Cohesity DataProtect Reviews

We primarily use Cohesity as our backup solution, however, we are leveraging Views to replace our MS Cluster file shares. We run these in 2 separate clusters. We are backing up 600+ VMs, multiple file shares, and leveraging other pieces, such as Kroll for Exchange, to recover our data quicker. With Views, we currently have what were once FileShares stored in an MS Cluster leveraging the speed and protection of Cohesity. We are also using Insight and Spotlight from the Marketplace to gain further insights into unusual file activity and audit trails.

We have been able to not only backup more of our data at faster speeds, but also recover that data quicker. What used to take us hours to recover is now done in minutes. Since deploying Cohesity we've been able to help our end-users get their data back quicker than ever. This savings in time has increased their productivity and helped them avoid complete data loss. On top of this, the performance boost we've gained in using Views has made our file shares much quicker to access and use, not only for normal file explorer use but for applications that write to those Views as well.

The ease of use and the GUI have really been most valuable to us. Configuring the system to do what we need is simple and straight forward and a lot of guesswork has been removed. One of my favorite features with Cohesity is Kroll for Exchange item-level recovery. The software is simple to use and fast. We've been able to recover individual emails in minutes instead of hours, some of which were time-sensitive matters. Helios has also proved useful to give us a look at all of our clusters and their performance.

The product is still young and is continually improving. There have been a couple of buggy releases in the software that have caused us minor issues, so possibly some better QA before releasing would prove to be useful. We have also been inquiring about new app and functionality via the Marketplace that was teased months back but has yet to come to fruition. The apps are coming, but slower than expected. While we know they are working at getting more of these features out and doing so as fast as they can, a better product roadmap would be helpful.

We have been using Cohesity for over a year now.

Overall, Cohesity has been very stable. We've had a few hiccups with some software releases, but have been able to get Support involved and resolve those in a timely manner.

Cohesity is easily scalable, simply adding more storage or nodes when needed.

Customer Service and Support are top notch. Each issue we've thrown at them has been answered and addressed quickly. We've even had times where we're not expecting to hear anything until the next day and we'll have a Tier 3 engineer on the phone within minutes. Overall their Support has been one of the most impressive things about them.

We previously used CommVault. We switched due to costs and speeds primarily.

Setup, with Cohesity's Support, was very straightforward. We had it up and running jobs in a matter of hours.

We used Cohesity's team to implement our solution.

I don't have an exact figure, but when you save dozens if not hundreds of hours for multiple engineers, the savings add up quickly. We've been able to focus our attention on bigger issues and some other lingering problems instead of worrying about our backups.

Setup was very easy and pricing/licensing were very straightforward. We didn't feel like we were getting nickeled and dimed for every little thing.

We looked at CommVault, Cohesity, Veritas, and Veeam.

If you're on the fence about moving to Cohesity, I suggest making the jump. We have been amazed at what we've been able to accomplish with it in such a short time.

Our primary use case is as a backup solution. We also use Cohesity for cloud enabling and seconday storage.

With respect to backup, our environment is based on virtual and physical machines, and Cohesity fits great. The virtual machines are based on VMware 6.5/Nutanix solution with vCenter. Cohesity can handle up to 2,000 virtual machines with a classic schdule of one backup per day. CBT works great so it is an incremental forever solution.

For our physical system, we use agents for AIX, Windows from 2003 to 2016, SUSE, and RHEL.

The application backups handle SAP, SAP HANA, Oracle, and SQL Server.

Cohesity has improved our backup architecture. Now everything is simple. Before using this solution there was a master server, media server, repository, dedupe server, cloud server, and a report server.

Cohesity is an all in one solution in a hyper-converged way. From three nodes and more, you can have one platform for everything. The storage and compute exist in the HA cluster.

No more IT department is required for backup. From four-person teams to general system administration, everything is logical and there are no more difficult concepts. There is no need for training and certification.

The most valuable feature is the cloud support. We can use it as a lift and shift solution for cloud migration. This feature is called CloudSpin. After linking a cloud subscription, like Azure for example (AWS and Google are also supported), you can "spin" a VM onto the cloud from any backup snapshot.

