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Dell Avamar Reviews and Ratings

Rating: 6.7 out of 10
Score
6.7 out of 10

Community insights

TrustRadius Insights for Dell Avamar are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.

Pros

Data deduplication greatly reduces backup traffic and backup times: Users have stated that Avamar's data deduplication feature has significantly reduced the amount of backup traffic, even in virtual environments with change block tracking. This has resulted in a considerable decrease in backup times, transforming hours-long backups into mere minutes.

Ease of use in configuring and maintaining data retention periods: Reviewers have praised Avamar's management interface for its ease of use when it comes to configuring and maintaining data retention periods. The specific menu dedicated to managing retention periods has been particularly helpful for users who need to retain certain data for an extended period of time.

Highly resilient system with minimal loss of backups: Users value Avamar's ability to recover itself from hard failures with virtually no loss of backups. The daily checkpoints provided by the system ensure a recovery point in case of catastrophic failures, instilling confidence in the resilience and reliability of their backups.

Reviews

22 Reviews

Avamar Experience

Rating: 9 out of 10
Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I can say that it effectively meets our virtual server and file backup needs. With its easy-to-manage interface, we can quickly create backup scenarios and get results. The restore process seems simple and fast. Compression and deduplication properties are good. It is a product that will meet our backup needs in the long run. With the flexibility of growth and expansion, we can better manage our capacity.

Pros

  • Creating fast backup profiles.
  • Compression and Deduplication performance is nice
  • Restore operations are easy and fast

Cons

  • Datadomain dependency is not a good feature.
  • Compression ratios are not good for 2nd time compressed data
  • A lot of integration is required during the setup phase.

Likelihood to Recommend

It offers a very effective backup comfort with profiles suitable for virtual server backup operations. Support services are underperforming in low-level cases, but very good in high-level events. status. Installation configurations have a complex process. We expect it to be a little more affordable in terms of cost.

Vetted Review
Dell Avamar
3 years of experience

Scalable, Stable, and Easy to Use. That is Avamar.

Rating: 8 out of 10
Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use the Avamar solution for the protection of our entire environment. We are protecting all the virtual machines using it and the backup center stores information extremely fast. The de-duplication is great. All of this is available under one hood. The complexity is hidden from you so in the end, it's easy to implement and to maintain.

Pros

  • Extremely reliable and scalable.
  • The source site replication feature is valuable.
  • The initial setup is easy.

Cons

  • It would be helpful if there was cloud support.
  • It lacks support for certain plugins, like SAP HANA, for example.

Likelihood to Recommend

It's well suited when you are looking for something to keep your on-premise environment safe and you don't want to spend a lot of time doing the setup. It's easy to scale and a very reliable solution. I think it is not a really nice solution in terms of pricing, so the challenge here is to check if the value [is] worth it.

Vetted Review
Dell Avamar
1 year of experience

Dell EMC Avamar Review

Rating: 1 out of 10
Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We purchased Avamar as part of IDPA (Integrated Data Protection Appliance) and it has been a complete disaster. The version we are on does not support vSphere 7 and to update the appliance to supported version is like pulling teeth with EMC support. There is a very long backlog of customers doing updates, so the timelines are usually 2-3 months out. Dell owns EMC and VMware yet they cannot make their own products work with one another. Currently Avamar is not being used at all so the appliance is effectively an expensive paper weight. Previous versions of Avamar were no better and we constantly had issues with maintaining backups as job would simply not run and break the entire appliance.

