Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users
it_user1310628 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Technical Support Engineer at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Real User
Provides us with one product, one console, and one license for our VM backups
Pros and Cons
  • "The most important feature is that everything can be controlled using a single console."
  • "I would like them not to push Command Center. It is good, but I would like them to enable all the features for the Java console. Some things are not in the Java console, like Office 365 agents. In fact, they are there, but one of the engineers had to show me how to configure it. It's not done the same as in the Command Center."

What is our primary use case?

We are mainly using it for backing up our VMware environment, some file servers, and some SQL databases. We also use it for some replication.

How has it helped my organization?

Before Commvault we had one product for backup, one for replication, and a few consoles. That was hard to manage for the administrator. With Commvault it's just one product, just one license. It does not require a special, separate license for deduplication or other stuff. It's easy to manage everything now.

Commvault provides us with a single platform to move, manage, and recover our data across on-premises locations. We usually have daily, incremental backups and a full backup weekly. That leads to reduced storage space for our Commvault storage. It's saving us about 30 percent.

The fact that the solution is a single platform has enabled our company to accelerate growth. We have a database and there are some major changes that happen to it at the end of month, or sometimes the developers have done something to change it in a whole different way. Before they apply those changes, we take a backup with Commvault so if something has gone wrong with the update, we can always revert it back.

Also, because it has alerts enabled, the solution helps our admins to minimize the time they spend on backup tasks so they can spend time on other projects. We don't monitor the backup system all the time. We only look at it when we get email alerts. If something has failed, then we'll look at what the error is and what's happening. There are daily backup reports configured so that at 10:00 am, every day, I get a backup report. It says what has been backed up and what has not.

In addition, we have had a few crashes of our VM environment and we have had to restore some VMs, as well as some files that have been deleted by users off our file server. We had another solution before, but that was before I started with the company. People say it was pretty crappy and that sometimes, when they were doing recovery, it took about eight to 10 hours for a VM. But with Commvault, the last time I did a recovery of a 500 GB hard disk with a VM, it took about one-and-a-half hours. That is good.

Finally, Commvault has helped by telling me there are outdated tools in the VM environment.

What is most valuable?

The most important feature is that everything can be controlled using a single console. That is the best feature of Commvault.

What needs improvement?

The user interface is a bit tough, to be honest, but once you get the hang of it, it's okay. In the beginning it was tough, but now I know what I'm doing. We had free training but after that, just to learn the interface took me four to six months. There are still things to learn because with every service pack there are changes. Service Pack 18 was recently released and there are some features that I haven't even seen yet.

I would like them not to push Command Center. It is good, but I would like them to enable all the features for the Java console. Some things are not in the Java console, like Office 365 agents. In fact, they are there, but one of the engineers had to show me how to configure it. It's not done the same as in the Command Center.

Buyer's Guide
Commvault Cloud
May 2025
Learn what your peers think about Commvault Cloud. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: May 2025.
851,823 professionals have used our research since 2012.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Commvault since 2018.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It's stable. 

Sometimes the Java console might not respond. It might happen one out of 20 times that the Java console might crash. And then we have to use Task Manager to end it and reopen it. Other than that, the server has never crashed nor has the database ever crashed.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We have actually moved into 365 recently. We had to buy some licenses but they agreed to give us some trial licenses for testing, but it is based on the user base. Commvault is supporting everything that we are doing.

How are customer service and support?

The technical support in the India region is a bit disappointing, but after 6:00 pm it is switched to the U.S and European teams, and they are much better in supporting and understanding the issues and fixing them. Sometimes the Indian team is also good, but we don't usually raise a ticket until after 6:00 pm. If it's a small issue that doesn't cause any harm to the production environment, we will go to the Indian team and some of them are good enough to help us.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Our company switched to Commvault because it had some issues with recovering data and the recovery time was high. Also, the local support team for our old product was not available when we needed them. That's why they were looking for something new and they found Commvault.

How was the initial setup?

