized management through a controller called the NAS Proxy, which helped us move the data from handling. It was just a VM. Everything worked in a different way, but we were able to take the backup using NDMP with different vendors, especially NetApp, and then we had some of the SMBs and NFS, which we were able to back up.

I worked on DPS, DPA, Avamar, and Data Domain. Those are all part of Dell PowerProtect Data Manager.

Dell PowerProtect Data Manager is majorly centralized management software and it really helped in a cloud-friendly way. Many of the solutions which we currently have are not directly integrated with cloud backup services, but these can be. It is the one platform where you can manage your backup, store the backup, and replicate the backup to other on-premises or cloud locations, and have the centralized management of it.

The snapshot which we used was majorly for the VMs and not for the database because we used that same solution for application-aware backup as well. It started taking a full backup and then created incremental backups. Snapshots allow restoration of everything in one shot, and the capacity consumption compared to other backup solutions is more efficient. Based on deduplication, it really affects the capacity consumption when we create snapshots using this backup solution. Taking a snapshot directly offers more efficiency in capacity consumption.

Anomaly detection is majorly important. When backups were going on, unusual backup activity would indicate that it could be a ransomware attack or an operational issue. We got anomalies with respect to operational issues and data corruption because we did not have much visibility to this backup solution to the internet, where ransomware was very difficult to get into. However, we did understand data corruption situations where sometimes the backup was happening and chains were getting disconnected. We would get alerts that data corruption happened and we would try to take care of it. Sometimes the frequency of backups increased without any manual intervention and we identified and stopped that behavior.

When we used this solution, it was integrated with our storages, and it usually creates snapshots at the storage LUNs level, volume level, or file system level. It used to connect with that and go straight to the long-term retention on Data Domain at DPS or the PowerProtect side. The major benefit was that without creating anything in the storage, Dell PowerProtect Data Manager was directly triggering the snapshot directly on the storages. It majorly supports Dell storage compared to heterogeneous storage, but we understand that there are some features that we can use to protect the others as well.

The majorly needed improvement is that the product should easily simplify the upgrade and installation process. Sometimes Dell support should be more active. They take time for P1 issues. Sometimes it is not a P1 for Dell, but it is P1 for the customer, and the support needs to be very mature. That is a major drawback I see. Otherwise, the product is quite well.

This is an enterprise solution and a bit costlier, but it is a solution where people should be looking into if they want to go into one single umbrella and have the centralized backup solution, which integrates with the cloud and can manage their cloud workload as well as the on-premises workload, and can be managed with one dashboard. In that way, it makes their backup management easier and they can get detected anomalies as soon as possible. This is one of the solutions I would recommend. However, if it is a very small company, they really need to think about the cost, as it is very costlier for them. But as an enterprise solution and a mid-enterprise solution, this is the solution where companies think their data is very critical, in sectors such as financial, banking, and health. This kind of sector should go with that solution because it always gives the compliances of HIPAA, GDPR, and all those things that are really required for them.

From management perspectives and consolidation solution perspective, the integration is quite easy. With respect to the backup administrator and everything, it is quite straightforward. There are some layers that need to be improved and should have the internal feature instead of creating the additional VMs for the NAS backup. It should be internal and directly have the agent base or something that can communicate easily with Dell storage. If it is third-party, I would understand, but it should be able to communicate. The benefit of it is that it is easily understood and you can do knowledge transfer with a lot of documents available. The drawback of it is that when it comes to the installation, Dell always takes a lot of time for all these things with third-party involvement in between Dell and the customer. Support is the major part of it. People need to understand that when a customer raises their ticket for P1, they should treat it as a P1. Instead of by their book being P3 or P2, sometimes they only treat it as such when the complete backup server is down. However, for the customer, if it is not happening with the critical system of backup, then it is a P1 for them. From Dell support, they do not treat it as a P1, or they treat it as a P3 or P2. That kind of understanding and some agreements need to be done between the customer and Dell.

It is a costlier solution. Comparatively, other backup solutions make this one of the costlier solutions. However, someone who has their enterprise data or needs protection in a good way can go for it. I could say it is a mid-enterprise or enterprise level solution. Otherwise, people do have the same solution but with differentiated features. However, it is costlier compared to the other.

They have a certain number of limits that you can add this much of disk based on the licenses. If you are okay to purchase the license, they have the feasibility to increase the capacity as well.

When we had the compliances and any of the backups were getting failed or we identified that some of the backups were frequently failing, the system would alert us. There was also a way where it was giving us the alert on the ransomware as well.

Positive

Initially when I started this conversation, the customer had multiple solutions, such as NetBackup, Veeam, and others where they had to have the hardware, maintenance, license maintenance, and everything. It was very not easy to maintain. Some of them, the backup storage or tapes were already outdated, and managing it with additional end-of-support and end-of-life support was too costlier for them. When we moved out of all of this and migrated everything to Dell PowerProtect Data Manager, it reduced their cost by somewhere around 30 percent. They no longer had to manage and maintain multiple customers, multiple OEMs, or hyperscalers and vendors support. It just came down to the one umbrella, which is Dell. It is a new product with all new features and no need to worry about ransomware. Previously they were spending one million dollars, and now they are spending somewhere around 720,000 to 750,000 dollars.