Pros

  • Integrates with vCenter very well

Cons

  • [I think] The appliance is terrible at doing steady backups
  • does not work with vCenter 7
  • [I feel] support is awful
  • configuration is very complex
  • [I think it is] unreliable

Likelihood to Recommend

Do not waste your time with this product. [I think] it is awful and and will only cause you headaches. Support from Dell/EMC is awful and it is not even compatible with their own brand (vSphere 7). [I believe] it was a huge mistake to purchase this product and I lost all trust in Dell sales team who vouched for this solution. Please do not buy this, there are way better solutions out there and [I feel] this one is not worth it even when free (back when Avamar was included as VMware Data Protection for free)

The downside to Dell EMC Avamar

Rating: 6 out of 10
Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Dell EMC Avamar is being used at 3 of the locations that I support. We used it to do system and file-level backup, database backups, as well as replication. This system works very well at backing up these items. The restore process is rather lengthy depending on what you are attempting to restore. The UI is not as user-friendly as would be expected.

Pros

  • System-level backups.
  • File-level backups.
  • Replication.

Cons

  • Time to recover is lengthy.
  • The user interface is not user-friendly.

Likelihood to Recommend

This system is very well suited for an environment that needs a dependable backup solution that doesn't require a quick restore. If you have this system as your only DR solution and you need to be up and running in a matter of minutes this is not the right for you.

Vetted Review
Dell Avamar
2 years of experience

EMC Avamar: A boon for backup fraternity.

Rating: 8 out of 10
Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We are a managed service provider and therefore we are using it for two clients to manage their backup and restore operations. We are leveraging through the dedupe technology and always incremental method, EMC Avamar BMR is one of the best in the market.

Pros

  • Variable length block level deduplication.
  • Always incremental.
  • Easy integration with data domain.
  • Backup and recovery speed.

Cons

  • Cannot do the restore of a individual large file from VMs as timeout occurs.
  • Cannot browse more than 14999 files for restore.
  • Database backups are clumsy.

Likelihood to Recommend

Dell EMC Avamar is well suited for backup of DFS servers with huge amount of data and daily repeated backups, due to global dedupe less data is being transferred across the network. EMC Avamar is well suited to do physical and virtual machines BMR as less information needs to be provided and very fast.

It is less appropriate for backup of SQL database, a lot of configuration required in dataset level and very clumsy.

Dell EMC's new Avamar VE and front end!

Rating: 8 out of 10
Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Dell EMC Avamar is being use as a front end backup scheduler and restorer device. It schedules backups of our VMs across multiple environments, deduplicates them, then sends them to the data domain device for storage. Once there, the data domain ages the device to our AWS instance, reducing our on-prem footprint and satisfying our need for a hybrid model.

Pros

  • New and improved interface no longer requires separate program to run on a management server.
  • The avamar interacts with the data domain device to allow for cloud storage.
  • The Avamar AVE footprint is much easier to install and use, given the new GUI.

Cons

  • Dell EMC has solved the bloated management software installation plaguing the install for years.
  • Dell needs to move the Virtual Edition piece into their hardware platform, to allow for better management and daily use of the product.
  • Using VMware for snapshoting a VM is older technology, holding back larger VM's from being backed up, to allow for a file system copy only. Real innovation would allow for better methods of snapshoting a VM.

Likelihood to Recommend

The new Avamar VE has a better management front end, thus allowing for faster deployments and allowing customers including myself to easily create backups and perform restores. This new VE platform needs to be retrofitted to the Avamar hardware devices as well. This is a great solution, when bundled with Data Domain and AWS cloud, to allow for hybrid model.

Vetted Review
Dell Avamar
4 years of experience

EMC Avamar

Rating: 8 out of 10
Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

When I was working for Hexistor, our cloud solution for backups was DELL EMC Avamar. We used this for different clients that were in distinct locations around the world and we transferred all their backups to our data center in the USA. The business problems that we resolved with Avamar were that we could have a second backup solution to improve the Continuity of our clients. We have local backup and cloud backup taken with Avamar.

Pros

  • Faster Backup and Recovery
  • Flexible Deployment

Cons

  • Interface is old
  • Managing space is difficult
  • Training is difficult

Likelihood to Recommend

It is a simple tool that allows you to backup specific information, only files and folders, and it does a good job with managing duplication. That flexibility makes it easy to set up and inexpensive for customers, because they can control the amount of data they send to the cloud.

