Commvault Cloud Reviews

I am primarily using Commvault for backing up the physical and virtual servers.

This product has allowed us to recover data when we've had issues.

This product does what it says it's going to do, and generally backs up the data that you want it to back up.

It is a little more complicated than it really needs to be.

Reporting could definitely be improved.

I have been using Commvault, personally, for about three years.

It works, and there are definitely some bugs, but nothing major.

As it gets larger, it gets a lot more complex in terms of the configuration. Generally, the larger it gets, the harder it is to manage. We probably have about 1,000 servers right now that it is backing up.

In general, technical support is okay. I would rate them a seven out of ten.

Prior to Commvault, we used Tivoli Storage Manager from IBM. It is a bit lacking in terms of features, compared to Commvault.

The initial setup was relatively straightforward.

The price is a little bit high.

My advice for anybody who is looking into implementing Commvault is to do their research. It's a good product for most use cases, although it's not the best. My main complaint is that it needs better reporting.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

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.

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.

We have full functionality as a complete data warehouse, and I've been tasked to leverage the multiple features and licenses that Commvault has, as they apply to our business. We're using every feature and what we are not using, we plan to be using.

We back up multiple platforms in our environment: Windows, Red Hat, Linux, Oracle. We have hypervisors, a large VMware environment. So it's a pretty enterprise-class environment. 

We use it for custom reporting to better manage our backup environment and there is a lot of discovery in that area too. The better question might be how we're not using it right now. We try to leverage every feature that's out there, as a complete data warehouse.

It's a hybrid. It's an on-prem, but we're in Azure now, too.

We're saving storage space. The built-in deduplication features are really good. It's second to none in my experience with it. You really have a better handle on your deduplication database and block changes. Saving storage space is the biggest thing. We see up to 75 percent compression rates, and even higher, so we're saving on data.

Also, with archiving, we've been able to identify data that we were backing up multiple times and archive it instead and save money there. So overall, we've had a lot of space savings with data that's being compressed through the deduplication features of Commvault.

It has also helped us save on costs. There is money available to further use for fees in Commvault, which means the business is happy with what's going on. Those cost savings are from the fact that we don't have to keep increasing our storage the way we were before we were using Commvault. For me, as an engineer, that means I have training opportunities and I can also identify a service for server refresh because there's money available for infrastructure.

We expect that Commvault will also help our admins to minimize the time they spend on backup tasks so they can spend time on other projects. We have identified how it can. Now we're trying to figure out how to implement that. It will involve using workflows and automated processes for scheduling, alerting, and reporting, and even using support resolution through automatic tickets that can be generated.

We haven't yet used Commvault to recover from a disaster, attack, or to recover data for another reason. We just had a report that said we haven't had disaster recovery backup in the past year. Commvault sent us an alert and, within one day, they assembled a team to discuss what we could do to mitigate that risk. Once the team was assembled and we all got together on the phone, I noticed that the report had been inaccurate for a year. It was great that we didn't have a disaster, but I like the fact that Commvault was willing to address that need, at my immediate request, based on their alerting system. They were ready to assist me in a disaster at a moment's notice.

You have total control of your data. It's scary, but it's good once you understand it. There are a lot of unknowns that happen with your data, things that Commvault is doing, and you really need to be aware of them to maximize its overall performance. I like that you have complete hooks into and total control of your data.

The biggest lesson I've learned is that it doesn't break easily. You can get by with some mistakes. It's pretty intuitive. You're not intimidated that you may do something incorrectly and cause some damage. 

The data is well-protected. It doesn't age off until it's copied. That's a big feature right there. When you reach the end of your retention, it does not expire until the secondary copy is completed. That allows you to hold onto data that otherwise would have aged off by retention. I like that feature. It's hard to just delete or lose data using the Commvault platform.

It's tough to understand if you're really maximizing the features of such a large platform without engaging other services that Commvault offers to help you understand and leverage the data warehouse.

It's a little challenging because of the way Commvault communicates and works with third-party solutions. Right now, we're using Commvault to back up Office 365 mailboxes, so we have to work with Microsoft and Azure. There's a lot of handshaking in the background that the customer can be impacted by. For instance, Commvault can say, "Hey, we can back up a thousand mailboxes in two days, providing Microsoft lets us." "Microsoft letting you" means that Microsoft will throttle you at certain times, and there are also certain restrictions Microsoft has with how fast you're doing something, or how many you're doing. We, as a customer, are impacted from that perspective. Although Microsoft welcomes Commvault, there's always the strain of how these two platforms work together. So it's a little challenging when it crosses different platforms into other environments that Commvault doesn't have total control of.