It has the predicted RTO and RPO. It reduced a lot of human errors because it was all automated, and once it is done, then it was working in a very faster way. We had some ransomware scenarios where we achieved faster ransomware recovery. It has DR testing as well. We have the DR setup on one side to another side. We were able to start the DR as well. Compliance was easy to handle with the centralized dashboard because everything is in the centralized location, including how much backup was there and how much backup failed. One of the major things is that the storage had the Data Domain in place. Previously they did not have that much deduplication. After we introduced this solution, previously they had somewhere around 100 TB of capacity for the backup for a few VMs on one side. Now, the overall setup is hardly 80 TB, where they use almost 240 TB of production data into that 80 TB. Still, it is at 60 to 70 percent of utilization.

The RPO that we are looking for and the RTO that we are looking for was working over there. When it came to the capacity and the reporting, we used to have that centralized reporting and the centralized dashboard. Even the validation, regarding what compliance we have at the moment and how much we are secure, we used it in that way. I would rate this solution an 8 out of 10.

Dell PowerProtect Data Manager reduces storage costs in DPVM and is easy to manage. These are the key benefits of this product.

Dell PowerProtect Data Manager is a single point of contact, functioning as a purpose-built backup appliance where I can take the data and manage everything with a single console.

The Transparent Snapshots feature provides excellent data protection through virtual lock and immutable snapshots. With immutable snapshots, I am protecting data from unauthorized access and unauthorized ransomware.

Storage Direct Protection is very effective in managing my data storage needs because data transfer is straightforward in DPVM since I am not involving any third-party transfer devices. Data transfers directly from PowerStore to DPVM without third-party hops in between, which is faster than traditional transfer rates. A higher transfer rate means I can restore or take backups in minimal time.

The Recovery Orchestration feature simplifies recovery processes by reducing the recovery restoration point and restoration time. When restoration time is less, the RPO and RTO are always less, and data loss is also minimized. The RPO and RTO will be near zero if backups are done regularly with smaller backup windows.

The major benefit I have seen from using Dell PowerProtect Data Manager is that the backup window is significantly reduced. When the backup window is reduced, the backup transfer or backup speed is higher than before. Previously, I was transferring data from servers or storage to a SAN switch and then to an extended backup appliance. Now the number of hops is reduced, and fewer hops result in higher transfer rates. This reduces backup time substantially, making it much faster than other backup solutions. Additionally, data reduction and longer retention policies exceed what standard backup solutions offer.

For improvement in Dell PowerProtect Data Manager, I do not have significant concerns as the engineering team consistently updates the solution. All the things I require are covered in this solution.

I do think there might be some slight improvements from the UI perspective. I would like to see AI technologies, guidance, and documentation integrated with Dell PowerProtect Data Manager. It should be integrated with AI analytics so I can fetch reports about utilization, peak time utilization, and other metrics. I need information about total storage availability. These features should come with an analytics agent so I can generate reports and showcase them to management.

I have been working with Dell PowerProtect Data Manager for around two to three years.

I find Dell PowerProtect Data Manager stable, and it is more stable than other solutions.

I do not find any scalability issues with Dell PowerProtect Data Manager. It is an elastic solution, so I can scale it without any challenges.

I evaluate the customer service and technical support team of Dell as fantastic. When I raise a ticket or call the toll-free number, they assign an engineer within the agreed timeframe. The engineer calls me and resolves the issue promptly. I rate the Dell support as nine out of ten.

The initial setup process for Dell PowerProtect Data Manager is not the toughest one. I can easily install it as there are multiple videos available on the Dell portal. I can go through those videos and then easily install and integrate it. The guide is also available, so even if someone is not very technical, with basic knowledge about the setup, they can easily integrate and configure it.

I have not calculated the return on investment with Dell PowerProtect Data Manager yet. However, I heard from colleagues that they purchased this box for a certain amount. In that scenario, I understand the investment, but I have not obtained the total cost of ownership for this solution, nor have I completed a cost comparison between these devices.

Regarding the pricing aspect, setup cost, and licensing, in comparison to others such as StoreOnce or ExaGrid, Dell PowerProtect Data Manager is a little costlier than other solutions.

The key differences of Dell PowerProtect Data Manager compared to its competitors include a reduced physical footprint and tight integration with DPPM and other third-party solutions. I have worked on ExaGrid, and there are multiple challenges with that solution. With Dell, there is a single point of contact for everything. If I face any challenge, I just need to call Dell, and they will definitely help me out whether it is related to DPPM, servers, or storage. The main advantage is that I can get support in a minimal amount of time and receive a resolution faster than with other solutions.

I have not used the Anomaly Detection feature in Dell PowerProtect Data Manager yet.

I am not using the Dynamic NAS Protection feature.

Regarding Kubernetes support provided by Dell PowerProtect Data Manager, I am not using the Kubernetes platform. I am using only VMware, so I cannot comment on Kubernetes.

I have not evaluated the impact of the availability of a unified dashboard on my strategic decision-making processes, so I cannot comment on this.

I have not noticed any disadvantages or cons of Dell PowerProtect Data Manager so far.

Regarding analytics with Dell PowerProtect Data Manager, nothing can be 100% perfect. However, when I compare it to other solutions, it is better than others.

Regarding recommendations I would give to other organizations considering Dell PowerProtect Data Manager, I already recommend it to colleagues. I have a group where colleagues and friends are connected to each other from different verticals. Some colleagues are in defense, some in healthcare, and some in financial institutions. I have conveyed this recommendation to them.

For other users looking into implementing Dell PowerProtect Data Manager, it is not that tough. If any challenges arise, I can raise the situation in our group, and I will get help from local friends.