The setup was straightforward. We didn't have many complications. When we had to install the agents on the servers, there were some issues with authentication with the SQL database, but that was from the database side. That was sorted and there was nothing much more than the usual administrative stuff.

The initial deployment took about three weeks because we had some complications with database servers. Some of them had to study the user account permissions. After that was sorted out, it was fine.

Our strategy was to install it on critical servers. After the vendor installed the physical servers for Commvault, we had to download about nine to 10 GB of their setup files. After that, they installed and there were some prerequisites to complete such as .NET. After that, it was pretty easy. Once we installed we had some local support. We also had to plan and provide retention periods.

What about the implementation team?

We had support from the local distributor. They were very friendly and they were cooperative and concerned with our requirements. They addressed them properly. Overall it was a good experience. 

And they provided us with the training after the deployment. We played with our environment for two to three months after the deployment, and then they gave us the training. That approach was better because we had an idea about what we were learning. We had questions when we went to the training so it was very good.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Commvault licensing is a perpetual license so only the support is being renewed yearly.

What other advice do I have?

I don't like the solution's Command Center. I don't know why they have pushed it. The old Java console is much better. Maybe it's because I was used to it. One good thing about the Command Center is that it has reduced the steps we have to take. If we had to do 10 steps on the Java console, it's been reduced to four or five steps in Command Center. But I'm confused about whether I'm doing things right because there are some steps missing. For a newcomer, Command Center would be good. But for me, I still prefer the Java console.

Currently, there is only me, as a system administrator, and another guy on the database team who use Commvault. That's all. We don't have many administrators.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
PeerSpot user
Infrastructure team leader - senior infrastructure analyst, storage and virtualisation at a construction company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
One of the biggest features is the global deduplication of our data sets.
Pros and Cons
  • "The cloud integration is a massive win for us, giving us a single backup service for all of our on-premise and cloud systems."
  • "The new HTML5-based management portals are very nice, but do not yet have all of the features of the Java-based client."

How has it helped my organization?

We have changed out approach to our ROBO backup solution. Utilising Commvault we can now automate the decommissioning of our remote project sites and convert these on-premise backups into Azure hosted VMs. This not only brings the service online faster for our users but also reduces the operational impact of our remote IT staff, as they now no longer need to manually manage the data into the cloud or our eventual archive platform.

What is most valuable?

One of the biggest features is the global deduplication of our data sets. AWE have deployed a disk-to-disk-to-cloud solution for our on-premise backups. The capacity savings of this approach lead to significant cost savings on the long term retention of data in the cloud for us.

We have also been very impressed with the integration with public cloud services. We have deployed our Commvault environment on-premise and into Azure and this has given us the ability to not only make use of cloud storage for long tern retention, but also achieve the same level of protection as our on-premise systems for our Azure hosted IaaS VMs. We have also deployed backups from Commvault in Azure to our Office 365 install base too.

The cloud integration is a massive win for us, giving us a single backup service for all of our on-premise and cloud systems.

I have also been very happy with the automated updating of the platform. Since we have been running the platform we have had around five service packs released. These are automatically updated after a period of time (we set the system to defer updates for one month). The updates run without service disruption and patches the central management system, the media agents and the client agents too. Compared to our previous vendor this is another huge operational saving for out IT staff and ensures we get to utilize the new features that are dropped with each new SP.

What needs improvement?

The new HTML5-based management portals are very nice, but do not yet have all of the features of the Java-based client. I’d like to see all of the features move over to HTML5 so that we do not have to use Java ideally.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We have had no issues with stability. The service has been running for 18 months with no loss of service due to the platform.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We have grown our initial, on-premise VM-only backup solution to cover all three of our on-premise datacentres as well as our Azure IaaS and O365 environments. This was easy to do and the central management tool set easily coped with our rapid scaling up to our entire estate.

How are customer service and technical support?

Customer Service:

We have had excellent engagement with our account team and they have been very helpful in ensuring that we get the most out of the platform. We get regular contact and they are keen to listen to data management issues that we have and see how they can address them with the Commvault platform. This has led us to be engaged in a couple of Beta test programmes and get early access to new features in some cases that resolved our challenges.

