Druva Phoenix Reviews

Druva Phoenix integrates with AWS and contributes to data recovery strategies in a flawless manner. Since Druva Phoenix was designed on AWS, its integration is excellent, and there are no problems there.

Druva Phoenix offers global deduplication, which saves a considerable amount of data from the data pool. It is a plug-and-play product unless the customer opts for an on-premises solution, making global deduplication a highlighting feature for Druva Phoenix.

I measure the impact of global deduplication on storage efficiency as it is one of the key features that enhances the efficiency of the entire backup system. Global deduplication decreases the size of the backups significantly, saving space and eventually reducing cost as well, making it a unique selling point for Druva Phoenix.

I was not part of the deployment, but from what I heard from the team, deploying it in a hybrid cloud model involves some minor complexities, though nothing represents a significant challenge.

I have been working with Druva Phoenix for approximately four years.

Druva Phoenix's technical support team is responsive and helpful.

Druva Phoenix's deployment process does not require much time to implement. If the infrastructure is ready, it takes hardly a couple of hours to deploy, not more than that.

Druva Phoenix provides a return on investment and operational cost reductions after implementation.

Druva Phoenix is purchased through the AWS Marketplace.

Regarding the pricing and licensing cost for Druva Phoenix, it is affordable compared to competitors in the market. A key advantage is that while most backup solutions require the customer to purchase an additional server or storage, Druva Phoenix, on the other hand, is a pure SaaS product and is a plug-and-play product, so there is no need to purchase any additional server or storage for the backup.

I work with other competitors as well, including Veeam and their technologies for backup.

My overall experience in this field is seven years.

The deployment model I have chosen for Druva Phoenix is mostly cloud-based backup. Government authorities and government customers majorly opt for on-premises deployment, but we have a very limited customer segment from that area.

Druva Phoenix primarily operates on a private cloud, with some customers utilizing hybrid cloud solutions.

If I assess the effectiveness of backup features in Druva Phoenix, particularly in minimizing operational disruptions, I would rate it as a very strong 9 or 9.5 on a scale of 10.

I am not using Druva Data Security Cloud.

My overall review rating for Druva Phoenix is 9.

Druva Phoenix is for server backups on cloud, which is the deployment model chosen by my customers. While Druva Phoenix is a good solution for a cloud-to-cloud environment, such as moving from AWS to another AWS, I see complexity when a customer wants to move from a physical environment or a physical VM backup to Druva cloud. Even if that happens, it takes a fairly longer time. The first backup is long because it is physical to cloud. Typically, Druva handles this requirement by providing a small accelerator box at a customer's location. That accelerator box would first do the backup and then at the backend would keep backing up on the cloud, but that still is, in my suggestion, a staging solution and not a performance improver. I have worked with Druva within the last twelve months. I am familiar with Druva Phoenix. Druva has white-listed cloud of their own, but I do know that the backend is on AWS infrastructure. As a solution provider for backup, they have their own software, and they use Amazon's AWS infrastructure as their backend.

One of the best features in Druva Phoenix for me personally is that it is an air-gapped environment. You can keep cloud backup on a separate air-gapped environment and save from any kind of ransomware attack; that is one benefit that the customer gets. It is a ransomware safer environment because a customer gets a separate environment. Next is its global deduplication; it is another feature that customers get because for whatever data that the customer keeps from various different assets that they have, they get global deduplication on this. A third is retention; a customer can choose their own retention and keep it at a low-cost tier for multiple years. Deployment for Druva Phoenix may take a few hours after getting IPsec approvals. Today, the maximum time is taken by the customer's Infosec team to give approvals to get to backup on cloud, to open those ports. Once those ports are open, then the backup is fairly simple.

