Commvault Cloud Reviews

We have used the Commvault solution to take mobile backups from our client locations. We had multiple data sites where data was not scattered in a distributed mode, and we utilized the Commvault client with all the users. 

We started collecting data from their machines to the centralized server. We especially used Commvault to back up Outlook and flat files, as well as databases like MS SQL and SQL using native services. For other databases, we used Commvault.

The solution saved us a lot of time, effort, and manpower. It helped us back up remote locations where it is difficult to reach. 

It also enabled us to take backups from all clients efficiently. The implementation of Commvault is very easy, especially if it's deployed on machines within the same network.

The feedback from users was phenomenal as they did not encounter any problems with backups, whether from Outlook or other data such as flat files and databases. 

The functionality and features of Commvault were much better compared to other solutions.

Commvault could improve in the area of monitoring and notification services. Upon backup completion, the user is not getting notifications. This might be a feature I'm missing within the system. If it’s not there, Commvault should enhance this functionality. 

Additionally, customer support should be improved for quicker real-time assistance, considering the time zone challenges.

In the past, support has been phenomenal, and the people at Commvault have been very supportive. 

However, recently, due to time zone differences, it has taken a lot of time to connect in real time with support staff. There is an issue in finding customer support services within India.

Positive

Commvault is slightly more expensive than similar solutions. We observed a pricing range of 15% to 17% more.

We have evaluated other solutions in the market, but due to the functionalities and features offered by Commvault, we opted to use it despite the higher price.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

Other

We use Commvault for our data backup and imaging.

Commvault serves us by backing up multiple versions and multiple locations, giving us availability in case of any issues in one place. It has saved us a lot of time as scheduled backups happen automatically.

Commvault is an all-in-one product that is very simple and operational for business use. It has an imaging option and a deduplication option, and our license is per node, which is not limited to storage capacity. We can back up unlimited TBs due to our per node license.

I think Commvault needs to improve its virtual solutions.

We have used Commvault for almost ten years.

Commvault is a stable system.

Commvault is scalable.

I would rate the customer support five out of ten. Customer support has very closed departments, requiring us to shuffle between them to get one thing done because representatives have limited accessibility. We need to go through multiple layers, which is inconvenient for us as end users.

Neutral

We used to use Tivoli long ago. Now, for more than a decade, we don't have other experiences.

I think the initial setup was straightforward.

Numbers cannot be said because it is just a backup software.

Our licensing model is reasonable for us. We don't know the exact current licensing models in detail.

We will recommend Commvault because it is stable and an all-in-one solution. Users can perform multiple types of backups from different sources. I rate the overall solution as an eight out of ten.

On-premises

We are using it for large data center backups, remote office backups, and cloud backups and restorations across all our environments.

We have implemented Threat Scan, and we have had several catches with it. The activity was not malicious, but it did allow us to know that somebody would do something.

It provides us with whatever we define. We have used some of their other tools in the past to tell us how old our data is and the things that we should be able to archive. It gives us a clear picture of our data when we need it.

Commvault has a platform that offers recovery across cloud, on-prem, and SaaS workloads. For it to have all those features is very important because it completely supports our environment.

We are very satisfied with how it protects our data from the endpoint and to its final resting destination, whatever that may be. It could be local storage. It could be cloud storage. We are very satisfied with what it does for us.

There are some features that have significantly reduced our RTOs. It has helped reduce RPOs too. The reduction in RTOs and RPOs has been wonderful.

Commvault has helped our organization reduce its threat detection time. It has helped us identify some possibilities of threats. We have a full scope of different tools for threats across our enterprise, but it has helped isolate a possible threat.

Commvault has helped our organization reduce or avoid downtime. There were several cases where we were able to have a short downtime as compared to having a multi-hour downtime. It could turn a multi-hour downtime into less than 15 minutes.

The VM backups and the recovery from cloud infrastructure are valuable.

It is very easy to use for administrators for monitoring, analyzing, and managing our organization’s data environment. The instructions are pretty straightforward. It is very easy to monitor.

They can improve the VMware recovery and VMware backup. There is an improvement area on the VMware infrastructure. They can make available what they call a VSA proxy. They can have an appliance-type setup to deploy VSA backups and help recover quicker. They can have an appliance ready. Instead of having to have a server dedicated to that and installing software on a server, they can just provide an actual appliance for that.

Personally, I have been using it for over 15 years.

I would rate it an eight out of ten in terms of stability. We have had a few incidents over the years due to certain revisions of the software. We were hit by some of the known bugs, so we had to go back and patch.

It can probably improve on scalability. We have the typical Windows Server deployment. There can be easier automation when deploying new clients and agents.

I love their tech support. As compared to other products we have used, Commvault's tech support is 100% one of the best. They let you know everything, and there is no mystery. They let you know what is happening in the background. I would rate their support a nine out of ten.

Positive

In the past, we have had an IBM solution. We have also used Micro Focus Data Protector. I personally also used NetBackup. It was called something else earlier, but it is NetBackup now.

Our deployment model is hybrid. We have a small cloud, but it is largely on-prem. I have been involved in its deployment multiple times in both scenarios. It is straightforward.

In terms of maintenance, it requires standard patching updates or application updates. It does require that periodically.

We do it all in-house. We have a team for deployment. For deployments, we have four people. We also have a dedicated recovery team due to the size of our organization.

It has helped us with our total cost of ownership with some of the newest features such as live recovery. It has caused our RTOs and RTOs to drop, so it has helped with our total cost of ownership.

It is a little too high. I would like to get more of a consumption model or more of a periodic true-up type of model that is more friendly to the ups and downs that you may have in your data instead of locking into multi-year agreements.