You can use this solution for test and dev, or for testing migration to the cloud. However, it is not so useful for massive cloud migration, so it is better to use the Azure migration tool for that.

It is useful for backing up a cloud workload. For better value in terms of cost, I suggest deploying a cloud edition of DataProtect. 

I would like to see the CDP features integrated into this solution.

Replication is working great, but with backup replication, you should have the option to link and RPO to the backup schedule. This would reduce the RPO in case of a disaster. It would be great to have something like the Zerto software.

The GUI is in need of improvement.

The upgrade path is not so clear because there are too many branches.

We have been using Cohesity for about ten months.

The cluster is stable.

This solution has good scalability by adding more nodes.

Cohesity provides great support, both remote and onsite.

We use TSM from IBM, NetBackup from Veritas, and Veeam.

The initial setup was straightforward.

We have implemented this solution on two occasions. The first was with the Cohesity team, and the second was done with our in-house team.

Sizing is important and it is easy to overestimate. It is difficult to understand how dedupe will work with your workload.

We are near a coin-flip with Rubrik. Same benefits but less power on dedupe.

Cohesity can replicate backups to a secondary cluster (also virtual edition).

We use Cohesity for backup and recovery primarily, though we are starting to look into it for file service as well. We perform on-premises backups of Exchange, SQL, SharePoint, VDI Golden Images, and a host of Windows Servers and Linux Appliances.

We test the restores weekly with file-based restores. The product makes this surprisingly easy to search for folders and files. The elastic search puts Cohesity above the competition. We will be leveraging the long term retention to the cloud later this year, but with the level of support that we receive from Cohesity, we don't anticipate any issues.

This product has allowed us to finally remove tapes from our environment. Prior to this, our service desk would waste two to three hours a week swapping tapes and then an additional five to six hours each month shuffling the tapes all over the place. All that time has been recovered.

For the admins/engineers, we would spend ten hours a week trying to keep our old backup system running properly, and that includes needing to be up at 1-3 AM when their "follow the sun" tech support would return your call from 10 AM (with a two hour SLA).

It also has allowed me to stop focusing on fixing the backups daily and I can trust that they will run reliably.

The most valuable features are the rapid VM restores and the ability to quickly find files and download them directly to my desktop so that I can put them where I need them to be.

The elastic search function is unbelievable. It has saved us so much time, not just in finding files to restore but also in finding lost files or files that were misplaced by an employee. This has led to quick ticket turn arounds for our service desk and they are growing more confident in the backup solution. If they had to leverage our previous product, they considered the file lost.

The granular restore functionality in AD is also extremely helpful.

The best part about Cohesity is that there is an active user community that can request improvements and the developers will incorporate them as they move through releases.

The error handling could be improved. The errors shown on the GUI tend to be just what the log spits out and that can be quite confusing. The nice feature is that the logs are in the GUI, so you don't have to go hunting for them, you simply need click the drop down to show the information. There are a few cryptic error messages, thankfully the support staff is fantastic and knows what the errors mean.

There are a few user interface concerns with some of the functionality, such as what screens you get dropped back on when moving in between different areas. If you use the back button on your browser, you may not go back to the last page due to the coding. However, overall navigation isn't tough or complicated. 

I have been using Cohesity for four months.

There have been bumps in the road, but overall the solution is working wonders in our environment. A 38-hour full backup has been reduced to a 10-hour full (it was only needed once) and then 45-minute incremental backups after that.

I believe it will scale up where we need it to and it can scale down where we expect it to. I think that it is great in terms of scalability.

The tech support is fantastic. Even when I e-mail on the weekends I get responses within 20 minutes, tops. If I call, it is immediate. 

We switched from a previous solution because it was unreliable and their tech support was unable to adequately fix the issues we were having. 

The setup was simple. There was an engineer who was on hand to do all of the work, but I chose to do quite a bit of the work myself instead. From power on to the first backup was about 30 minutes.

The engineer that they provided to us was amazing. He was dedicated to getting the job done right and quickly. We couldn't have asked for better.

With respect to pricing, make sure that you look at both Rubrik and Cohesity as they are very similar and are quite competitive.

We evaluated Rubrik, Unitrends, Veeam, Dell, and Cohesity for this project.

