Commvault Cloud Reviews

We are using Commvault to protect some of our workloads in the public cloud. We are using it in AWS SAM and Office 365. 

Scalability, as well as stability, are a couple of important parts of this solution.

This product is overly complex to operate and run.

The price of this solution could be lower.

We have been working with Commvault for about 18 months.

From a stability point of view, it is very good.

It's extremely scalable. It's used across the coalition control team and the cloud team, so there are a couple of dozen administrators. We are running a great deal more than that in the backend systems.

The technical support is pretty good.

We used Spectrum Protect or Tivoli Storage Manager for quite a few years.

The initial setup looked complex so we contracted Commvault to do it.

Commault completed the deployment but even they had issues, particularly with getting Office 365 operating correctly. Their professional services were the ones who deployed it.

One of the issues with backup vendors is that they overprice, or overvalue their products.

We are looking at Metallic as an alternative because Commvault is a good product but it is a bit complex.

Overall, this is a good product and very capable. That said, my advice for anybody who is considering it is to make sure that it fits your purpose. If you can make do with a simpler product then choose a simpler product.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

We primarily use the solution as a backup.

Our other solution deploys every agent on every single server, and then you back up that way. However, when you have to deploy to the APIs using the Commvault to their instance, due to the fact that we are a VMware shop, we are capable of leveraging the snapshot capability within the VPI. And then we back it up, the entire VM.

The license is counted as one VM. The other option is based on the capacity model. The cost on a capacity model is more expensive than the VM path model. That's why we switched. The functionality is very similar. 

The VSA, the virtual system agent backup, is the most useful aspect of the solution for our organization. Based on our use case, it cuts our costs significantly. Early on, when we had the software at one point, we were using the front-end data protection, the DPE model, with the licensing using an agent. Then, as the technology continued to evolve, they added additional features like the VSA path, VM path model and other things. We are switching from the DPE model to the VSA model. That helped us to eliminate some of the costs.

Once you get comfortable with the solution, it becomes pretty easy to use.

People are going to be very impressed with that kind of support that they get from Commvault. It's excellent. 

It's a comprehensive data management for all platforms. It works with multiple clouds and vendors.

They have a strong development team and are market leaders in the space.

With any product, there could be improvements made. 

I can't think of exact features that are lacking.

It's been a while, however, it's my understanding that they have new features coming out. 

Our cloud is still pretty old-school, I continue to use the console as the traditional admin tool for daily troubleshooting. In a newer version, they're using something called Command Center. I haven't played around with that yet. I heard that it's very sleek. At this point, the console is pretty dated, so it's good they're doing an update.

The Chargeback feature has recently changed as well. I haven't had a chance to explore it, however, I believe they've improved on it quite a bit.

The solution can be a bit complex for new users.

The solution needs better Office 365 data backup management.

I've been using the solution for six years now.

The product is very solid. They are the number one data management platform on the market. They are leading in that sense above the competition.

At this point, there are no plans for increasing usage right now. We are reducing our footprint on-prem and we've moved everything to Azure. Unfortunately, we leveraged some of the native protocols from Azure side. Commvault has gotten reduced. Due to that change,  the pricing or licensing that supports the functionality of it may be impacted a little bit.

While you can call support for anything, they have great online documentation that you can reference for assistance. It's easier to check out that before reaching out to them directly.

Their support is the best. They're worldwide, 24/7. I give credit for that. I deal with a lot of other vendors. Their support model is far superior. Once you open the ticket, if, after an hour, it's not resolved, you can click on it and another engineer will come online within the hour to assist, depending on the severity of the case. 

I'd rate them nine out of ten for sure.

At one point, we almost tried to switch to another vendor. However, due to the economic scale and other factors, we didn't move forward. We decided to stay with Commvault in order to leverage all the modeling and pricing, and we were able to accomplish what we needed.

Since I have worked here, the company has always used Commvault.

The initial implementation has a moderate amount of difficulty. It's complex at times, however, it depends on what it is. Once you know it, it's not that complex to set up. Overall, it is easy to use. It's not that difficult.

Deployment is probably just a couple of hours. In that time, you can spin up the environment and then you can set it up and deploy it and get a backup.

While we have a lot of users on the solution, I am the main person who handles the maintenance.

Most of the upgrades we do ourselves. In the cases where we have a major upgrade, we typically use a consultant. We did use a couple of consultants in the past for the upgrade. Early on, we didn't have the resource and personnel to handle everything. 