Technical Support:

Very good! We have had some very good dealings with support. In the main, this has been around us securing new systems and tweaking policies to get the best result for our infrastructure. In most cases the person answering the call resolved the ticket first time. When calls were escalated, the response was fast and the issue resolved to our satisfaction.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We often had scale issues with our previous vendor deployment or found other solutions were better for a particular system and so would introduce differing technologies to address these challenges. This led us to have a large and awkward-to-manage backup estate.

The biggest driver for us was to get all of the backup services into one tool set and to get better control and visibility of our data estate.

How was the initial setup?

The initial deployment was straightforward. The only complex part was seeding our initial backup into Azure as, at the time, we were not on Express Route. We set bandwidth limits for aux copies during the working day and allowed the copies to burst out-of-hours. This just meant it took a week or so for the initial seeding to complete but all subsequent incremental copies ran fine.

After implementing Express Route we changes our architecture to copy the data through Azure hosted media agents into Azure storage. This then allowed us to seed much faster, although we now use the Azure import service for migrating large archive sets when required, as this is the fastest/cheapest approach we have found.

What about the implementation team?

We used a vendor team to perform our initial deployment (a single resource). The consultant was very knowledgeable on the Commvault platform and made good recommendations regarding policy approaches to the various services we were targeting. The consultant performed a handover to our internal staff and we complimented this with certified training courses for the team who engage with our backup solution the most so that they could take on the task of scaling the deployment to the rest of our estate.

What was our ROI?

We have consolidated all of our backup technologies into the single platform and reduced maintenance costs and complexity in doing so. The OPEX costs equate to around the same but the biggest value returns have been in addressing our scale issues, ensuring compliance with backup policies and a significant reduction in operational staff’s time to manage the estate.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

There is now a subscription based licence option that, depending on your environment, could offer a more efficient method to licence the solution if you are OPEX cost driven rather than CAPEX. This was not a concern for our deployment and we implemented on perpetual licences which had more commercial value to our business.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Initially we were looking at Veeam, as our first challenge was to address our on-premise VMware estate. Although they had a good vSphere integrated solution, we found limitations in cloud and beyond the virtual environment to be an issue for us. This was driven form our desire to have a tool set which could encompass all of our estate and allow us to simplify management and compliance etc.

What other advice do I have?

Take the opportunity when engaging the Commvault sales team to walk them through other data management challenges that you have. You’ll likely find that the "backup" solution that you were looking for might be able to address these challenges and provide you with a greater ROI. This certainly worked for us and we have several new initiatives being developed to get more even value out of our deployment.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
SanjeevKumar5 - PeerSpot reviewer
SanjeevKumar5student at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
User

yes, it helpful to me.

Buyer's Guide
Commvault Cloud
May 2025
Learn what your peers think about Commvault Cloud. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: May 2025.
851,823 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Technical support at Foresight Software Solutions Pvt Ltd
Real User
Top 10
A simple and easy-to-deploy solution that provides excellent backup and recovery features and a helpful support team
Pros and Cons
  • "The 1-Touch recovery feature is helpful for all customers."
  • "The stability of the tool could be improved."

What is our primary use case?

The product is used purely for backup and restoration of data. A company can use the product if it needs to keep the sensitive data in its disk and cloud safe.

What is most valuable?

The 1-Touch recovery feature is helpful for all customers. If anything happens in the environment and a server shuts down, we can bring it back using the 1-Touch recovery feature. Commvault Backup & Recovery is simple compared to other products.

What needs improvement?

The stability of the tool could be improved. We were not able to take a secondary copy in Metallic on-premise. Some pharmaceutical customers keep their data on-premise so that they can maintain a copy on-premise if something happens to the cloud. Metallic does not provide an option to save a copy of data on-premises.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using the solution for four years. I am using the latest version of the solution.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I rate the stability an eight and a half or nine out of ten.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is scalable. We are providing services for 30 to 45 customers in our organization.