I use Dell PowerProtect Data Manager and Cloud Snapshot together.

I work with the on-premises deployment of Dell PowerProtect Data Manager only. As a financial institution, I am not working on public clouds.

I buy Dell PowerProtect Data Manager through Dell or through a local partner, most of the time through the local partner.

My overall rating for this solution is nine out of ten.

I have been working with Dell PowerProtect Data Manager for the last three or four years. We use it for our RMAN or Oracle backups, and we purely use it for RMAN script-based backups. I find Dell PowerProtect Data Manager the most beneficial because we're only using it for RMAN, so when it was initially implemented, it was a better option to run RMAN on it. We purely use it for RMAN environments or Oracle backups.

The best features in Dell PowerProtect Data Manager include the multiple copies and the fact that you can pull it off to an ECH or to a cloud environment.

I have seen main benefits from using Dell PowerProtect Data Manager in terms of how it helps to improve the way the organization functions. I have read up on PPDM and how its Avamar is integrating into it. I am actually looking forward to that because it will give us more access to PPDM. Currently, the way we're using PPDM is not at its ultimate level or what we can still do with it. We just use it at the basics of PPDM currently. There are a lot of features that we don't currently use because we only have five databases on that environment that we're currently running. We're not using PPDM as we should.

I apologize, but I'm not in a position to answer what areas of Dell PowerProtect Data Manager I would like to see improved or enhanced. There is still a lot of features that we haven't tried yet. I can't say whether I can answer that because we basically don't experiment as often as we should on PPDM. I won't be able to answer that.

Based on my use cases with Dell PowerProtect Data Manager, I would like to see alerts improved, as streamlining the alerts could help. The alerts are becoming an issue because we don't always get notified of certain things via the alerts.

I have been working with Dell PowerProtect Data Manager for the last three or four years.

I would recommend it. It's stable, and you don't have downtimes, even with upgrades. It's just now and then that you have to reboot and do maintenance on it. Other than that, it's pretty much stable with no issues.

With Dell PowerProtect Data Manager, today was actually the first time when we had to reboot PPDM. Other than that, the upgrades and everything else we needed to do on it was pretty much straightforward.

Regarding scalability, we haven't scaled out or up yet with Dell PowerProtect Data Manager. However, as per the documentation, that is an easy process, whether you need to scale up or scale out. Obviously, when you have issues, the nice thing is you have Dell to assist online all the time.

My experience with the technical support team of Dell is that they are actually great. Once you get them on the line, they are great. Now and then, the waiting gets frustrating when there's a shift change, and then you have to re-queue the call. But other than that, there are no problems.

On a scale of one to ten, where ten is the best, I would give my experience with the technical support an eight.

Positive

I have worked with NetBackup and NetBackup appliances prior to Dell PowerProtect Data Manager.

In terms of comparing Dell PowerProtect Data Manager to NetBackup solutions, they're very similar because PPDM is also now becoming an appliance. I am biased because I mostly work on Dell products, and PPDM is much better for me. Even Avamar and NetWorker are much better if you run them with a Data Domain. I prefer Dell products to Veritas.

The setup process and onboarding process for Dell PowerProtect Data Manager is pretty much straightforward when it's configured by Dell. The configuration from there is easy. It is fairly easy if you know what to do.

When Dell PowerProtect Data Manager arrived to us, it was already configured. Dell or the EMC partner guys usually configure everything, and we don't do our deployment ourselves.

I am currently working with Dell PowerProtect Data Manager, and when you called earlier, I had a problem on PPDM. The issue appears to be resolved. It looked like it was a default certificate that has expired.

My impression of Dell PowerProtect Data Manager's Transparent Snapshots feature in terms of data protection is that we don't use the snapshot features. We still have Avamar as the software on the environment.

We currently do not use the Anomaly Detection feature in Dell PowerProtect Data Manager.

I assess the effectiveness of the Storage Direct Protection in managing our data storage needs by stating that we directly use the Data Domain currently on all PPDM. We just have mount points on the Data Domain for the Oracle RMAN backups via PPDM. We still use Data Domain for it.

We are not using the Dynamic NAS Protection feature in Dell PowerProtect Data Manager.

We have not used Dell PowerProtect Data Manager in the Kubernetes environment.

I do not work with containers.

My experience with the Recovery Orchestration feature, specifically in terms of simplifying the recovery process, is that because we just do Oracle on PPDM, it is more a DBA feature. The DBAs or the Oracle DBAs run the restores. All we provide them is the mount point and the password.

We do not utilize the Dell orchestration feature in the recovery process that I described.

I can't say whether I'm seeing benefits or improvements with the PPDM because I don't have anything to compare to. When I started working on PPDM, we already had the Oracle stuff on there. From what we can see, the backups are obviously much faster than using either Avamar or NetWorker.

We are not using the Unified Dashboards feature, so I can't comment on its impact on our strategic decision-making processes.

I do not know anything about the pricing, setup cost, or licensing cost of Dell PowerProtect Data Manager because I am technical and do not deal with that.

I prefer Dell mainly because when I started my IT career or when I started my backup and storage path, it was Dell. Where I used to work, it was Dell, and I've worked on multiple other recovery or backup and recovery software. Dell always stands out because for me, it's been tested and proven, whereas multiple other software that's coming out hasn't proved itself to some extent.

I purchased Dell PowerProtect Data Manager directly through Dell.

I work with other Dell products at the moment, including Avamar, DPA, DPS, DPC, and ECS.