While Druva Phoenix is a good solution for a cloud-to-cloud environment, such as moving from AWS to another AWS, I see complexity when a customer wants to move from a physical environment or a physical VM backup to Druva cloud. Even if that happens, it takes a fairly longer time. The first backup is long because it is physical to cloud. Typically, Druva handles this requirement by providing a small accelerator box at a customer's location. That accelerator box would first do the backup and then at the backend would keep backing up on the cloud, but that still is, in my suggestion, a staging solution and not a performance improver. Regarding the technical support of Druva, they are responsive. Since this is a solution and a backup software, most of the solution is partner-dependent. When I approach Druva, it is only for some really technical code enhancement, etc. They were very much responsive a few years back, but in the last one or two years, I believe the responsiveness has gone down. When they were young and agile, I could go to them for multiple R&D and they were very prompt in doing those R&D and adding features. But now obviously they have grown and R&D and enhancements are not that easy.

I have been working with Druva Phoenix for almost three and a half to four years.

Based on my current experience, I would suggest rating the technical support of Druva around seven or eight. Other than R&D requirements or technical changes in the specs, they are pretty responsive for the already existing know-how. I would rather rate eight because I hardly require them only for L3 support; L1 and L2 is always from the partner.

Positive

There are no complexities or challenges with the implementation of Druva Phoenix; it is very easy. For a customer who is already on cloud, it is a very easy solution to do AWS backup on Druva because AWS native backup solutions are not as capable of doing backup. For people who have their servers already on the AWS platform, AWS native backup solutions are not great. To have a better solution on the cloud, I believe Druva backup solution on cloud is much more optimal. Deployment for Druva Phoenix within an average organization takes only a few hours, and one person can handle multiple locations.

Many customers use Druva Phoenix's continuous data protection feature, but not for Phoenix. Not for Phoenix because Phoenix is server backups, and you generally do not keep continuous backup for servers on cloud. I do not utilize Druva Phoenix's advanced analytics. Measuring the impact of global deduplication on storage efficiency depends from environment to environment. Global deduplication is very much necessary when you are saving data on the cloud to reduce your cost or optimize your cost. Otherwise, you will end up wasting too much space, which is cost. To save cost, global deduplication is very necessary, but the size of the deduplication will depend on various environments. I see customers value deduplication as one of the important features, which brings in approximately thirty to forty percent cost benefit from the native AWS environments. Druva Phoenix's integration with AWS contributes to data recovery strategies because the environment, AWS is agnostic to the customer. Druva comes across as a white-listed single party. A customer is not aware; a customer does not interact with the AWS environment. Druva works in the MSP model, as a managed service provider model. The AWS environment is agnostic to the customer, but I do know that it makes a difference because the availability, the seven nines, 99.9999% availability and the security features, compliance features of AWS infrastructure definitely help in selling Druva features and Druva solution. In terms of anything else, it just improves customer confidence in terms of sales, but in operational terms and in recovery, it is agnostic. I would rate this review a nine out of ten.

Checking Hyper-V backups, checking file level backups, checking VMware backups, even Nutanix backups, even Azure backups. 

So, like, stored all the experts of Phoenix taking NAS backups. Earlier, I used to take SQL backups as well.  

All our customers are in the pharmaceutical industry.

Not having an on-premises appliance is a plus. I don't need to manage a server. There's always a risk that the server will go down due to something like file damage, maintenance, or patching. 

But in the case of Druva, it's patch-based, so you don't have to bother about the backup server or the repository. I don't have to bother about whether the data would go on a public or private network. I just have to set up the network, and everything else is pretty much-taken care of by Druva itself.

My perspective on data protection: 

Druva's ransomware features are very much limited to VMs. It is not extended to Hyper-V and Nutanix. So I'm not concerned about security because I know backups are going to the Druva cloud. I don't have to think about my backup repository or backup protection.

AI in terms of analytics:

I did see that Druva has some AI tool, but I haven't gone through it. I saw some information, but in order to integrate something on the backup tool, you need to constantly train and develop those tools to effectively use AI and ML. I see a lot of backup tools struggling with AI. It might be a marketing gimmick. For example, in Veeam, I don't feel that they use AI effectively. 