After using Commvault for six years now, I'm a bit more comfortable and confident in handling everything myself more and more.

We work directly with Commvault consultants.

The ROI comes from the fact that it's a solid product that works the way it is supposed to. When you need data recovery, it's perfect. That's your money's worth right there.

The licensing costs are determined on a yearly basis. It might be around $40,000 or $50,000. There are no costs in addition to the standard licensing fees.

Originally, we were on a private cloud, however, we've since moved to a public cloud.

I'd advise others that the implementation depends on the skill level of those setting it up. It's best to consult with the technical manager or the technical team. They can give recommendations. The costs are very reasonable. It may be only $4,000 or $5,000 for three or four days worth of consultant work. They handle the consulting remotely, not on-premises. 

Of course, if you don't know the answer to something at any time, you can always call support. That's for break/fix scenarios. For most other things, the online documentation will get you through.

Overall, I would rate the solution nine out of ten. We've been very happy with the product.

We use it for backup and disaster recovery. We protect Windows and Linux servers, Windows 10, SQL, and Office 365.

It has streamlined data recovery, via a SaaS solution, to provide overarching protection. Metallic has also reduced the amount of manual work required to manage our backup operations by about 20 percent. In addition, it provides us with more predictable costs for our backup requirements because the egress charges are known.

• The SaaS offering is the most valuable feature because it provides endpoint, Office 365, and core server backup.
• The overall ease of use is good. The user experience is very in-tune and they are constantly making improvements as a result of feedback from customers.
• Its performance for both backup and recovery, and security, as an enterprise solution, is good. Integration with Active Directory and the Azure platform make it a complete solution.
• It's very easy to set up the storage across all platforms. This allows us to be dynamic and change on-the-fly.
• Metallic is also very nice because you're not connecting to a VPN to use the endpoint recovery.

There is room for improvement in the Knowledge Base and error reporting. I would like to see best practices in the Knowledge Base, and have the ability to diagnose errors without contacting support.

I have been using Commvault Metallic for three months.

It's stable. I've had some outages over the last week, but overall, it's stable.

It seems very scalable. We have plans to increase our usage of the solution.

Commvault's technical support is responsive.

There are multiple systems in place. We're in the process of replacing them.

As for the process of switching to Metallic, planning goes a long way. It's at an intermediate level between simple and complicated. We did the free trial and it was easy to get going.

We went with Metallic because it's a SaaS offering. It was one of the few solutions that offered SaaS with their own storage.

After doing it, it's straightforward, but it does require a little bit of understanding. It's in the middle between straightforward and complex. We're still in deployment but the initial setup took about one month.

Our implementation strategy is to cover critical applications: Office 365, Windows 10, and both Windows and Linux servers.

I've ran into some issues, which has made the configuration interface for configuring the solution for data protection more complex, but overall, if the instructions work, it's very simple.

The Commvault Success team helped. Other than that, it was just me. Their team was responsive. They pride themselves on making the product work for the client.

In terms of administrators of the system, there is just me in my role of network engineer. The individual users don't log in. We're a small business with under 200 users.

We evaluated Veeam and Rubrik. The pros for Metallic were that the costs were up-front and that it was a SaaS with dedicated cloud storage for endpoint and dedicated cloud storage for Office 365, separating those silos.

The drawback with Metallic is that it takes a bit of work to understand the process for registering clients, but once you have it down, it goes quickly.

Take your time to run the trial and understand what you're getting yourself into.

The move from on-premise to a cloud solution is definitely a change. Be patient with the process and open to understanding the SaaS solution.

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

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.

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.

I've been using Metallic for about a year.

I have not had any issues with its stability.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

We previously had two different backup solutions, one that covered physical machines and another one that covered the virtual machines. We decided to go ahead with an enterprise tool and we chose Commvault to back up both. It's backing up more than 1200 VMs and more than 150 physical machines.

We can follow any backup or restore situation in a granular way: Who did it and which files were restored. If they did a local restore or if somebody restored to another server or another location, we can see it down to a granular level. We can follow each action, including all the administration actions.

The fact that the solution is a single platform has enabled our company to accelerate growth. With the migration from Veeam and NetWorker to Commvault, the whole environment has become easy for us because we have one tool. It has helped to accelerate the growth because it's easy to expand the whole environment. As soon as we have more data to back up, we can easily change the way we back up the data or increase the storage devices for that data.