I have been working in the data protection field for probably about 15 years.

I would give this product an overall review rating of nine out of ten.

In my current role, I mainly help customers build the solution design on Dell PowerProtect Data Manager. This product is a backup and resilience solution. Its goal is to allow customers to back up things that they consider vital and mission-critical. Once the data is backed up, they can be resilient in case of human error or data corruption. They can also work against cybersecurity threats and data center disaster recovery. For example, a couple of months ago in London, we had a fire occur near Heathrow airport. IT systems definitely need resilience and backup. This solution simply protects operations so that when bad things happen, they have backup systems and resilience data to carry on operations.

The strongest point for Dell PowerProtect Data Manager is because of Dell's very broad product portfolio. If the customer has already invested in Dell servers and Dell storage, it certainly makes sense for them to use Dell backup as well with this PowerProtect solution. Definitely, it would synchronize, and in terms of compatibility, their support will be best for the customer. When they do the backup within a Dell environment, it is an integrated experience. Everything is Dell, so definitely there are no issues with connectivity.

When it comes to support, when bad things happen and the customer needs to call for support, they only need to call one number and reach out to one party, which is Dell support. One Dell support team will be able to help figure out what is going on. Because everything is under Dell, the Dell support side will also be able to find the root cause much more easily. That will help as well.

Although Dell has the broadest portfolio in terms of hardware as well as the software side, the customer can enjoy that piece. However, this is a two-sided blade. On the good side, the customer can have the best compatibility. On the bad side, Dell right now is not having the best interest or not having the best investment in the development of this particular product. Dell is not putting much investment in development on the backup piece. I understand this because right now the market has so many buzzwords, including AI. Every customer is more interested in putting their investment into buying new servers, new AI servers, storage, networking, and things of that nature. But on the other side, it is very common that customers are setting a much smaller budget in terms of their data protection as well as their cybersecurity side.

Because they do not have many resources or are not being actively invested in new features, I have a feeling, and this is also from customer feedback, that other vendors and competitors' products, including Veeam, Commvault, and Cohesity, are doing quite well. As a comparison, while Dell is backing up their own system, there is definitely no problem. But when it comes to a mixed environment, if the customer has in use other vendors' solutions, including HP, Cisco, or other Lenovo things, it can be a little hesitant from the customer's side.

I have been using this solution for seven to eight years.

For the licensing cost of Dell PowerProtect Data Manager, because it is software, it does not get affected by the skyrocket pricing of things including chips and memory. So it does not get affected that much, which is good. Also, for this data protection portfolio, Dell PowerProtect Data Manager, among the Dell offering portfolio, is considered a lower tier within the whole portfolio. That is also a good thing. But if compared to other competitors including Veeam or Commvault, Veeam is by far offering the most cost-effective solution. Back to the comparison, Dell PowerProtect Data Manager among the Dell side is relatively cheap, but within the market, it is still not as attractive.

The initial setup of Dell PowerProtect Data Manager can be done within half a day, less than four hours. That is what we usually do. Once the system is set up, we will ask the customer to do testing and fine-tuning. Once the backup works, the software will function accordingly. The customer will select which product or which server, for example, PowerStore. With the backup software, they select the servers, the storage, or even the servers that they host. They select those, and then they will run the backup during the scheduled time, for example, over the weekend. Once they set it up, the backup definitely takes time because usually the customer's backup network is not the premier one, not ten gig or twenty gig. Basically, it means it takes time, but the setup time is fine. Everything can be set up within less than four hours. Sometimes, I used to do a two-hour setup, and that is totally fine.

For the deployment of Dell PowerProtect Data Manager, one engineer is fine. One engineer can do it. Because Dell PowerProtect Data Manager is basically a software piece, it does not even require any physical rack-mount hardware. If this involves hardware movement, then you probably need two engineers on-site to do the rack and stack, rack mounting, cabling, and things of that nature. That will help speed things up. But on the software setup side, one person is sufficient to do the setup.

I would say yes, if the customer has already invested a certain amount of money. If they are using a lot of Dell hardware and a lot of Dell kit, and the majority of it is Dell, then it certainly makes sense. Plus, think about it in terms of a meal deal. If the customer buys A, they buy B, and potentially if they buy C as well, they will get an overall discount on everything.

The product is a backup and resilience solution. Its goal is to allow the customer to back up the things that they consider vital and mission-critical, so they can essentially be making backups. My overall review rating for Dell PowerProtect Data Manager is seven out of ten.

I have dealt with Dell PowerProtect Data Manager for many years, perhaps five to ten years or more. My first experience was with HP and IBM, and then I moved to Dell, which has remained with me because I prefer iDRAC and the other solutions for management. The warranty with Dell is one of the best in the world right now. My customers buy Dell products from partners, such as Tech Data and others, rather than directly from Dell or from any third parties.

ESET Endpoint Protection Platform is also very good for me because it does not consume much memory and other hardware resources, and it has a good database about malware and other issues we have from the BIOS and other sources.

My impression of its transparent snapshots feature in terms of data protection depends on what type of software solution we have. The snapshot for VMware is very good, while for Hyper-V it is not as important. The snapshot in VMware is one of the best, which I prefer. However, right now VMware is very expensive and most companies are moving to Hyper-V from Microsoft.