Avamar Backup System Review

Rating: 9 out of 10
Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Avamar is our primary backup appliance for our location. We use it to protect our critical data against loss. We backup Windows and Linux servers, both physical and virtual.

Pros

  • Great deduplication.
  • Fast backups.
  • Super reliable.

Cons

  • It is expensive.
  • Initial setup of clients is a little clunky.

Likelihood to Recommend

I found that Avamar was very easy to use when backing up physical servers. The version I had was not as good for backing up virtual servers, but it was an older version. The console you use made it very easy to see if any backups failed.

What does Dell EMC Avamar provide that others backup solutions do not?

Rating: 9 out of 10
Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Our organization is currently using Dell EMC Avamar to backup all our assets around the globe (Linux, AIX, Virtuals, Windows, Mac, AS400). We presently have 22 individual systems deployed internationally to provide backup and replication protection using deduplication. We have two sites running the new IDPA (Integrated Data Protection Appliance) with a combined capacity of over 150TB and a virtual tape library. Data protection is provided by backup/restore of critical files for data loss prevention. Business data is growing at an exponential rate where storage and recovery processes are vital to speed to market. Initial installation is simple and straightforward. Backup schedules adhere it time zones across the globe and are easy to set up. Before purchasing Dell EMC Avamar other backup solutions were vetted and cost to storage and feature options were compared. The final decision came down to cost of storage and ease of setup and technical support, which of course Del EMC Avamar won us over.

Pros

  • Ease of setup
  • ROI storage to cost
  • Technical support

Cons

  • Renewing Avamar contracts internationally should be more integrated
  • More simplified technical support portal
  • Price of additional storage

Likelihood to Recommend

Dell EMC Avamar is well suited for medium to large corporations since costs are larger for storage and contracts. Deploying large scale backup/restore topology is Dell EMC's strong point. Support and upgrades are handled on a per site basis with constant connection with tech support during the process. Small to medium organizations might not need the extremely powerful features included with Avamar. And the costs may be prohibitive.

A cloud tool that needs to evolve

Rating: 6 out of 10
Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We have been using Avamar as a simple cloud backup solution for our customers, considering that it does only files and folders and it does a good job with deduplication, so the backups get well compressed when sent offsite. That flexibility makes it easy to set up and inexpensive for our customers because they can control the amount of data they send to the cloud and what they pay.

Pros

  • It has a variety of plugins to backups different types of applications or to do only files and folders, so you can be very specific about what to back up and how much data you would like to send to the cloud.
  • The deduplication feature is very efficient, especially when the datasets are created with specific plugins, so the system knows how to process the backups.
  • The restore option is user-friendly.
  • The Avamar Client and Administrator are desktop applications, easy to install and set up.

Cons

  • The application is not secure enough to be compliant. It does have basic encryption for the transfer of the backups but it doesn't allow to encrypt the backups itself to make them more secure.
  • The creation of users is very simple, doesn't have password restrictions and doesn't have strong user profiles that can allow restricting the access based on specific options.
  • The management of the application is not cloud, it requires to install Java and a Console to access the settings and perform restores.
  • Is not intuitive to configure the datasets, schedules, alerts, among other things. You have to go to different options to finish the configuration of these features.
  • The software requires you to have proprietary hardware for the cloud that is always up to date on the generation, otherwise, it could easily reach its end of life in several years, which would require a new big investment, which makes it expensive.

Likelihood to Recommend

This software is well suited for companies that want to be very in control of their backups but need a simple tool. It could be convenient for them to just buy their own node, locate it in a different location, and set up the jobs for their machines to backup to the cloud with the specific plugins. However, it would not be convenient for companies looking to have a tool that needs to be secure and compliant, and that need to have different other options for business continuity.

Vetted Review
Dell Avamar
3 years of experience