It is also a single platform to move, manage, and recover our on-premise data. It's not only easy to manage physical and virtual machines, it's easy to manage where you want to put the data and where you want to recover the data. It's clear to everyone inside the organization.

Another benefit is that Commvault minimizes the administration time. Administration that I personally do takes about two hours a day for the whole environment, and that is about a three-to-one reduction.

The solution has also helped us to optimize infrastructure usage by reducing storage space. With the deduplication option, we have reduced the end storage devices we need significantly. We need 70 to 80 percent less storage.

We do regular restore and recovery tests, five to 10 times a month, for files, folders, and whole machines. We haven't had an actual attack or virus situation. In terms of the time it takes to restore data, at the physical layer, it's four or five times faster than it was when we used EMC NetWorker. At the virtual layer, it's about 50 percent faster than Veeam.

I've worked with backup software for the last 25 years. I know NetBackup, Tivoli, NetWorker (Legato), DataProtector (Omniback) and Veeam. I have found that I can cover all what we need with Commvault. 

The solution also provides us with a complete view of our data. I wrote scripts to report information from the Command Center daily.(A bunch of predefined reports are also available). I report them in HTML and have the status of the last day for the whole environment. Using the interface, I have predefined links to open daily or to send to my supervisors so they can see what's happening. They find it easy.

What I need is deeper CLI documentation for both QCommand and SQL queries.

I have been using Commvault for about 12 years. Starting with Simpana

When you talk about backup it must be stable. If not, we would change the tool.

We are increasing the capacity because we have an increase, on average, of about 20 percent a year. It's really scalable. With Commvault, you have a lot of possibilities. You can use your hardware or you can use dedicated hardware from Commvault. There are a lot of options for how you back up your environment. It's really good in this area.

One of the best points recently with Commvault is that it is a really good support organization. Overall, from one to 10, their tech support is between nine and 10. I used to place calls just to get know-how from the technicians, and sometimes because I really needed it. They always come back with fast and really accurate answers. It's really good.

As described before, we use NetWorker and Veeam and the idea was to consolidate the whole backup environment with ONE enterprise tool.

The initial setup was not complex for me. If you know the tool it's not complex. It could be a little complex for newer people because there are a lot of features. For a beginner, it's really not the best tool. It's not a tool for small business, it's more for medium and big companies.

We deployed Commvault, in this company, about four years ago, so I don't recall exactly how long it took. I think we needed three weekends to deploy and move all the data.

In terms of an implementation strategy, we have a team that takes care of backups. We first planned the whole architecture, what we wanted. Then we voted on the pros and cons of the architecture elements and decided where we were going with it. 

In addition to help from Commvault, we had an external analyst from a third-party who helped us with the initial deployment. Our experience with them was very good. I really appreciated it.

Internally, there are two of us in the organization who share the backup roles.

The implementation took place with our resources, but we have also a contract, with a vendor and also with a technical partner.

Two eyes see more than one! And if you have a problem, ussualy, you are part of it :)

From a licensing point of view, we now have one license which covers backup for the whole organization. And we spend less time administering the whole thing.

The solution's model is cost-efficient, but it depends on your environment. For us it was cost-efficient because we reduced the number of licenses. We came from two backup solutions, covering two types of servers, to now having a global license based on the amount of tera or petabytes we have. We cover all this with our license and that is cheaper than other options.

Overall, we have seen ROI in terms of both time and money. We started saving 40% of our resources and covering more each day.

As I once heard from a car salesman in California: every car has its girlfriend / boyfriend.

Here it is more or less the same, for each case it is necessary to study which is the best backup tool, basing ourselves first on the technical aspect and then on the financial one.

At the time we evaluated other options: NetBackup, HP Data Protector, and IBM Tivoli Storage Manager.

There were two key points when we decided to change. One was the licensing type that was best for us, because the cost could have a big impact on our budget. The other point was internal knowledge of the tools. I cannot say one of these solutions is worse or better than the others. We chose what was better for our environment at that moment. We wanted a solution to cover our whole environment, including at the OS level and the virtual layer, and one with a license that worked with our budget.

Licensing is a key point when you decide to change or to buy new software. The licensing type has an enormous impact on your budget and your decision. If it doesn't work with your budget... And it's the same technically. If the tool is not good for you, then you cannot choose it. On one hand you have the budgets and the licenses, on the other hand, you have the technical needs.