I find Dell PowerProtect Data Manager also good, and the anomaly detection feature is not that important for me. When I have stabilized good servers, power supplies, and other solutions like Bitdefender, and we have backup and replication with a minimum of three in the cluster, it feels very secure. Management and monitoring tools like Zabbix or NetCrunch do not matter to me because those are just solutions, and Dell PowerProtect Data Manager is very good for my needs.

About Storage Direct protection, we have a special matrix for about twenty or more hard disks, and one of the best and fastest solutions is NetApp right now. I also use Dell storage for special cases, which depends on how fast we need to read and write data.

Kubernetes support provided by Dell PowerProtect Data Manager is good, and I think it has the best warranty, with good solutions and no issues. We have servers working full-time in other cases from Dell.

Dell PowerProtect Data Manager could be quicker.

Dell PowerProtect Data Manager could learn from their competitors from their partners and vendors. They have good competitors, and Dell PowerProtect Data Manager could improve by checking storage solutions like NetApp, which has a much faster solution. However, it depends on what they need.

I am talking about storage, and NetApp is indeed very good and fast, faster than Dell. However, it is probably more expensive. Perhaps Dell will provide a new solution similar to that. I need to find the new product and check what they have in their offer.

When it comes to performance and stability, for me, it is around a nine or ten.

In my region, for Dell PowerProtect Data Manager, it is acceptable. I use only what I choose for the part and other cases. If I need to find something, I find it myself, looking for the best price to go to the shop and get it.

If they have knowledge about databases with some issues, they can give me answers when questions arise, and there is always good support from them.

For me, it is the best company for things like laptops and other solutions, as they send engineers the next business day. Although sometimes for servers we wait for parts from another country like the USA or other places.

I rate their technical support a nine because it can be better sometimes. I mean quicker support, and I give a nine because sometimes I need to explain what I need regarding parts and other cases.

I have experience with Bitdefender, ESET NOD32, Norton, and probably some more solutions, but I do not remember all full names because there are many solutions. Currently, I am dealing mostly with Bitdefender, which is one of the best for me, but I also prefer ESET NOD32 the most.

For the initial setup of Dell PowerProtect Data Manager, it is easy for me. I never have any issues during setup; it has always been correct for me. It is very easy, and it depends on the type of license for iDRAC and the software, but I have had no cases with that.

The pricing of Dell PowerProtect Data Manager is acceptable for me.

For Dell PowerProtect, I also use APC, and I have two power supplies for redundancy. About PowerProtect, we also have one big UPS for handling all servers and a few machines in the operation team, and it takes eight hours to stabilize.

Regarding the Recovery Orchestration feature, Veeam from VMware is one of the best right now for simplifying recovery processes. I have recovery processes, and in the past, I put my scripts on the PowerShell command line for backups. For recovery from hard disks with RAID on one hard drive, we need to replace special parts to recover all the disks, but it depends on what solution the company has to pay to use.

I work with the Dell server and iDRAC solution from the management. I also work with HP and other solutions, and Lenovo and IBM. I am dealing with Dell PowerEdge. The PowerEdge I am using is E-series, if I am correct, and not C-series or XR-series.

I probably did not use the Dynamic NAS Protection feature of Dell PowerProtect Data Manager.

I think everything is fine right now with Dell PowerProtect Data Manager. I rate this review a nine overall.

In Dell PowerProtect Data Manager, we are using it for retention policies. The retention lock policy is a very important feature for us. We have also achieved a reduction policy of about sixty-five percent reducing capacity. The capacity sizes are very efficient for our needs. We can also use hot-swap operations, which is fantastic for us to make the old product new by just changing the head.

These are very key features for us when telling customers that the total cost of ownership is better than the storage for backup operations.

For Storage Direct Protection, it is a good option for us to tell customers that we have good features for it. We are using a NAS slicing feature that is very efficient in our solution. We are talking to customers about the new catastrophic options available to them.

We are using Dynamic NAS protection.

For the Kubernetes support provided by Dell PowerProtect Data Manager, we are using some additional customers that have been using the Kubernetes solutions. They are using Dell PowerProtect Data Manager for this right now, and it is good. Sometimes we have struggled with some S3 operations, but we can solve all the problems. The customers are satisfied with the Kubernetes solutions for backup in Dell PowerProtect Data Manager.

Regarding the Transparent Snapshots feature, we are talking with the customers about PowerStore and the Data Domain replication, and Power Snaps, or also instant backup and instant recovery operations. We tell the customers that these are very efficient for them.

We are right now using the CRS solutions with Dell PowerProtect Data Manager operations. We have sold twenty petabytes of CRS solution in Turkey. We are also using the CyberSense software for our CRS solutions every time. Data Domain is the heart of our business right now in Turkey, in GlassHouse.

I am using the Dell PowerProtect Data Manager anomaly detection feature. We are publishing to our customers that use it in their environment. We are also making the proof of concept for all customers. We are also using the Dell demo center for our customers, talking about all the experience on the customer side.

About the recovery orchestration feature, sometimes we have a struggle, but we have no problem right now. We can use it, and we are using this feature. It is working correctly.

Improving Dell PowerProtect Data Manager is a difficult question because we are using it for the tape library operation, the cloud customers' cloud operation backups, and client backups. We can make these options much better. These three features must be applied to Dell PowerProtect Data Manager for the future, which can be better for us.

For additional features, we are trying to reach the future for tape library backups. It is very important for us that the feature will come, but we do not know when it will be. Kubernetes backup is very important right now for us.

We had some problems with Kubernetes. Sometimes we are struggling, but we can solve it without problem.