How are customer service and support?

The support team is good. Whenever we raise tickets, the support team is available 24/7.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is straightforward. As a beginner, I learned the entire deployment process in an hour. The entire configuration takes three to four hours to complete. The download takes 30 minutes. The installation is purely based on the network strength. If everything is good and we download the right package, the console can be deployed in three to four hours.

What about the implementation team?

We need to download Media Kit from the console to deploy the solution. Then, we must extract it and download the entire software package. After that, we run a set of files from the downloaded package.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The solution is expensive, but it is worth the money. When we choose a good quality product, we must pay for it. We should not expect a good quality product at a lower price.

What other advice do I have?

I have used versions 11.28 to 11.30. I have four years of experience in technical support. We should not think that the solution is expensive. It is worth the money. It is a worthy product. Overall, I rate the product a nine out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
PeerSpot user
Solution Architect at IT Solution
Real User
Top 5Leaderboard
Offers unlimited backup
Pros and Cons
  • "One valuable feature is unlimited backup. You can back up existing users and folders."
  • "You can't change Metallic's retention policies without contacting the Commvault support team."

What is our primary use case?

We have used Metallic to offer a package of services to some of our clients along with Nutanix. One of our clients just started using it for Mac agents. They purchased approximately 35 licenses.

What is most valuable?

One valuable feature is unlimited backup. You can back up existing users and folders. 

What needs improvement?

You can't change Metallic's retention policies without contacting the Commvault support team. We can only change the scheduling within a certain window, like four hours. Restoration also takes a long time. The hypervisor capabilities are also limited in terms of backing up across cloud platforms. For example, if we are taking a backup in Azure and want to switch the backup to AWS, it will take some time. 

For how long have I used the solution?

I have worked with Metallic for about a year. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I rate Metallic seven out of 10 for stability. The backup and restoration takes some time, and you get some errors when installing a package. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Metallic is a scalable solution. Its primary benefit is unlimited backup for endpoint users. However, not all clients purchase that. 

How was the initial setup?

Deploying Metallic isn't complex. You only need to install the onboarding agent. It took approximately half an hour the first time. You have to download the agent package from the console itself and deploy it on the endpoint. You need to put in the login credentials. It will ask for the email ID and password. 

What other advice do I have?

I rate Metallic eight out of 10. I recommend using the console instead of the web interface. It's much easier to use. 

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
PeerSpot user
Roopesh Mohabeer - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Systems Support Analyst at WARWYCK PHOENIX PCC
Real User
Top 10
Easy to deploy and maintain, stable, and delivers as promised
Pros and Cons
  • "It is easy to use and stable. It delivers what has been promised. When it says it can do something, it can actually do it, as opposed to some of its competitors."
  • "Its dashboard could be improved to provide a summarized version of all the jobs instead of having to go through each one of them. We should easily be able to glance at all issues. If I had not gone with the on-premise version, I would have had regular reports with the cloud version. It would be an advantage if they increase the compression rate of the backup. I am keeping it on-prem, so I'll need more disks depending on the policies that I have in the retention period. Its price could also be lower. If a good solution can be cheaper, it is always an advantage."

What is our primary use case?

I used it during a POC, and now, it is in production. We opted to go for the N minus one release and not the latest one.

We use it for the backup of servers. It is also used when users need to take a backup of their laptops or mail archiving.

What is most valuable?

It is easy to use and stable. It delivers what has been promised. When it says it can do something, it can actually do it, as opposed to some of its competitors.

What needs improvement?

Its dashboard could be improved to provide a summarized version of all the jobs instead of having to go through each one of them. We should easily be able to glance at all issues. If I had not gone with the on-premise version, I would have had regular reports with the cloud version. 

It would be an advantage if they increase the compression rate of the backup. I am keeping it on-prem, so I'll need more disks depending on the policies that I have in the retention period. 

Its price could also be lower. If a good solution can be cheaper, it is always an advantage.

For how long have I used the solution?