If you don't have know-how regarding this solution, you will need assistance from certain parties, providers or the company itself. That's not only for Commvault, it's for backup tools or any other kind of implementation, in general. You can really make wrong choices at the beginning that are not easy to repair when the whole system is in production.

Commvault has two interfaces, a Java interface and a full HTML interface. People who use the tool must have the know-how, so internally we teach the people who use the tool how to do backups and restores; we focus on these situations. For me, with my know-how, the tool is really simple, both the Java and the HTML. But for newer people, it might be a little bit complicated.

The biggest lessons I have learned using this solution are about the different ways to back up a virtual environment, and the different types of deduplication options there are.

The product is really good for us. I can't say that it would be really good for someone else, it depends on your environment. For us, Commvault is between nine and 10 out of 10.

We use it for endpoint backups. They are laptops and we needed a solution that could handle Linux, Macintoshes, and Windows, in different locations, and Metallic was the best option available.

We needed a solution that could handle Linux and Macintosh and Windows, all together. Metallic seemed to be the only one on the market that could provide an all-endpoints SaaS solution.

In terms of the manual work required to manage our backup operations, I don't have to manage it that much. There is not much that needs to be done or manual work involved. It works well. There's not much I have to do on our side and I don't have to dedicate any time to it.

Metallic has also saved our organization money on infrastructure costs because the price was amazingly affordable, and we didn't have to create an on-prem solution. Especially since we're moving the Parsons data centers to the cloud, we're reducing our on-prem footprint. This SaaS gives us a full cloud solution to take care of that . There's a huge cost savings for us with this. 

We're only using the endpoint backup solution part of it. It works very well. There's no impact on the endpoint. It runs in the background and it's something that you install and then forget about.

It's very easy to use. You don't really need to change anything or do anything different. For non-technical people it can be a little challenging trying to understand the GUI options because it can go a little bit deeper, but for basic use it's very simple to use.

It's definitely appropriate for an enterprise-level environment. Its performance for both backup and recovery is amazing. It runs very well. I don't even know when it's running and that's true during the backups as well. It completes successfully and there's zero impact on the endpoints.

The compression and deduplication are great for optimizing bandwidth and speed. I don't have to worry about it or think about it, and, because it's a SaaS solution, I don't have to worry about the storage size.

It's also very flexible in terms of where data is stored. You can choose what you would like. We're going to Azure cloud and the issue for us was more whether the security protocols were in place, and they are. As long as they met the security requirements, we were okay.

It has the AES-256 encryption. It meets that requirement and there is no issue with the amount of time it takes. The backups are very quick. There's no delay.

Adding new users who are non-technical can be a little challenging. You can push the software out through SCCM and install it that way, and that works great, but it would be nice to have another option where somebody could download an executable and run it and it would work. It's a little challenging to get it on other systems. I work from home but I have to go and help them because sometimes they don't know. I might send them the authentication code and they'll try to install it... I'm still working out the details, trying to figure out where they went wrong, but I've had several users try to do it and it hasn't worked.

I would like to see more customizable reports. I have reports going right now, but the daily report, for example, shows something like 40 jobs that ran when there are just a few endpoints on there. I'd like to just know if the endpoint was successfully backed up, not how many times. More customizable reports would be nice to have.

I've been using Metallic since it was released. We jumped onto it as soon as possible.

The stability is great. It just runs. I've had zero issues with it.

The scalability is great. It's very scalable.

Currently, I only have 10 endpoints that I'm protecting and I'm trying to roll it out to more. There are a lot of employees in our company. Right now, we're using Metallic for just critical systems, critical endpoints. I'm hoping to create more awareness throughout Parsons so that others learn about it and see it and, maybe, start using it. But for now, it's going slowly trying to get Metallic in through the door.

Commvault's technical support for Metallic is great. I really enjoy working with Commvault tech support. They're very knowledgeable and I love how they handle tickets. They're on top of things. They're always kind and polite and understanding. I wouldn't want to go through third-party support. I'd want to go directly through Commvault.

Our company used to use PC Backup but that's gone away and now they want to use OneDrive. A lot of executives feel that OneDrive is sufficient and that we don't need an actual backup solution.