I have been dealing with Dell PowerProtect Data Manager for fifteen years, with NetWorker and also Avamar. It is now working with Dell PowerProtect Data Manager solutions.

I have no idea about the availability of a unified dashboard because I am not familiar with the customer's usage. I am pushing up the customers about using this. I would rate this product an eight out of ten.

The main use case for Dell PowerProtect Data Manager is to secure all of my company's critical data and ensure that data can be restored in case of an incident.

Dell PowerProtect Data Manager has drastically improved our backup processes, reducing the time needed for backups from 12 to 15 hours to just an hour and 30 minutes, allowing me to efficiently manage critical data resources.

I have seen a return on investment with Dell PowerProtect Data Manager through reduced time spent managing a backup solution. I set the policies and let it do its job efficiently in the background while being alerted to any issues by reporting.

The feature I like the most about Dell PowerProtect Data Manager is Instant Recovery, which allows me to restore a VM instantly by mounting it directly to the Data Domain and then performing a vMotion directly into my production environment, providing me instant availability and access to a backup that I took place up to seven hours ago.

I have used the Anomaly Detection feature of Dell PowerProtect Data Manager and recently turned it on, as it was not available in the version I was using prior. I upgraded to 19.22, which allowed me to start using Anomaly Detection, and I really appreciate it because it lets me train the data being backed up and provides insight before I ingest it into my Cyber Recovery Vault to be scanned by CyberSense.

Anomaly Detection has given me more awareness as a data administrator backing up all the data in our company because it allows me to see the overall grand scope of all the data being ingested into our organization structure and informs me about anomalies across a broad scope of accessible user data, making me more proactive than reactive.

I do utilize the Transparent Snapshots feature of Dell PowerProtect Data Manager, which is one of the best features, because it communicates with my storage solution, PowerStore, allowing it to take a snapshot at the storage level without quiescing or freezing the VM, thus enabling backups at any time without hindering production.

From a cyber resilience perspective, this means I can take more backups and snapshots quicker and more frequently without fearing the loss of critical services and systems provided to my users.

I have used the Storage Direct protection feature of Dell PowerProtect Data Manager by directly connecting to PowerStore, allowing me to back up my unified file system individually and select different retentions, providing greater granularity.

The availability of the unified dashboard of Dell PowerProtect Data Manager gives me an accurate idea of how much of my data is being protected, allowing me to discover which VMs are not protected and providing visibility into all VMs and their inclusion in a protection policy, ensuring I can restore critical resources.

One improvement I would suggest for Dell PowerProtect Data Manager is the ability to send data not just to a Data Domain but also to a PowerScale, which would provide faster backups for critical VMs, enhancing the Instant Recovery backups' speed.

I have been using Dell PowerProtect Data Manager since September of 2023.

I find Dell PowerProtect customer service to be very good; while Avamar's upgrades could take almost 24 hours, with Dell PowerProtect Data Manager, I complete upgrades in less than an hour with fast support available if needed.

I would rate the technical support from Dell for Dell PowerProtect Data Manager a ten.

In our previous solution, we used what was called Avamar, and how Dell PowerProtect Data Manager and their features helped us drastically was that if we had an outage with the main backup, our data protection application, which we called Avamar, it took me having to contact support and within 25 to 48 hours, I would have to get the unit back up online in case I had to restore critical structures.

Prior to adopting Dell PowerProtect Data Manager, I was using Dell Avamar, which was great at the time but lacked scalability and was complex, requiring support for simple tasks, whereas with Dell PowerProtect Data Manager, I can handle upgrades independently.

My experience deploying Dell PowerProtect Data Manager is straightforward compared to Avamar; with just a single OVF file, I was up and running and backing up within an hour, with the assurance of seamless connection to Data Domain for disaster recovery.

I have seen a return on investment with Dell PowerProtect Data Manager through reduced time spent managing a backup solution. I set the policies and let it do its job efficiently in the background while being alerted to any issues by reporting.

Before selecting Dell PowerProtect Data Manager, I considered a couple of solutions including NetWorker, but my Dell Solutions Engineer encouraged me to try Dell PowerProtect Data Manager, and although it was a gamble, it paid off in dividends.

My advice to organizations considering Dell PowerProtect Data Manager is to take the challenge, deploy it, and they will be amazed.

Overall, I would rate Dell PowerProtect Data Manager a nine; it will not get a ten until another application piece I am waiting for becomes available.

It allows me to sleep much better at night.

I primarily use Dell PowerProtect Data Manager for centralized backup and recovery for my virtual machines, databases, and critical workloads. It helps automate backup policies, manage retentions, and restore data quickly in case of accidental deletions, ransomware incidents, or system failures.

One time, a critical VMware virtual machine became corrupted after a failed application update. Using Dell PowerProtect Data Manager, I quickly identified the most recent successful backup and restored the VM to its previous state. The recovery took less than an hour, which minimized downtime and allowed users to resume work with minimal disruptions.

Dell PowerProtect Data Manager has positively impacted my organization by improving data protection through automating backups, simplifying management, and enabling faster recovery when issues occur. This has reduced operational overhead, minimized downtime during recovery scenarios, and increased the confidence that critical business data can be restored quickly if needed. I don't have specific metrics, but I can say that it reduced the downtime during any outages and data corruption, allowing me to restore workloads and services from the backup as soon as possible.