I used this solution for six months.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It is stable. I haven't experienced any issues.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is scalable. We have approximately 30 users, but we are also backing up the servers that everyone uses.

How are customer service and technical support?

I have had one call with their technical support, and they were of great assistance. They were really approachable, and they were able to answer the questions.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We have been using NetBackup and Veeam. As compared to NetBackup, Commvault is an improvement. NetBackup licenses are expensive as compared to Commvault. 

How was the initial setup?

It was pretty straightforward. It took one day to do the installation and put all policies. It was really quick. I did the installation, deployed the agents, and started using it for testing. After successful tests, we decided to go with the solution.

What about the implementation team?

I was accompanied by our business partner, but its implementation was pretty straightforward.

Its maintenance is really easy to do because you have everything in the console. It can be managed by one technical person. It doesn't require much. Because it is stable, there is not much to be done. You just need to enter the jobs that have been run and completed successfully. Every now and then, you might also do a restore.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

It is cheaper than NetBackup, but its price can be lower. If a good solution can be cheaper, it is always an advantage. Its licensing is on a yearly basis.

What other advice do I have?

I would definitely recommend this solution to others. We plan to keep using this solution.

I would rate Commvault a nine out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Aviation Attorney at Gagliano Law Offices
Real User
Eliminates the time I spent on manual backups and protects my OneDrive data
Pros and Cons
  • "In terms of the speed of backup, it operates seamlessly, so I'd rate it as excellent... with my daily use and workload, quite honestly I don't even notice when it backs up."
  • "The setup was a little bit difficult for a non-IT person like me. My OneDrive is protected by multifactor authentication, and to get the backup to begin behind that multifactor authentication took a little bit of almost customized support, even though I was following the instructions and the videos. That process could have been easier."

What is our primary use case?

It is used as a single backup for my small office's Microsoft 365 account, particularly the OneDrive files.

How has it helped my organization?

The best example is that it hasn't impacted my operations, which is exactly how it's supposed to work. It's supposed to provide a backup in the case of an unforeseen event or emergency, if something happens to the OneDrive. That's what it's there for. Otherwise, it shouldn't have an impact and it doesn't.

It provides daily backups and, since I'm not doing manual backups anymore, it has greatly reduced the time that it was taking me to do those. I was doing them every day so it has greatly reduced my workload. In addition, it has provided much higher reliability and efficiency. It's saving me on the order of 20 hours a month, as it does backups more efficiently and more often than I did or would have.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature is the one that I'm using, which is the backup of my OneDrive. Thankfully I haven't had to use a backup yet, but the solution itself seems to be working very well.

In terms of the speed of backup, it operates seamlessly, so I'd rate it as excellent. The first backup took a while because I already had quite a bit of information residing on my OneDrive, but now, with my daily use and workload, quite honestly I don't even notice when it backs up. It's completely seamless.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using Metallic for about a year.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I have not had any issues with its stability.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It seems like it has good scalability, which is another thing that I'm interested in because hopefully I won't be a small business for long. I've never run enterprise-level software, but I'm very happy with Metallic, as the owner of a small business.

As the business grows, as I add users, the ability to add backup features is there. It's something I've discussed with their customer support and tech support. I'm comfortable that as I add users and begin to use more features in my Office suite and elsewhere, Metallic will be able to provide backup. That's really the primary reason I have it: data backup and security.

I use it every day for the business. It's in OneDrive now but at some point I'm going to have employees and it will have to migrate over to SharePoint. I will then need it backed up in SharePoint as well for use by my team.

How are customer service and technical support?

In terms of ease of use, I'm not an IT professional. I own a small business. So it was a little challenging to get running, but Metallic's customer service — their technical support and their sales and customer contact representatives — were world-class; among the best customer service interactions I've had with anyone, anywhere, for any reason. That was very much appreciated. I appreciate their follow up, their diligence, their responsiveness. That was just world-class. There's no other word for it.