The reason for going to Metallic was that PC Backup couldn't do Linux or Macintosh. We needed something that could do everything. It is a complete SaaS solution, backing up to the cloud.

The initial setup was straightforward. It was me that set it up. We got our plan configured on the website and I installed it for myself and for somebody else. It was pretty straightforward and pretty easy to configure. The instructions work well. 

The interface was a simple webpage, which is something I like about it. It's something I'm used to and there wasn't much to add. You just add the endpoint into the policy and away it goes. You don't have to really configure it.

We enabled it with SAML, so it uses our Active Directory and automatic login, and that worked out pretty well. It's been a long time since I've dug into it and done it. I tried to add some other users and they just emailed me and said they couldn't get it to work. I'm not sure what they're doing. Somehow they went wrong and I'm not sure yet how.

Overall our initial deployment took about 10 to 15 minutes. It was quick. In terms of deployment and maintenance, I'm the sole person who is working with the solution.

We didn't have an implementation strategy. We were trying it out. I had a certain number of laptops that I knew that needed to be added to it. I went through and configured them to work with Metallic. It was a really quick, easy setup, and it just runs with no issues. It doesn't matter where the laptop is at, where it's connected.

For me, it works great and it does exactly what it says it does. I love having it. I would put it on my home computers if I could. I'm still working on trying to get it implemented throughout all of Parsons.

We looked at PC Backup. We also looked at other cloud solutions. Metallic was the one that offered all the options.

It's simple and it has very low-to-no impact on endpoints. It runs in the background and has some really cool features for the end-users to use on the computer, if they want to look at their backups, do restores, or to find their computer location. But it is very simple and basic for non-technical people to use.

I like the interface, how it works, and being able to get daily reports of any failures or anything that happens is very useful.

I would rate it a 10 out of 10. I haven't come across anything that's better.

It is the primary backup/recovery solution for our VMware platform.

It provides solid backup automation for VMs and automatic backup replication. It also has real-world compression and deduplication.

As a backup solution, it has minimized our task of backing up VMs. It is difficult to give it a time frame, but we are backing up over twice as many VMs than our previous solution with less effort.  

We have not experienced a disaster or attack so far. Commvault allows us to recover VMs rapidly with different levels of recovery.

Its compression/deduplication allows us to store more backups and save storage space. The reporting is great; we are able to obtain critical business reports and infrastructure/usage information very easily.

The backup, recovery, and replication of VM workloads in a single platform has reduced backup windows, augmented platform availability, and recovery times.

The solution’s user interface for managing on-prem, cloud, or multi-cloud environments in one place is not the best. There are discrepancies between Java GUI plus HTML5. While additional improvements are coming soon, the lack of CLI makes administration tedious and time consuming.

The Command Center is decent. It does require major improvements for usability. SP19 will provide many desired features. It would be optimal to have CommServe running on Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

The solution requires constant attention. Commvault is very complex. We are constantly making adjustments and working through hotfixes, updates, and issues. 

There is a steep learning curve. Training is essential.

More than one year.

We did not have the best initial impression regarding stability. Things got better after four months.

The Hyperscale scalability is very good. CV LiveSync is a great tool for protecting Commvault’s database.

There are two full-time engineers doing day-to-day administration of this solution. 

The product is currently in Phase I: VMware. We have plans to increase usage in Phase II: Exchange/Physical/Isilon.

They have very good, knowledgeable engineers.

We previously used IBM Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM). TSM does not offer a solid VMware solution nor does it have strong reporting.

This solution has helped us to optimize infrastructure usage. With the solution's deduplication, we are saving storage space. Whereas, on our old solution, we still needed the same storage space. We now have faster backup storage, giving us faster restores and file level restores. This saves time and time is money.

The initial setup was straightforward but that was primarily because of all the planning and a clear architecture design. We were able to run production backups in two weeks

Phase I of our implementation was the VMware platform. We hired a Commvault consultant who followed an approved architectural design.

The solution has enabled us to save on infrastructure costs by being able to manage what were disparate data management solutions in one place.

The solution’s model is cost-efficient. It provides an all-around, exceptional enterprise backup platform.

We work with Commvault and a partner on our environment needs according to capacity, licensing, pricing, components, modules, etc. Additional costs depend on your backup needs.

We evaluated Veeam, but concluded that it was not an enterprise solution.

Commvault is a great backup/recovery solution. Start small, then scale out. Training is very important, as it is a complex solution. 