My experience with Dell PowerProtect Data Manager reveals multiple features including centralized policy management, fast and reliable recovery, application-aware backups such as database backups, built-in deduplication, efficient storage, cloud integration, automation, and self-services. The standout features are centralized backup management, policy-based automation, fast recovery, VMware and database integrations, efficient deduplication, and cloud-ready protection. Together, these features make backup easier to manage while improving recovery times and reducing storage costs.

The feature that has had the biggest impact on my daily workflow is policy-based backup automation. The biggest benefit is that once backup policies are configured, for example specifying which VMs or databases to protect, how often to back them up, and how long to retain them, the process runs automatically. This means there is much less manual intervention, fewer missed backups due to human error, and less time spent on routine backup administration.

Regarding Dell PowerProtect Data Manager's AI capabilities, its governance and security capabilities are strong overall. It offers role-based access control, encryption for data in transit and at rest, audit logging, and policy-based management, which helps organizations maintain control over backups and meet compliance requirements. The AI capabilities of Dell PowerProtect Data Manager appear to be accurate and reliable for routine tasks such as monitoring recommendations and identifying potential issues.

The Transparent Snapshots feature provides an additional layer of data protection by enabling quick point-in-time recovery while reducing the disruption of production workloads. It improves confidence in recovery scenarios because recent data states can be accessed and restored more efficiently.

I have used the anomaly detection capabilities of Dell PowerProtect Data Manager. It has improved my monitoring by helping identify unusual backup activity and potential risks earlier than with traditional manual checks.

Storage Direct Protection is effective for managing my data storage needs, making it fast.

Recovery Orchestration simplifies the recovery process by automating and streamlining the recovery flow. It helps reduce manual steps, ensures recovery tasks are executed in the right sequence, and improves consistency during disaster recovery scenarios. This makes it easier for teams to restore critical services quickly and with less operational effort.

I am using the Dynamic NAS Protection features, which protect my network-attached storage and secure the files and folders from the storage.

Dell PowerProtect Data Manager could be improved by simplifying the user interface and making navigation more intuitive, especially for new administrators. Reporting and dashboards could offer more customization and provide better at-a-glance insights. Troubleshooting could be easier with more detailed error messages and built-in guidance. Faster performance for very large environments and broader cloud integration would make the platform even more effective.

I have been using Dell PowerProtect Data Manager for the last three years.

Dell PowerProtect Data Manager is very stable.

Dell PowerProtect Data Manager can be scalable according to the requirement and workload.

Customer support is very good.

There is a return on investment after using Dell PowerProtect Data Manager because it provides the backup platform. It has automations like scheduling the backup jobs, which automatically run in the backend to protect business-critical data. There is no manual intervention to perform daily tasks to create the job and take the backup. Once the schedule and policy are created, the jobs run automatically each day.

I don't have experience with the pricing, setup cost, and licensing, but I thought it was straightforward. The pricing is as per the licensing model, and the initial setup cost is not a significant amount. Overall, the pricing, setup cost, and licensing are reasonable for enterprise data protection solutions, especially considering the automation, recovery capabilities, and centralized management they provide. However, the overall cost can vary depending on the environment size, protected workloads, and required features. A licensing model and more transparent cost planning tools would make budgeting and adoption easier.

I would advise others looking into using Dell PowerProtect Data Manager to plan according to their workloads and data. I would give this product a rating of 8 out of 10.

Dell PowerProtect Data Manager is a backup and recovery tool created from the ground up by Dell to cover modern workloads, mainly related to containers and Kubernetes, in addition to traditional hypervisors and normal workloads. Dell is moving their backup solutions toward everything being supported on Dell PowerProtect Data Manager, which will be their next offering. Avamar is coming to end of life, and NetWorker is still there mainly for tape output. In general, Dell's approach around tape-out solutions is becoming complex. Before it was simpler with NetWorker only, but I am not sure if Dell PowerProtect Data Manager will support tape-out or if the roadmap will include it. This has made it challenging for us to sell Dell PowerProtect Data Manager on the SMB market, and even some enterprise customers have RFPs that require tape support, which is still necessary.

Some of the advantages are the way it handles VMware backups with much superior performance and being lightweight, with something called Transparent Snapshots that creates almost very little overhead on the compute of the customer infrastructure. The way it introduces NAS backups is very competitive compared to traditional backup tools. Dell PowerProtect Data Manager integration with Data Domain and PowerStore makes it run as an orchestrator for backups to push backups from PowerStore to Data Domain. It has application-aware backup capabilities, which is not easy to find in the market with our competition. The integration with Cyber Vault and Cyber Resiliency, all these features, and AI workloads protection by supporting containers allows it to discover unprotected containers and include them in the backup policy. As a product, if customers are accepting Dell PowerProtect Data Manager with Data Domain as a target, we can easily sell it to them. However, when targeting Veeam customers who are more focused on simplicity, even though Dell PowerProtect Data Manager is very simple to manage, it is not easy to make satisfied customers change.

Dell PowerProtect Data Manager works only with Data Domain in the backend, and both products work very well together as a very powerful solution. As Data Domain has a very tight integration with Dell PowerProtect Data Manager, we have a whole solution with 65 to one data reduction guaranteed from Dell, which is something very significant compared to other competition as no one else can give this kind of guarantee.

Dell PowerProtect Data Manager has tight integration with Data Domain, which is very well known for the speed of backups and restoration of backup recovery. There is even the possibility to boot the VM directly from Data Domain without needing to restore it, as we can run it directly on the backup target. This gives customers less RTO. For example, in the case of a VM failure, we do not need to restore the full VM to production but can just boot it directly from the appliance.