Also, Commvault likes to be ahead of the game when it comes to merging with other platforms, but sometimes it's before they have the solution truly baked in. Office 365 is an example. I feel that my company might be a litmus test for their solution, because we have such a large environment. Some of the promised solutions that we received from Commvault were more like testing solutions. They weren't really validated, meaning they were possibilities. There have been a lot of hot fixes for the solution that we're using right now, more than we expected. It wasn't a simple, turnkey solution when we decided to use them. They could do a little bit more due diligence before they jump into a space to get some of that market share.

One particular issue we found was when we were trying to open up ports for communication. They had listed a couple of ports that we needed and we found out there were a lot more communication ports that they had already assumed we were aware of or already had in place. As we were doing our deployment, we had a lot of network communication issues when we were trying to communicate between resources on-prem and off-prem, due to different ports that were identified as being blocked.

They have to be willing to admit that, "Hey, we don't have this quite worked out yet, but we're working on it." I got to learn Commvault by implementing this Office 365 solution. That's my go-to for examples. There have been a lot of "gotchas" in performance. Commvault says, "Go to this SP, go to that SP," but you're talking about changing your whole service pack level in your environment, and you just can't do that overnight. You can't move as fast as they want you to move, business-wise, to take advantage of new releases and new features. They have to be more realistic that the customer can't keep up with their pace.

In addition, there are two of us who do all the maintenance, but we definitely make use of Commvault resources. They kind of make you dependent on utilizing their resources, which is not such a bad thing. But sometimes you may want to learn to manage your own environment completely, without engaging the vendor as much. Commvault finds a way to keep themselves engaged with what you're doing. You almost have to reach out to them to say, "How does this work? What's the best way to use this? I don't see any information on how to leverage this feature."

The documentation is lacking. You'll find some general stuff, but it's hard to find actual use cases. You also want to know who has tried a solution out, who is it working for, who can you talk to to get some pros and cons? They could do a little bit better with their documentation and not just have basic guidelines that you have to customize to follow.

I've been using Commvault for a year and a half.

We haven't seen any issues with scalability at all. They tend to have a suggestion for us when we come to them with a problem. Right now we're leveraging the IntelliSnap feature. It's been identified as a better way to back up, given some problems we've been having with some particular data that has been hard to capture within a certain time window. 

It's scalable. We haven't had any complaints at all. It rates pretty highly in scalability.

One of the features I'm working on putting in place is access control: How to grant different levels of authorization. We currently have 51 users and six are primary users. Most of those 51 users log in to run reports. Those users have operational roles, administrative roles, and some are in engineering. We also have a couple of database admins who have read-only access to view metrics.

Support is pretty extensive. There are five different levels of support. We're at the top level and we have also experienced two levels below that. They have a great support system. 

They could use additional subject matter experts, but when you do get the right subject matter expert you have a person who is pretty knowledgeable. We haven't needed many escalations, but they do have a good escalation system. 

They've never been stumped. There's always somebody that has the knowledge and expertise to resolve the issue. And that's generally within a matter of days at the most — and sometimes it's only hours. I've never had an outstanding problem for longer than a week without having the right resources in place to resolve the issue.

We have the highest enterprise-level support contract, so we have a team that engages us on chronic issues. We have a team that engages us on new initiatives and we have a team that we work with on the overall Commvault experience. We also have a dedicated technical account manager and we can bounce anything off of him at a moment's notice.

We went from Veritas NetBackup to Commvault. We switched due to upfront licensing and costs. We have more visibility into what we're actually purchasing. It seemed like, overall, the cost of Commvault was cheaper.

The licensing is more visible. It's more "per-diem." They're not forcing you into certain purchases. You can buy in bulk, per se. You can try things out. Commvault offers a lot of good, temporary licenses where you try something out before you commit to buying it. Once you express interest in purchasing, they'll supply a lot more information for you to make a better decision. I like that, versus the way Veritas works.

Commvault is a cost-efficient solution. Just beware that there's a lot you're going to have to understand before you can get to the point where you're utilizing that cost-efficiency.