As a backup admin or an architect or a consultant, you can easily go to a user guide and get this information. You can go to the community or forums. So they are not doing that much good in this, like sending a chat assistant. If they have something to help with our struggles, that would be useful. For example, if you have a file backup and the CPU is overloaded, there should be a mechanism to suspend the agent and resume once the CPU usage comes down. These kinds of things are going to help, not creating a chatbot or sending messages. I don't think backup admins need those kinds of things.

The ransomware features are limited in Druva. There's a lot of improvement needed. It should extend to Nutanix and Hyper-V. It should extend to Azure as well. 

A lot of people are looking for ransomware scans, but Druva doesn't support them. Veeam barely supports them over Azure Virtual Machines. It doesn't support Linux Virtual Machines. 

NetApp and Commvault don't have such features. Acronis is also limited. In Azure, you have Azure Defender, but that works extensively on cloud storage, not on the servers. So, backup companies like Druva need to work a lot on ransomware protection and detection.

These companies need to work a lot on ransomware detection, protection and more. 

Ransomware protection doesn't work in this hash-based transfer mirroring. If I only have to find this hash and feed it to the Druva end. It's sometimes not possible. It will struggle when the workloads are more than a hundred machines. It's not possible to find the hash of each file and provide it to Druva. So, this needs to be fully automated. 

If I were scanning with some technology, maybe signature-based scanning, behavioral-based, or keyword-based scanning. I can put this FHA, maybe SIEMs as well. But Druva is very limited. It's already in an active stage. I don't like that they don't extend all the features to all the workloads. These features are minimal compared to those of its competitors. 

For instance, I have one customer who was looking for Druva, but since they have Azure machines, they couldn't find a way to restore a particular file. Druva doesn't provide Azure virtual machine single file restore. It doesn't make sense to build a product and then it doesn't support it. Customers really struggle. 

Some customers tried Druva so that they don't have to think about setting up a separate network, but Druva is making things critical by not providing all the things at once and gradually releasing them. It's been more than six months or one year since they started their virtual machines, but there is no single file restore. Every time you have to restore the VM, and then from there, you can get the file. Why would people go with Druva if they have to manage backup machines?

Nowadays, backup product companies need to be aggressive and adopt themselves in this highly changing world of AI and ML.  

I have been familiar with it for more than seven years. 

I would rate the stability a five out of ten. 

I would rate the scalability a seven out of ten. My customers are usually small and medium businesses. 

We almost lost a customer due to Druva's stubbornness and lack of support. During an upgrade issue, Druva was pushing Mac updates on Windows and vice versa. The customer was unhappy, and Druva requested logs from numerous endpoints, which wasn't feasible. With fifty users needing upgrades, it wasn't practical to collect logs from each user. Druva's approach in such scenarios needs improvement.

There is room for improvement in customer service and support. 

They're not customer-friendly and don't think outside the box. They are very bookish. I had an issue with a customer recently. The customer was having trouble with an advanced connector going to a server. Druva's support came and said we needed to create another connector and profile, but they didn't explain how to copy the profile and create a new one.

This caused a mess. My team missed this detail, and the customer escalated the issue because they didn't have a backup for two days. When creating a profile for SaaS apps, the visibility setting needs to be enabled, but Druva's support didn't mention this, and my engineer didn't check it properly.

Customer Experience

This was very disappointing. I told their managers that Druva's support team needs to be more precise because support is our last point of contact. We try to resolve issues on our end and think about what went wrong, but when we finally reach out to support, we expect better guidance.

Neutral

I have also used Druva inSync.

I would rate my experience with the initial setup an eight out of ten, with ten being easy. 

Deployment time: It takes almost one hour for deployment, creating the proxy, and activating them.

It's not complex, but it's not entirely straightforward either. In various environments with numerous Druva customers, I've observed that with the standard CPU and RAM, we can handle backups. 

However, sometimes, a single backup runs without actual load, requiring manual intervention to restart the Druva Phoenix proxy. This indicates a need for better intelligence in handling backups to prevent such issues. I haven't seen these problems with other backup tools.