The solution is very capable as a single platform. It has many features. However, we have not leveraged the capabilities to move, manage, and recover our data across on-premise, hybrid, and cloud locations yet.

Commvault offers the best integration of multi-cloud/hybrid environments and is a leader in the market. The solution offers an extensive array of cloud options and features. However, we are leveraging it for on-premise workloads at the present time. 

Biggest lesson learnt: Backup replication requires a solid network infrastructure.

I would rate the solution as a nine (out of 10).

We are a partner and a service provider for Commvault in the Middle East. We use it for both backup and recovery, and sometimes for replication. 

It has on-prem solutions and we are also going with Azure.

Commvault is the first software company to release software for Nutanix AHV backup. We have an implementation here, with a government company, where we are taking a backup of the Nutanix virtual machine and their database, and replicating this backup to the DR. That way, if the main site is down or something has become corrupt or something is wrong with the backup, they are able to restore from the DR backup. It is the largest implementation in the Middle East.

The solution provides us with a single platform to move, manage, and recover data across on-premises, hybrid, and cloud locations, making it very effective. We can replicate the data even when building a new data center for DR. That makes it easier for us because from there we are able to restore using Commvault.

It provides us with a single console where we can back up our software, our databases, and even our desktops and laptops, even if they are connected remotely, at any time and from any place. Whenever the bandwidth is available and whenever the process is available, it will take a backup.

Commvault also supports most of the cloud vendors. We can back up cloud-based applications like Office 365 to on-prem, and we back up our on-prem data to the cloud as well. It can be anywhere, either local or in the cloud.

It helps to minimize the time admins spend on backup tasks. Once it is configured perfectly you can forget about it, in terms of administration. It saves our admins along the lines of 20 weeks per year.

And with Commvault, you don't need multiple applications to back up different kinds of platforms. It can be OpenStack, VMware, Hyper-V, a physical machine, or Oracle. It's a single point for backups.

When it comes to saving on storage we are saving 20 percent. In terms of storage optimization, it is seven times more efficient. You can store 700 TB in about 100 TB of space.

We have helped many clients to recover from ransomware using Commvault. For one of our clients, we were able to get them back into production in one week. That was an environment with 200 servers and 1,400 user backups. Without Commvault it would have taken some months.

One of the most valuable features is the encryption which helps save you from ransomware. Because the data is already encrypted, it cannot be encrypted again.

The restore performance is better than with any other product. That's why Commvault is number-one in industry reviews.

With Command Center, you can view the backup schedules, the running backups, and the data availability.

It takes a lot of technical expertise to implement. Commvault could increase the training it provides to customers and partners.

Also, with technology changing, it could use more features. Maybe they could include artificial intelligence.

We have been using Commvault since 2015.

The stability is really good. Once you implement it properly you can forget. It's an automated solution. You don't need to troubleshoot anything.

As software, it's scalable. You can add any number of licenses as often as you want. Commvault has options to scale using appliances and software.

Commvault's technical support is really good. I would rate it at nine out of 10.

We have used Veeam. Commvault is more of an enterprise product. In terms of the scope of integration across multi-cloud/hybrid environments, Veeam is a five out of 10, while Commvault is an eight.

The setup is not straightforward. It is a little complex. It really needs expertise, unlike other software.

The deployment time depends on the size of the environment, the number of servers and the storage size. It has taken us anywhere from one week to three months.

As a result of our experience in setting it up, we have created our own plan for doing so. We do a complete environment study of the client by using a solution survey sheet. That gives us complete visibility into the databases they have, the number of servers, the virtualization platform, and the physical machines. According to that, we suggest a plan for the size, if it is on-prem. We have a project management professional to make the process smoother. We have four engineers who implement Commvault and they are also responsible for maintenance.

ROI with Commvault will take about five years. It's cost-efficient when it is used at the enterprise level.

Some years ago, Commvault had a huge price. Now, it is cheaper than Veeam.

It's also available per VM license or per socket or per storage capacity and you can mix licenses. You can have some VM licenses and some socket licenses, for example.

We evaluated NetBackup. Commvault has better encryption technology and restore performance.

Keep on training and select a proper implementation company. That is the most important thing.

Most of our clients are only using Commvault. If they go with Commvault they won't use any other product. It can back up everything: servers, databases, storage snapshots — everything. They don't need other software.