They're very responsive. When a question comes in, they follow up, even when they haven't heard from me. They check to make sure everything is working properly, and they answer any questions preemptively. I have the utmost regard for their customer service and their tech support and their ability to solve issues. They have done a phenomenal job of customer outreach, problem solving, and tech support; the whole nine yards.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I had a physical hard drive that I backed everything up to, manually. That was my backup plan, which was not a good backup plan. I'm much more comfortable with how things are operating now.

The reason I moved to Metallic was that my OneDrive files got too big. The manual backup was taking too long and it was not being accomplished as often as I wanted it to be. I knew I needed an automatic cloud backup.

How was the initial setup?

The setup was a little bit difficult for a non-IT person like me. My OneDrive is protected by multifactor authentication, and to get the backup to begin behind that multifactor authentication took a little bit of almost customized support, even though I was following the instructions and the videos. That process could have been easier. But considering that I needed the additional support, Metallic was phenomenally responsive and I give them the highest marks possible for their responsiveness and support.

It was configured through Azure. That was hands-on on my part. It was simple to understand. But even though I followed the instructions, I wound up doing a screen share with tech support that uncovered some additional items that the instructions did not cover. That was the source of the initial problem. But tech support and customer support helped me overcome those efficiently and they were really responsive and helpful.

I knew the setup would take a little bit of time and I set the time aside. When it didn't work and the backup wasn't occurring or was having trouble, I got in touch with customer support and technical support and they provided assistance. And then I would get busy and not be able to respond to them for some time, and then they would get back with me. The plan was to sit down and have it all done but it didn't work out that way. It took a little bit longer than planned, but that was not Metallic's fault.

I got everything installed, but I didn't have any backups accomplished till after the free trial expired. But again, that was not Metallic's fault.

What about the implementation team?

It was just me and the Metallic support. One of the customer support agents at Metallic, Alix, was fantastic. I don't recall the names of the tech support people who I spoke with, but they were also excellent.

I'm the only one using and maintaining it at the moment.

What was our ROI?

It hasn't saved money for my company on infrastructure costs but the idea is that in the event that something unforeseen or catastrophic happens, it will save me money. It's like an insurance policy.

It certainly provides me with more predictable costs for my backup requirements. And there is ROI because I've got a backup that I don't have to do manually. That saves me time and headache.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

I looked at this at the beginning of the year and I don't remember what the prices were for all the other services, but I thought that Metallic's was fair. It was also highly rated, which was even more important than cost because I need a reliable, secure, backup method.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

I looked into other options but Metallic seemed like it had the greatest ability to scale up, add features, and it had a good price.

What other advice do I have?

I would highly recommend it.

The biggest lesson I've learned from using it is that when I expand, I'm going to need an IT consultant to assist, so that I don't have to spend the time doing it. I will want someone who can deal with the issues efficiently.

With the caveat that I haven't needed a backup yet, since nothing catastrophic has happened, I would rate Metallic and their team as a 10. I can only assume and hope that if, God forbid, something were to happen and I were to need the backup, it would be as good as the service has been so far.

Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
reviewer1271601 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr. Network Analyst at a government with 5,001-10,000 employees
Real User
We save significantly on space through deduplication, but a lot of effort is required to keep it running
Pros and Cons
  • "The solution provides us with a single platform to move, manage, and recover our data across on-premise locations. Some of the guys have been using it to move a virtual machine from VMware to the Microsoft solution, Hyper-V. They back it up and then they restore to the different virtual machine provider, and that works great."
  • "Just to keep it running is time-consuming. There are five people on my team. Commvault was supposed to be one of the less time-consuming solutions, but in reality it takes 60 percent of our time just to keep it running, and that's not even fine-tuning it; that's just to keep it running."

What is our primary use case?

We use it to back up NetApp shares, servers, and virtual servers. We also use it for Active Directory and databases. We used to use it to back up Exchange servers, but we're moving that to the cloud. It has a lot of features but we mostly use it to back up and recover stuff.

How has it helped my organization?

I can't really say how Commvault has improved the way our organization functions because, while I know there was use another product in use before Commvault, I came here way after the company started using Commvault. I wasn't in this role during the transition. When I've talked about this with the more senior guys, they say Commvault is supposed to be the best product available at this moment.