Backup Traffic Handling

Occasionally, backups get queued up, and after investigating for forty to fifty minutes, you might discover that one backup is monopolizing resources, causing delays for others. In such cases, you'd need to wait for the backup to complete and then reboot the proxy to see multiple backups progressing. This shows that Druva Phoenix needs significant improvements in handling backup traffic and minimizing load.

Log Information

For regular users like us, their logs aren't very informative. To find logs, you must navigate through multiple levels, and even then, the logs aren't very useful. They're primarily for engineers, who sometimes struggle as well. Druva engineers seem to rely heavily on theoretical knowledge without practical experience. They often ask for numerous logs, which can be frustrating.

It's very costly. Normal people wouldn't understand how their credits are calculated. It's pretty complex.

Druva could reduce the cost a bit. The product has credits per VM, per month, and all that, which are very complex. 

It's suitable for medium and small customers. You have to really spend your time and be very patient in using Druva. You have to learn end to end. 

Things could go pretty wrong unless you are very sure about how exclusions work, how profiles work, the different settings in Druva, how activation works, how Druva sync connectors work, how the proxy works, and what could go wrong if the proxy is not running.

Overall, I would rate it a seven out of ten. 

The typical use case for Druva Phoenix depends on multiple workloads. If a customer wants a simple solution where we can manage the entire workload, or they want to back up with agent plus backup, we can accommodate that. It depends on the use case for what type of solution they are looking for.

The best features of Druva Phoenix include comprehensive backup capabilities where you can back up your data with agent plus backup, deploy the proxy, and integrate your VMs to take your backup. The best part is that Druva charges after dedupe and compression only. If your front-end data is 10 TB, and after dedupe and compression it comes to 2 TB or 3 TB or 1 TB, Druva will charge only for the reduced amount, not the front-end data.

The global deduplication technology for optimizing storage is very good and is one of the best features of Druva Phoenix.

The cloud-native deployment model of Druva Phoenix is both scalable and flexible.

Druva Phoenix could be improved if they provided bare metal recovery for physical servers, which would be beneficial for server deployment.

I have approximately 1.8 months of experience working with this solution.

The cloud-native deployment model of Druva Phoenix is easy to deploy, so much so that a non-IT person can deploy it with proper instruction. The most important factor is that you do not require any additional manpower resources.

The automated disaster recovery orchestration is excellent, particularly for AWS and VMs, making deployment straightforward.

Druva Phoenix is a stable solution.

Druva Phoenix is a scalable solution that we have implemented in many organizations. We have started with minimum users and expanded across multiple data centers. One of our biggest customers is NASA.

The technical support from Druva Phoenix deserves a rating of ten out of ten. The support is superior compared to other solutions such as Veeam, Commvault, or Rubrik.

Positive

The initial setup of Druva Phoenix is straightforward and very easy to complete.

The pricing is slightly higher than other vendors. However, when considering features and security, Druva Phoenix is the best solution. If you understand the technology, Druva Phoenix is an excellent choice.

The price of Druva Phoenix is higher compared to other solutions such as Veeam, Commvault, and Rubrik. However, the security features and other capabilities are superior to these alternatives.

On a scale of 1-10, I rate this solution a 9.

We mainly used Druva Phoenix for data backup and disaster recovery.

I found the cost-effectiveness of Druva Phoenix to be its most valuable feature, especially when compared to on-premises backup solutions. Using Druva Phoenix for three to five years was a cost-effective choice. Additionally, I was impressed by the ease of deployment and the excellent customer support provided by the company, which stood out as a standout feature.

There is room for improvement in the reporting aspect of Druva Phoenix. It took some time and effort to figure out how to generate the specific reports we needed, and that could be made more user-friendly.

I have used Druva Phoenix for six months at my previous company.

We didn't face stability problems with Druva Phoenix. There were typical rollout challenges in the beginning, but we overcame them. It all worked well as we got used to the product and installed agents where needed. An advantage was that not every system needed agents, which made things easier.