Cohesity's elastic search gives it a leg up on Rubrik. 

We use it in the realm of data protection. We have comprehensive coverage, including backups for all our databases, VMs, file systems, and various auxiliary components.

One of the notable benefits is its user-friendly interface, making it easy to navigate. Additionally, it demonstrates faster performance compared to other vendors.

The recovery process is effective, especially when it comes to other types of data, such as VMs, and overall, the performance is commendable.

We have been facing challenges, particularly with HANA databases. Despite initial promises of delivering an agent within a few months, it has been over two and a half years, and there is still no indication of when the Cohesity agent for HANA systems will be available. The absence of an agent for replicated recovery makes it impractical for our current needs. We are highly dissatisfied with the level of support and functionality provided for HANA within the Cohesity product.

I have been working with it for two and a half years.

The overall stability has been consistent. The only noteworthy concern is related to the HANA aspect, which falls short of expectations. However, in terms of performance and support, there have been no issues.

I would estimate that approximately two hundred users are involved.

The support quality is commendable – upon opening a ticket, a responsive and capable team promptly assists. However, managing cases with a global team working across different time zones can pose challenges in terms of knowledge transfer and handovers between teams. Occasionally, the transition between teams for a specific case doesn't go smoothly, resulting in the need to repeat explanations for each new team member involved. I would rate it seven out of ten.

Neutral

The installation process requires a couple of straightforward connectors to be installed on our servers, and the setup is quite simple. It's a one-time task, and overall, we haven't encountered any issues with the setup.

We conducted a POC with testing and various evaluations, completing it in a couple of months. The deployment spanned across a broad range of systems, including both production and non-production, and we successfully implemented it within three months. This encompassed all our SAP systems, including ECC, BW, and others, up to ADA and earlier versions. Maintenance is necessary, but the majority of patches and updates at the cluster level can be seamlessly handled online.

Despite encountering challenges with HANA, I would recommend moving forward with Cohesity. The observed improvements and overall convenience make it a worthwhile choice. Comparatively, the experience has been preferable to Symantec or other alternatives. It is an evolving product, and we've witnessed substantial enhancements from its initial stages. Overall, I would rate it seven out of ten.

We primarily use the solution for VMware Backup and SQL backups that are replicated and copied to the cloud.

They basically can do what Rubrik does. It's a backup device. There aren't necessarily any special features. 

What it does well, it does very well. It just works. 

The initial setup is easy.

It's stable.

The solution scales well.

It's not overly expensive.

Support needs improvement, but the product is fine when well deployed.

I've used the solution for a few months.

This is a solid product. It's quite stable. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable. 

I found the product to be scalable. You just add nodes if you need to. It's a hyper-converged solution, and scaling is easy.

I have not had a good experience with support.

Neutral

I am also familiar with Rubrik.

I've also worked with Commvault and find that you do have to do a lot of fine-tuning with it during implementation. This solution is easier. Commvault is also a lot more expensive. Cohesity has a simpler workflow and for people in operations, it's a blessing. 

The setup process is very straightforward and simple. It doesn't have huge requirements and it is not that complex. 

The pricing is okay. I'd rate it seven out of ten in terms of affordability. How expensive it is depends on how big the contract is. 

I'd advise potential new users to do their due diligence before, know what they want, and get some training.

I would rate the solution eight out of ten.

We are using Cohesity DataProtect for all our platforms, including the VMware platform and the site server. 

I like that Cohesity offers the chance to have data on-premises and on the cloud. All the data is automatically sent to the cloud.

DataProtect's recovery time is too high. It takes a long time to recover things from the cloud. I'd also like them to increase the capacity of the file server. 

DataProtect is very stable. We haven't seen any great problems with the platform.

DataProtect is totally scalable. 

We've contacted Cohesity support at times. It's good.

We were using Symantec. It was so expensive to add new hardware. We have more capacity on Cohesity than with the Symantec appliance.

Setting up DataProtect was very easy. With two people, we could deploy it in a couple of weeks. 

We had help from a consultant to deploy DataProtect.

We evaluated Rubrik. Cohesity is less expensive, and I think it gives us more capacity.