In general, it gives people confidence knowing that their data, on their servers and home shares on shared drives, is backed up. It gives our end-users confidence.

And the solution has helped us to optimize infrastructure usage. The deduplication in Commvault is great. We have 90-something percent savings using its deduplication technology. It's awesome. I love that aspect.

What is most valuable?

The solution provides us with a single platform to move, manage, and recover our data across on-premise locations. Some of the guys have been using it to move a virtual machine from VMware to the Microsoft solution, Hyper-V. They back it up and then they restore to the different virtual machine provider, and that works great.

What needs improvement?

We have never managed to use it to full potential because we don't have a dedicated team to take care of Commvault, so we barely keep it running. It takes a lot of our time when we have ten other systems to take care of. That's why I'm not the biggest fan of this. Just to keep it running is time-consuming. There are five people on my team. Commvault was supposed to be one of the less time-consuming solutions, but in reality it takes 60 percent of our time just to keep it running, and that's not even fine-tuning it; that's just to keep it running. It's a pain.

It constantly breaks and then we spend three or four days trying to fix the issue, working with support, going back and forth. When we finally resolve something, another issue pops up. Then we spend another three or four days trying to make it work. I'm not saying it's the product's fault. Maybe we didn't implement it correctly in the first place. I don't know, I wasn't here. But it takes a lot of time, and every issue is different so I cannot build experience. With another system, I know if I do this, this, and this then it breaks, and I know that I have to do this, this, and this to fix it. But every time Commvault breaks, it's something different, so it takes us a lot of time to fix it. It is frustrating.

Another thing I find frustrating is that when it fails and it says something like "Error code 19: etc., etc... Click here for more information," when I click I get an error page. Having the error codes documented in the Commvault Knowledge Base would help us a lot.

When I came to the role, they said, "Oh yeah, you're going to be doing this, this, and this, and maybe a little bit of Commvault. In reality, 60 to 70 percent of my day is just tinkering with Commvault.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using Commvault for about two years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It's not very stable in our environment. Every day there is something weird going on. When we solve the "weird thing of the week," the next day something different goes on.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The issue of scalability isn't applicable to us because we're not trying to just grow, grow, grow. It's not that we're going to have 200 percent growth next year. Our environment is more or less stable. We have 800 servers. Next year we might have 850, but it's not doubling.

Pretty much everything we back up is done via Commvault, except for desktops or laptops.

How are customer service and technical support?

Their follow-up is great. If they send an email saying, "Hey, can you try this and this," if I'm busy with other stuff, the next day they follow up again and again and they harass me. But it's great because my experience with other companies' support is that you have to chase them instead of them chasing you.

Some of Commvault's people are better than others. That's normal. We're humans after all. I only had one case in which I could not agree with the guy, so I had to request another person. But most of the time they're okay or good. Once in a while, you get this really great person, someone who is really awesome. Overall, the support is good.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

There were a couple of guys from Cohesity trying to get business from us. We met with them, but it never went anywhere. We heard what they had to say and it looked cool, it looked promising, but of course they are much smaller than Commvault. We didn't try Cohesity. They only did a demo for us.

It's not easy for us to make those kinds of changes. If we have a contract with Commvault, we can't just say, "Okay, let's forget about this. Let's bring in somebody new." We are government, so we can't just do that. We need to go through a bid process so it's not as easy as in other companies.

What other advice do I have?

My advice is to have a dedicated team for Commvault, if possible. In our team we are dealing with DNS Exchange, antivirus, Active Directory, and Commvault. I feel I'm not successful enough in Commvault because I am always thinking about multiple things. If you really want to be successful with the product and use it to its full potential, a dedicated team just doing Commvault would be great. In reality it might not be easy to do, but if I had a magic wand, I would have two or three people just doing Commvault.