Druva Phoenix was very scalable, working well across various systems and environments. The key factors to consider were the costs and data retention policies. Three people used the product at my previous company.

Technical support was excellent. I would give it a ten out of ten.

Positive

Before using Druva, we used Dell EMC Networker along with a Spectra Logic backup solution. We used two different products to achieve their data backup goals.

The initial setup of Druva Phoenix was not difficult at all. We conducted a proof of concept, performed restorations, and successfully tested all the use cases. The product met our requirements securely. I played a key role in reviewing and discovering the product as a subject matter expert. I was also responsible for the installation process, overseeing it from start to finish.

Druva Phoenix was absolutely worth the money. In a major incident, it played a vital role in quickly restoring our entire environment within days. The product's efficient restoration capabilities were impressive, and there were no reported problems. The product and all of the features are purely based on the amount of data you retain.

I would definitely recommend Druva Phoneix to others. Overall, I would rate it a ten out of ten.

We utilized the product to modernize backup as a service, eliminating the need for extensive hardware and ensuring data is securely backed off-site.

The solution has significantly improved our organization by simplifying backup processes and enhancing data security through secure links and automated off-site backups.

The product's most valuable features are simplicity, ease of use, and security. The simplicity and ease of use make it accessible for users to manage backups efficiently, while its security features, such as secure links and automated off-site backups, enhance data protection.

The product's pricing needs to be improved. Including more flexible feature sets such as options for sending secondary backups to different locations would be beneficial.

I have used the Druva Phoenix solution for approximately three or four years.

The solution is extremely stable. One of its standout features is the ability to access backups from anywhere, enhancing its stability and reliability.

The platform scales very well. Customers use it across multiple sites and data centers, and it handles scaling without issues.

My experience with customer service and support has been positive. Their support was extremely good during the proof of concepts and initial installations.

Positive

Before Druva Phoenix, I was familiar with storage solutions like Data Domain. However, I found Druva Phoenix to be more modern and better suited for backup as a service.

The initial setup was very straightforward. The deployment process was completed within 20 minutes.

The implementation was done in-house.

I recommend Druva Phoenix for its ease of use and security features. It is a solid choice for organizations looking to modernize their backup strategy with a cloud-based solution.

I rate it a nine out of ten. 

We use Druva Phoenix for backing up virtual environments, physical servers, and a few SQL workloads.

Druva Phoenix is easy to use and easy to start with. There's no upfront cost involved, and we can start the backup within a few hours. We can right away deploy the backups and then start configuring the backups.

Druva Phoenix should include a few reporting features that it doesn't provide currently. Druva Phoenix provides very few preconfigured reports. We do not have the option to get ad hoc reports.

I have been using Druva Phoenix for more than five years.

Druva Phoenix is a stable solution.

Druva Phoenix is a scalable solution.

We contact Druva Phoenix's technical support team for multiple issues we face on a day-to-day basis. The technical support team helps us based on the criticality of the ticket. If it's a critical ticket, we get engineers assigned very soon and start working on it immediately.

They don't have solutions for a few issues and rely on the engineering team, which takes time. However, most of the time, they are able to resolve the issues right away.

Positive

It takes a couple of hours to set up Druva Phoenix.

I assume clients use Druva Phoenix because it is cheaper than other products.

Druva manages everything, including the storage account, and we're just billed for storage usage. We can back up everything on-prem and on the cloud. However, the storage is on their side, and we're billed for the used storage.

The product is evolving, with frequent updates and multiple things constantly happening in the back end.

I would recommend Druva Phoenix to other users because it's very easy to use and learn. The solution has many learning documentation and videos, which makes it easy to understand. The solution also has a configured course for backup admin and Phoenix admin. We can learn the concept in a matter of a few hours, and we can start right away.

Overall, I rate Druva Phoenix an eight out of ten.

Druva Phoenix is used to have the ability to back up on-prem to the Druva cloud. It can back up many sources can be virtualized, physical systems, or VMware environments.