The potential improvements are uncertain. The tape-out support and tight integration with Data Domain are advantages, but they can be treated as disadvantages because Dell PowerProtect Data Manager only supports Data Domain as a backup target. If a customer is looking for a cheap solution with backup to local disk, cheap SAN drives, or cheap storage, we cannot proceed with Dell PowerProtect Data Manager because it supports only Data Domain as a backup target.

Dell PowerProtect Data Manager can scale to nine on a rating scale.

I would say support is seven points out of ten for Dell PowerProtect Data Manager, though others rate it as eight.

The deployment procedure is quite easy and manageable for Dell PowerProtect Data Manager.

Dell PowerProtect Data Manager is supported to run on the cloud as well, and it is available in the marketplace on Azure and AWS.

It is very important to have these kinds of features because there are different kinds of people to access the application. Sometimes we can have access to an application admin, so we will have an administrator to give users some backup admin access with full visibility in the full infrastructure. There is even integration with Oracle and direct integration with some applications like SAP HANA. These application admins have their own control over backups and need to make sure they can see their backups in case they are running test and dev environments where some batches are not going well, so they need to roll back to the previous version. They need to have the right access to give them this flexibility in their own backup policies.

The price for the software itself is very competitive. However, because it comes with Data Domain as a whole solution, the price will increase. From a license perspective, it is a cheaper option, and there is a subscription license as well. The way use cases are supported in the single licensing is something we can quote for each use case separately or through unified licensing. The unified licensing has flexible options to license based on source capacity in terabytes, frontend or backend, or socket-based. This depends on the customer side. If there is a customer with small two or three servers with a large amount of data, socket-based licensing will be more cost-effective rather than frontend capacity which can be very expensive. If there are a lot of servers with less capacity, frontend capacity will be more cost-effective.

The way Dell PowerProtect Data Manager handles VMware backups is very good compared to the competition. The way it handles NAS backups is very good. The way it has direct integration with storage direct backups adds value as well.

The dashboard interface is quite simplistic and quite easy to use. Dell PowerProtect Data Manager can be deployed on-premises, and it can also be deployed in mixed environments with some projects running on the cloud through partner deployment. My overall review rating for Dell PowerProtect Data Manager is eight out of ten.

A few use cases for Dell PowerProtect Data Manager include VM protection, mostly focused on VMware protection, which is the major use case here.

The key differences between Dell PowerProtect Data Manager and its competitors in the market include that it is easy to use, very well integrated, and has decent cybersecurity features. The integration with workloads, particularly VMware, is very good. However, the reporting is not as good as I would like; I need more reports, and support could see further improvement.

The specific features and functionalities I find most beneficial in Dell PowerProtect Data Manager include good integration with other Dell products, such as Dell Data Domain, which makes it a very good use case for environments that already have Dell Data Domain or any other Dell products.

My impression of Dell PowerProtect Data Manager's dashboard interface is that it is good, easy to use, and quite interactive, so there are no major issues there.

The deduplication feature of Dell PowerProtect Data Manager has allowed me to reduce or save some 15% of storage compared to what I was using earlier.

Specific features missing in Dell PowerProtect Data Manager that I would like to see in the future include Active Directory Forest Recovery and ADFR recovery; they need to work on that. Additionally, other SaaS protection is required, as there are many SaaS applications these days, such as Salesforce, which need protection.

I have been working with Dell PowerProtect Data Manager for some time now.

I assess the efficiency of Dell PowerProtect Data Manager in managing data recovery processes as efficient for VM restores; it works fine, and there are no issues with that.

I would assess the stability and reliability of Dell PowerProtect Data Manager as quite stable; there are no issues with the workloads I am using.

Dell PowerProtect Data Manager does not scale with the growing needs of my organization yet.

I would evaluate the technical support and customer service teams of Dell as adequate; I cannot say outstanding, but there is obviously some room for improvement there. It is not as good as some other products in the market, so there is room for improvement.

I have worked with other solutions for backup and recovery, and deduplication apart from Dell, including Veeam, Commvault, NetBackup, and Rubrik.

My experience with deploying Dell PowerProtect Data Manager is that the deployment was not problematic, thanks to Dell support, so it was adequate to do. It did not take too much effort to deploy it, and overall, it went well with no problems onboarding the workflows or starting the backups.

The use of Dell PowerProtect Data Manager certainly improves the speed of my data recovery efforts compared to the previous Dell products because it is easier to use and much faster; the compression and deduplication are also good, which helps in recovery. I would estimate that it is at least 20-30% to 40% better than the previous ones.

I do find that with Dell PowerProtect Data Manager, the ROI is good when compared to other Dell products, but when compared to others in the current market, such as Cohesity or Veeam, it is not as good.

Regarding the pricing aspect of Dell PowerProtect Data Manager, I am not very happy with that; compared to some other products, it is a bit more costly, and there are definitely areas for improvement.

Dell PowerProtect Data Manager's role-based access control impacts security management within my IT operations by connecting with LDAP or Active Directory, providing access only to certain users, and there are no issues with that.

My advice for organizations considering Dell PowerProtect Data Manager for their environment is that if the environment has other Dell infrastructure and tools, Dell PowerProtect Data Manager will make sense. For a hybrid environment, particularly, it goes well with the Dell infrastructure, and the easy setup is a plus, so I would recommend it for such organizations.

I would rate this review an 8 out of 10.