To convert over to Commvault from NetBackup took us three days, and part of that was standing up the environment. With Commvault, it's easy to bring new data and new platforms in. It's simply a matter of clicking on the agent, installing it, and then going from there. The fact that it's agent-based made it a little bit easier to adapt to and back up multiple platforms and storage devices.

Generally, it takes about five hours to two days to drop an architected solution and start the implementation process. You need time for whatever issues may arise, so it could take three to five days to get Commvault up and running. 

But to get started, it's just a matter of a few minutes. The fact that you can push out and do all your installs from Command Center is a good feature from Commvault. It's easy to get rolling and get started. To really get it fully leveraged takes some time.

Our company is in its fourth year with Commvault and we're just now getting to the tip of the iceberg with leveraging a lot of its features and the licensing that Commvault offers as a data warehouse.

Training-wise, there's a lot of information out there, a lot of free training. There are tutorials and a lot of YouTube videos and virtual classrooms. They encourage you to learn and leverage their data suite without paying for a lot of training.

Prior to using Commvault's Office 365 feature, we were backing up mailboxes at the database level. Commvault allows us to just point, click, and drag-and-drop for backup and restore. That's a really big ROI. Restores are easier to handle at the message and item level. Things are a lot easier to restore. We can restore in multiple ways, including as a PST file. Commvault has a way of looking at our mailbox data and picking out anything that is PST and backing that up in different ways. There are a lot of built-in APIs to make things a little bit easier.

So we do have a good ROI with our overall mailbox protection and restorability.

It's been a while since we used NetBackup, but I think Commvault is easier. It's really point-and-click. There isn't a lot of background stuff going on or command-line stuff. It's all Windows-based, easy drag-and-drop. With NetBackup there was a lot of stuff going on in the back-end, command-line wise, that you couldn't get a good visual of as you were doing it. 

Working with Windows is a little more explanatory, versus working with command-line, when it comes to installations. With command-line, you have this sense that if you do something incorrectly you might really do something bad. That's a big difference that I like with Commvault versus Veritas NetBackup.

Take advantage of any free training and look at other business cases and how they use Commvault, because it's so customizable. There's no right and wrong way. You have to look at your unique business needs to really maximize the platform.

If you're just going to back up and protect your data, I would recommend something outside of Commvault. If you really want to understand your data, audit your data, really manipulate your data, and save money through your data, then Commvault is the place to go.

I like the interface. It requires some assistance with navigation. It's very intimidating when you first jump in as a newbie. You don't know where to start or what's important. The best approach is to learn each one, one at a time. The problem is that you usually end up favoring one particular feature because that's where the fires are at. It's user-friendly, but it takes some time to get used to.

I'm still learning the Command Center. I think a lot of people are hesitant to transfer over to it because it is a little different than the Java console. I just had a tutorial and demonstration on it last week. I like it. It's easier. It's just that the layout is a lot different. It's not as busy as the Java console, and because it's not as busy you don't know what you're not using, or what you have quick access to. I think that may be what intimidates people with the Command Center, that the layout is really a lot different. But kind of like a desktop, once you get it the way you want it, it's a lot easier to work with. I think those initial challenges deter some people, which is why it's been a slow rollout, and Commvault hasn't just said, "We're going to turn this one off and this one on."

I'm in favor of the Command Center. I'm starting to use it a little bit more. It's a good tool, a good upgrade, but it's going to take a little bit of learning.

The fact that a Commvault is a single platform will enable our organization to accelerate growth and drive innovation. This is my second year with this company, and we're now leveraging the experts within Commvault to show us how to use Commvault, so I think it will. But getting to that stage where you have to align those resources can take a company some time. There are some challenges there. But once you embrace it and leverage it the way they want you to use it, instead of using it how you want to use it, it will make the transition a little easier.

This process is helping in identifying lost data and identifying backup performance. You can really drill into backup performance, throughput, network connections, firewalls, and ports. You can really see where a problem is. Fixing their problems is one thing, but you tend to have to upgrade to fix it. Commvault is really good at listening to what the customer says, to their challenges, and then taking those challenges and making solutions down the line. The problem is you have to upgrade your environment to take advantage of those new bug fixes.

What we're looking to do with Commvault in the next six months is to leverage its ability to protect and backup our stuff within the cloud, within Azure. We also want to leverage it more for identifying data analytics. Because we're in the compliance field and the medical field, we really want to understand our data. Is it deduping right? Is it being backed up correctly? How can we archive it? We're confident that it's protected. We're confident we can restore it. Now we want to understand it.