The most valuable features of Druva Phoenix are the simple portal to log in and flexibility. 

Druva Phoenix is optimized to work with x86 platforms, making it unsuitable for backing up non-x86 architectures like AIX. The solution is primarily designed for physical Linux and Windows systems based on the x86 architecture, as well as virtualized Windows and Linux environments. However, if you have an AIX system, it cannot be deployed in the cloud, and therefore, backing it up in the cloud is not a concern.

I have been using Druva Phoenix for approximately two years.

The scalability of the solution is practically limitless since you can deploy additional backup devices within your VMware environment. This makes it ideal for customers with multiple data centers, such as the one I am currently working with, that has facilities in Mexico. Deploying the backup solution within each data center is simple, and you can quickly identify data that needs to be backed up and send it to the cloud instance. The solution is particularly beneficial for multi-site deployments. You can easily replicate your data to other locations through the cloud instance, albeit with additional charges, ensuring that you have multiple copies of your data.

Druva Phoenix technical support is outstanding, and their team is always quick to respond to any issues that arise. I often recommend the support to my customers, and they are consistently impressed with their responsiveness and ability to quickly resolve any problems.

I rate the support from Druva Phoenix a ten out of ten.

Positive

I was able to deploy the solution in my lab environment in less than 10 to 15 minutes, and I immediately began backing up my data.

There are no additional charges for data egress, and the cost of storing your data in the cloud is included in your subscription, eliminating the need for a separate bill for your cloud storage usage. 

As a solutions architect, cloud cost is always a variable that needs to be considered. However, with Druva Phoenix, you can eliminate the concern of receiving a separate bill from a different cloud provider, such as Google Cloud, as it is included in your subscription. This is a significant advantage.

Druva Phoenix's pricing is based on the service provided, and it's reasonable. The cost of the service will depend on the size of your data and the number of virtual machines being backed up. However, the pricing structure is straightforward and easy to understand.

Performing maintenance on the backup devices is straightforward. You can simply log in to the portal, view the status of your backup devices, and see if any upgrades are required due to new codes or other updates. If an upgrade is necessary, you can initiate the process with just a few clicks.

Druva Phoenix offers a Proof of Concept (POC), and in most cases, the POCs end up becoming the customer's actual environment. Druva Phoenix encourages potential customers to take their solution for a test drive, and they are always willing to provide a POC.

I rate Druva Phoenix a nine out of ten.

We've been using it just for a couple of on-premise servers where we needed to get the data stored somewhere else.

The setup process was pretty straightforward. It took less than half an hour to just get it running and set up. As long as you have access to it, the engineers are there. The person who helped us set it up was very knowledgeable and it was handled fairly quickly. 

Once you set it up and you tell it exactly what needs to be backed up, you literally forget about it. It sends you emails and notifications of the current status of the jobs. You have access to a portal, or you can just go there and take a look at the backups that were created, and you can see if there were any issues or anything. That's about it. It's one of those things that you just set it and forget it.

It's very simple to use. 

The stability has been great.

The price is always one of those things that you always look to just improve if you're a not-for-profit organization. We're always looking at lowering costs. They were able to give us a very reasonable price considering we were non-for-profit organizations, however, there is always room for improvement on that cost.

I've used the solution for a while now. It's been close to a year at this point. 

In terms of stability, we've had no issues whatsoever. In the beginning, we did la around a bit. We wanted to make sure, for example, that the backup was not running while people were trying to access information. We were worried that it might have caused some slowness if people were accessing the server, however, so far, it's been good. In the end, it was just working in a configuration to make sure the timing was right on the backups and that's it. 

We might get 250 licenses for one of our organizations.

That said, I can't speak to the scalability. I have only one specific server that I'm backing up and it's not the actual server itself. It's only the data that resides on that particular server.

Right now, I am the only person that manages the solution in the company.