I rate Cohesity DataProtect 10 out of 10. I would advise new users to be careful with traffic from the cloud. If you don't manage your traffic, it might spike one month, and you end up paying a lot. 

We use the Data Protector to back up all our VMware virtual machines, as well as a SQL Server and Microsoft Exchange. We're not that big of a company anymore. We have three people who know the product: two specialists and someone from second-line support who can handle the tickets. 

The most valuable thing about Cohesity is how it operates as a whole. We are very satisfied with the product as a whole—all the backup functions, the data protection functions. We are very satisfied with those, and the product is very simple to use. 

We have had our share of minor bugs over the past two years and a few bigger ones. But I think it's because the product has so many features, and they try to add new stuff reasonably quickly. For example, Cohesity adds certain functionality in what they call a "feature release." This doesn't mean a long-term release. They added new functionality very quickly, and it was things we needed that were not yet available in a long-term release. When I say "long-term release," I mean one that is more static and gets updated once every few months. We wanted the feature, but we had more issues than some of us might've liked.

On the other hand, they managed to fix all the bugs without significant issues like data loss or anything like that. So it was more an inconvenience than it was a real problem. But if I have to have any criticism of them, maybe it's that. There are some minor improvements on SQL Server backups that we are waiting on, five services. We had one problem that will be solved in one of the subsequent releases, but those are small things. We are not waiting on any major stuff. The product currently meets all our backup needs.

We have been using Cohesity for just two years.

Cohesity's stability is very good. We haven't had any major issues with that.

I would say Cohesity support is somewhere in between good and very good. But, of course, it depends on which region you get. We know that if we log a ticket before noon here in Belgium, we are not in the region where we want to be. It's something we told Cohesity about, as well. We asked them if they could arrange it so that our ticket will always get picked up by the people in Cork. For one thing, they're in our title. They're also much more capable compared to the other regions. But that's our experience. Generally, we are very satisfied with the support we are getting.

Setup is pretty simple, especially compared to the product we had before. It was an older legacy product that was much harder to implement. We deployed with the help of an integrator, but we do all the day-to-day maintenance on the product by ourselves.

We paid for the entire solution because we have done a few expansions already. I think it's between 400 to 600k. That is the price for the complete system, including the hardware, the support, the subscriptions for the software, I think for four to five years.

I rate Cohesity nine out of 10. So, I would recommend it because it's quite a simple product and can do a lot. With the last product we used, you had to be a specialist to navigate in it. It's a much more straightforward and modern interface—very intuitive to use. And the speed of the backups, we do much more backup than we ever did before. So, I would certainly recommend it, yes.

We primarily use the solution for data protection and data platform. We are backing up VMs, physical servers, and other applications. 

We are even using the Exchange cluster backups in our environment. It became easy for us to administrate the data and for handling recovery as well. The best part is the UI. I have never seen this level of enhanced UI. 

The best use case is when we are facing issues while taking the exchange backups. Cohesity made it easy for the exchange backup and restore processes. We are happy with the Support provided by Cohesity for the issues we've come across.

I am very satisfied with the UI of Cohesity. Day to day, they are enhancing it.

We are now easily managing the data from Helios for all the clusters centrally.

Cohesity has made it easy for exchange backup and restore functions. 

We are happy with the support provided by Cohesity.

When we are facing issues while taking the exchange backups, Cohesity makes it easy for the exchange backup and restore processes. 

We are happy with the support provided by Cohesity for the issues we've come across.

Knowledge sharing has become easy by technical sharing and galaxy also evolving drastically.

For Oracle DBs, we have observed a few bugs. This can be done better.

We'd like to see easy Administration and non-disruptive upgrades and node additions.

For a few engineering issues, we've observed delays and they are asking for an upgrade of the cluster. It would be good if they modified it with gflags.

Knowledge sharing has become easy by technical sharing and has been evolving drastically.

I have been using Cohesity for the past 3 years, from 6.3 to 6.5.1.d Hotfix 10.

We are happy with the Support provided by Cohesity for the issues we've come across.

We'd like to see easy Administration and non-disruptive upgrades and node additions.

For a few engineering issues, we've observed delays and they are asking for an upgrade of the cluster. It would be good if they modified it with gflags.