I think it's a great product that we are under-utilizing. The lesson I have learned from using it is that when I think I'm getting a handle on Commvault, when I think I'm learning it, something else happens that shows me that I know nothing about Commvault. It's a good product, but it's just it takes a lot of effort to support it. Sometimes we just don't have the time. When it works fine, it's awesome.

IT has the regular ComCell Console that looks ugly but is full of functionality. And it has another way to manage it called Command Center that is a nice-looking web interface but I find it doesn't have all the functionality, so I stick to the old interface because I can do everything there. I haven't used Command Center often. I don't find it's the best feature because there are some things that I cannot do in there. I got used to using the ComCell Console and have kept on using it.

The fact that the solution is a single platform hasn't really enabled our organization to accelerate growth or drive innovation. We're government, so we are not driven by growth or innovation. We prefer to have stability and reliability. We're not a company that is trying to quickly sell something. We don't care about that. We're not trying to grow; it's actually the opposite: The less impact that government has, the better.

In terms of the solution's breadth and depth of cloud support, we're not using cloud yet. In government, we don't want to have the latest and greatest and the shiniest thing. We have to be very careful. In a private company, somebody just says, "Okay, let's go cloud," and that's it. Next day everybody is in the cloud. But we have to be accountable to taxpayers and we usually have to justify the expense. Decisions are not made that fast, so we are not in the cloud yet.

We have not tried or simulated a disaster recovery scenario. It's something we have to test. We tried once and we killed the network and everybody complained, so we had to stop it. We have recovered the files here and there when people say, "Oops, I just deleted this file. Can you recover it?" But a whole disaster recovery is something we have never done, and I hope we never have to.

There are five administrators of it in our organization while a couple of more use it to move VMs from one place to another. There are three more on the SAP team who use it to push backups to us, and three more from the DBAs. We don't back up laptops or desktops. Our end-users don't have access to this, nor do our other IT teams such as the applications programmers. They have to come to us to restore something.

It works fine when it works. It's a good product but it takes a lot of effort to support it. I don't know if it's because we didn't implement it correctly or if it's our infrastructure or the product, but that's my general impression.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
ALbert Navarro - PeerSpot reviewer
Account Manager IT at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
Reseller
A solution with a great rate of duplication and easily scalable
Pros and Cons
  • "The rate of duplication is great."
  • "The interface could be improved because it has two different consoles."

What is our primary use case?

The rate of duplication is great because when you do the first full backup, it duplicates 20%, but when you do more increments, depending on the mode, the duplication is 99%. It is also great at detecting ransomware. It's not an antivirus, but when you copy files, the system can send you a message such as, "Mr. Albert, have you downloaded 10,000 files in two minutes? Why are you doing this?" Again, it's not an antivirus, but it notifies you if something is wrong with your system.

What needs improvement?

The interface could be improved because it has two different consoles. The first console is Java, and it is a little complex, but you can do 100% of the operation. But now, there is an alternative console of HTML 5. It is trendy and simple, but you can only do 70% of your operation. The HTML console is perfect for a client or a partner.

You have all the information centralized with the Java console, and I believe they plan to transition to the HTML console fully.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using it for three months, deploying both on-premises and cloud. The choice of on-premises or cloud depends on what the client wants.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I rate the stability an 8.5 out of ten, and there is a small room for improvement.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is easily scalable. We have about 300 users of Commvault Complete Data Protection in our company.

How are customer service and support?

We have used technical support, and you can contact them by opening a ticker and in a few minutes, they will action it. For example, we opened a ticket last week, and the issue was solved in 30 minutes.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Veeam, Veritas and Rubrik are three software comparable to Commvault Complete Data Protection. Veeam is competitive in price and demand. Their solution is not very good, but many people use it because it is not expensive. Commvault Complete Data Protection, however, is the best out of all of them.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is simple.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

I rate the pricing an eight out of ten, with ten being a good price and one a high price. Depending on the client, they have different types of licensing.

What other advice do I have?

I rate the solution a nine out of ten. We would like to see a single console for everything in the future.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Reseller
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Commvault Cloud Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
Updated: May 2025
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Commvault Cloud Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.