I've used technical support in the past and they were great. They were very quick when it came to replying. Once you open your ticket and you get a ticket assigned, somebody fairly quickly takes over. They are very forthcoming and very knowledgeable. They're great at answering questions. I'm quite satisfied with the level of service we get.  

The initial setup is pretty straightforward. It's very quick and easy. You're done within 30 minutes. 

We had someone help us with the setup and they were great. they knew everything and answered our questions. 

The price could always be a bit lower. 

We're looking at inSync to just allow us to protect some of the data that we have on Office 365 and create that additional layer of protection for our data, emails, et cetera.

We're just a customer and an end-user. 

We're using the latest version of the solution. 

The solution is great for companies that need backup capabilities. It takes less than half an hour to get everything up and running. I was surprised at how easy everything ended up being.  

I'd rate the solution at a nine out of ten. We've been pretty happy with its capabilities. If they could lower the cost a bit, specifically for non-profits, it would be perfect.

We use Druva for both local backups as well as to directly backup to AWS.

We use four people in general for backup because the operating systems are not supported anymore. But other than that, product maintenance has dropped down. I would definitively say that we have been able to make our people more productive by at least 30%.

First of all, it's a fast product. We're directly able to do it without any restrictions. The second feature that is most important is the ability to back up to the cloud. This drove the cost down for us. So Druva Phoenix was a cost-effective option for me to use. Thirdly, this product allows me to do disaster recovery from the cloud in AWS. It was able to meet my requirements for some of the customer's disaster recovery abilities.

I’m not at the point where I can really talk about what needs improvement. Maybe after another year or so. Although, sometimes there is a restriction with the number of OS platforms that this solution supports. That can be constrained because naturally, not every solution supports older or outdated versions.

We’ve had experience with the data center for a while and we have had solutions that were able to support older versions of the operating systems that we needed. I would like for Druva to support it as well. In terms of other features I’d like to see, I’ll be able to say more in around a year after I use it a little longer.

I have been using Druva Phoenix for a couple of months now.

I think we are able to meet our requirements right now. So it's stable, and it's working well.

My impressions were, anything that has expired, or any place where the support has already been dropped by everyone else will not be supported. There's less chance that any software vendors are going to support these older systems anyway. Older operating systems are not supported but one can't really expect them to be supported. For example, Windows 2003. For whatever reason, some customers still want to run windows 2003. That becomes a challenge because everyone has stopped support it for quite some time now. 

We have been in touch with technical support for Druva Phoenix to a limited extent. We are still in the earlier phase of the implementation. For the next year, we'll see how it goes.  We don't really need expensive support as such. Currently, we have not come across a technical challenge where we really needed their help. Now and then we need to do something for the first time. We definitely looked at the self-help to see how the VR in the cloud works.  What happens, what not, how to modify them, so those are the things that we took the help from in the beginning. But, once we understood it, it becomes really easy to use.

We previously used EMC. We switched to Druva Phoenix because it was cheaper.

Setup was pretty easy. I think it's simple to use. So training people is easy to do. For a full data center, it took us almost a month to implement it. The reason is because we wanted to do the replication. The initial replication takes time to do it directly to the cloud.

And with the given bandwidth we wanted to make sure that we spread out the initial backup of the system. Otherwise, for a smaller setup within a certain bandwidth, you can get things up and running very quickly.

Our team members were able to complete the setup without much help from the vendor. We just bought a few hours from the consultant if we ever got stuck with the implementation. But mostly, our team went through the technical documentation available for the product. That was decent enough for us to get the product up and running.

We evaluated multiple products and compared the feature. We compared price vs performance as well as the technical support offered. We wanted to know what it does and then make our decision based on the features we required from the products. We chose the best one that works for us which was Druva Phoenix.

I would only add that I think it's a good product. I would suggest that if you're working with Microsoft Azure, then you cannot use this product, as of today. It's supposed to come with support for the Microsoft Azure option sometime down the line this year. But, as of today, this support is not available. So if this support becomes available this becomes an easy option to choose. I would rate this product an eight out of ten.