We compared Cohesity DataProtect and Dell Avamar based on user reviews in five categories. We reviewed all of the data and you can find the conclusion below.
Features: Cohesity DataProtect offers instant recovery and built-in integration with Office 365 and Active Directory. Dell Avamar earns acclaim for its scalability, data compression capabilities, swift incremental backups, and seamless integration with Data Domain and VM stacks. Cohesity DataProtect users have suggested enhancements to its user interface, rollback methodology, and cloud data recovery. Other pain points include file server capacity and legacy platform support. Dell Avamar could improve its tape connectivity and bare-metal restoration. Users also requested better Azure backups and a more user-friendly interface.
Service and Support: The customer service experiences for Cohesity DataProtect have been mostly positive, but some say the quality of Cohesity's support may differ depending on the region. Opinions on Dell Avamar’s setup were mixed. Some users found it to be straightforward, while others considered it complex and difficult. Deployment time ranged from a few hours to a week, and assistance from Dell engineers might be necessary.
Ease of Deployment: Most users consider the setup process for Cohesity DataProtect to be easy, although a few found it more complex than other products. Opinions on Dell Avamar’s setup were mixed. Some users found it to be straightforward, while others considered it complex and difficult. Deployment time ranged from a few hours to a week, and assistance from Dell engineers might be necessary.
Pricing: Cohesity's pricing is higher than its competitors, although some customers consider it affordable. Dell Avamar’s pricing is generally seen as reasonable, but some users think it is expensive.
ROI: Cohesity DataProtect provides security against ransomware and efficient file retrieval. Dell Avamar provides cost savings through data reduction, deduplication, and compression.
Comparison Results: Cohesity is regarded as an affordable solution that offers instant recovery and superior ransomware protection. However, users say its customer service is inconsistent across regions, and its rollback methodology has room for improvement. Dell Avamar is a scalable solution that offers excellent data compression and fast compression. However, Avamar earned mixed reviews for support, deployment, and pricing. Users also requested better Azure and bare-metal backups and restoration capabilities.
"Instant volume mount and the SpanFS filesystem itself, which has great dedupe and compression across all of our backups."
"Cohesity DataProtect is easily manageable, and you can see every option from the user interface."
"The initial setup is easy."
"Cohesity DataProtect is a reliable solution for performing backups within a suitable timeframe, and its forever incremental model is particularly effective for the customer's needs. Additionally, the solution handles instant recovery and file-level recovery from a VMware image backup seamlessly."
"Setup was extremely easy from racking to backing up was about one hour."
"The solution is stable."
"Backups are quick and painless to set up."
"The spin-up of a VM within a test environment for backup testing along with quick restores."
"I have found the product to be scalable."
"Avamar has long been the best in its class, but that's changing as new solutions emerge. However, Dell has traditionally been a leader in deduplication and compression. Avamar enabled us to shift data from on-premise local appliances to data centers and multi-tenant infrastructure. That's a powerful feature. because customers can back up to the cloud without upgrading o high-capacity links or congesting their backups."
"Client deduplication."
"We sell Avamar with Data Domain. Data Domain and Avamar work really well together and their compression ratios are very high compared to Veeam, Commvault, and all the other backup software on the market."
"The data reduction feature and the ease of enabling a server in a DR location are the most valuable."
"I found the most valuable features of Dell Avamar are the user-friendly interface and ease to use. Our clients have administrated this software and there is no additional training required."
"Duplication and the speed of backup are great."
"Easy to configure and highly reliable for backup."
"I would like to see the management of multiple nodes inside a tenant. If you want to manage a Cohesity environment, you either go on a per-node base, and you can hop from one node to the other, or you need to implement their SaaS capability but it always needs an internet connection. We would really like to have some kind of local management entity so that we can see all the Cohesity nodes in a customer environment and manage those nodes centrally. That's something that we would really like, and they are really working on it."
"This solution is only compatible with a limited number of storage arrays, including Pure and Cisco Hyperflex."
"The solution has a more complex setup than Veritas and Veeam."
"The one area where we would like to see additional improvements is with reporting. There are very granular reports from each grid. There are also some built-in reports within Helios (SAS Management Console) that offers basic reporting. However, for complex, large-enterprise environments, a more robust reporting engine that supports detailed audit reporting and enhanced ad hoc reports would be welcome."
"Many of the reports are basic, at most, and at times we had to open a support ticket to help find or develop a report for our needs."
"There is limited support for legacy systems, which is something that could be improved."
"We aren't missing any features. In terms of the solution overall, it's so far so good."
"The rack mounting instructions did not appear to be correct, but we were able to overcome it."
"I have found the support from Dell EMC Avamar to be not as good as Veeam. The time it takes to receive support could be improved. However, once we have the support the agents are knowledgeable and helpful."
"The solution used to freeze sometimes while taking a snapshot backup."
"I would like to see better integration with third-party applications and platforms."
"There also needs to be single sign-on support."
"When you get down to doing certain things, such as somebody wants a particular file restored, the process by which you do that is stupid. You kind of have to know exactly where to look for in order to find it. Even on older backup products that I've used, I didn't have that kind of problem. If we were looking for a file with a particular kind of a name, the solution would find that file anywhere irrespective of where it resides within the backup system. So, we didn't have to know the name of the specific server, the specific timeframe, almost all the characters of the file name, and all kinds of data in order to find a file. In Avamar, we got to know these details. We've gone around and around with them on that, and their attitude seems to be that it is working just fine. There is nothing for them to improve. The organizational system of other products that I'm working with, such as Zerto and Cohesity, seems to be centered around the tasks that you would most commonly do and want to do, as opposed to we've laid it out in a really neat technical hierarchy."
"Some integrations are not in place, such as the email alerts, which are not compatible with Office 365 SMTP gateway."
"Avamar is still competitive because of the way we have deployed it, but we need to diversify and shift away from specific technologies. In addition to hypervisors, virtual machines, and bare metal servers, our customers need protection for Microsoft 365, SaaS, and the public cloud, so we need other technologies in the business to cater to those customers' needs. Those are the enhancements we would want from the Avamar platform, but that's not likely to happen. Dell has PowerProtect and Apex backup services. There are other Dell solutions that we'll use to fulfill our customers' requirements."
"Setup and deployment of this solution is complex and requires expert engineers."
Cohesity DataProtect is ranked 8th in Backup and Recovery with 67 reviews while Dell Avamar is ranked 12th in Backup and Recovery with 81 reviews. Cohesity DataProtect is rated 9.0, while Dell Avamar is rated 7.6. The top reviewer of Cohesity DataProtect writes "Easy to use, offers good scalability and responsive support ". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Dell Avamar writes "Stable, integrates well with other solutions, and has a good price, but its UI needs a refresh". Cohesity DataProtect is most compared with Rubrik, Veeam Backup & Replication, Commvault Cloud, Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) and ExaGrid Tiered Backup Storage, whereas Dell Avamar is most compared with Dell PowerProtect Data Manager, Veeam Backup & Replication, Dell NetWorker, Dell PowerProtect DP (IDPA) and Azure Backup. See our Cohesity DataProtect vs. Dell Avamar report.
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