To those evaluating this solution, I would advise understanding the infrastructure that is needed to support the product. Understand what you need and dig into the details of what you have to purchase. That would be my recommendation.

We have not enabled Commvault’s automated policies. We have also not utilized the risk analysis tool.

Overall, I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We use the solution for auto backup and tape library.

The product is used for backup purposes. Data backup is important for us. The product helps us secure our data.

The product is user-friendly. We can restore it very quickly. The browse option is also good for browsing files. We can also index files.

The product is expensive.

I have been working with the solution for the last two to three years. I am using the latest version of the solution.

The tool’s stability is good. I rate the stability an eight or nine out of ten.

The tool is perfect. I rate the scalability an eight and a half out of ten. It is scalable according to our needs. We have more than 100 users in our organization. We use the solution 24/7. We use it to its maximum potential.

The technical support is good. We have a team on site 24/7.

Positive

I rate the ease of setup a seven out of ten. New users may find the initial setup difficult.

We have a dedicated user for maintaining the solution.

I rate the pricing an eight out of ten.

We are still exploring the features since we are new users. We were using a different solution before Commvault. I joined the organization after we started using Commvault. Overall, I rate the product a nine out of ten.

On-premises

We use the deception piece of Commvault, not the backup solution.

We use deception decoys across our corporate networks and across our OT networks to emulate vulnerable systems so that if a threat actor were to get inside and start scanning the network, the hope is they would bump into one of these, and we would get the alert, and we would be able to react and know some of these inside. Most of what we deploy in terms of decoys have some level of vulnerabilities that threat actors would be interested in, such as an old version of an operating system.

Building and deploying a decoy is fairly straightforward. If there is any work involved, it is just tuning the noise in terms of what happens inside your network. Most people probably do not realize how many times they are scanning their own network internally, and that decoy is going to feel like it is getting scanned, but that scan is being done by a dedicated device that you want to scan. You then build your exception rules in to not trigger on that and trigger on other devices when it is scanning. We have built the alerts back into our automation platform, so if we get alerts, our automation platform will do some runbook evaluation that is automated and then hand it off to an analyst if they think it is a real event.

They do a good job of building the decoys and deploying them, and then giving you good insights. When something happens, you can look at how the decoy was connected or attached to a scan and figure out if that is a real threat or not.

I like the coverage. We have 250 locations across the US, and we deploy decoys across every one of those networks.

We saw its benefits immediately. The first time we got it and deployed it into one of our operating plant environments, the plant engineer noticed right away that there was a foreign device on his network that he did not really realize was out there. It was a support vendor coming in, and that vendor was scanning parts of his network that he did not realize. They were not necessarily doing it maliciously, but it gave him great insight, so he was sold on the product right away as we were. Shortly after implementation, we did our regular PAN and Red Team testing. I can say with 100% confidence that every time we do one of those, those teams come in and they tip over one of the decoys, and we see them fairly quickly.

The decoy side protects my data because I get early insight into if there is a threat actor in my environment and it is moving laterally because they typically will hit one of these decoys, so it gives me quick access. If a ransomware threat actor was in my environment, they would be moving laterally trying to get to a vulnerable system, so before they ever get to the point of deploying the ransomware payload, they are going to hit a decoy. I am going to get early insight, and hopefully, I can get them out of there.

In terms of its effect on the total cost of ownership (TCO), as with almost any security product, we are mitigating risk and protecting revenue. The total cost of ownership is an overhead when it comes to security. You want to spend as much as you think is necessary to mitigate high-risk areas. Otherwise, it is just money out the door. You are protecting revenue, but I would not put a TCO on it.

It has helped our organization reduce or avoid downtime a great deal. It has avoided a potential downtime because the decoy typically gets the threat actor. My threat actors are PAN Test and Red Team people. They are identified before they can get too far and cause a scenario where I have downtime because of whatever they are doing in the environment.

The expanse of the decoys that they have is valuable. They cover everything on the corporate side that you would think of, such as Windows, Linux, and even applications like SAP. They also go into the OT environment and emulate OT devices as well.

If I were to ask them to work on something, it would be the fidelity of the alerts that occur. They should tell me if it is a real event or not. It is easy for it to identify that something hit it but give me more information. They can build AI into the engine so that I get better output from an alert to tell me if I should really be interested in that or not.

We bought TrapX before Commvault acquired them, so we have been a customer of the deception technology, and a specific one, for over seven years.

It is very stable. We do not have a problem with availability or uptime on the product.

It is very scalable. We started with hundreds, and now, we have got thousands of decoys. The only thing that you have to be careful about is the more decoys, the more alerts. Can you handle them, tune them, and get them cleaned up so that you are effectively looking at real alerts when they come in?

I am the CISO here. I do not contact them, but my team certainly has used their support organization before.

We have not used any other solution. We have been a TrapX customer from early on when they were just coming out.

It was originally on-premises. They have since come out with the cloud version, and we are migrating to it right now. It should be done by the fifteenth of March, which will make it a lot easier because before, I had to buy hardware and deploy assets across my environment. Having a cloud solution is a much better model for me.

The deployment for the cloud one has been good so far. It has been going fairly well. We are on-prem, and we are moving to the cloud. I do not know if it would be different if I was deploying the cloud only and I had never deployed it before. I would imagine it would be easier than what I did in the past with on-premise equipment. I was building servers and VMs and allocating those types of resources to run this environment.

When we started, we did get help. We had professional services included. They were early to the market, so it kind of made sense. For this deployment in the cloud, we are just doing it ourselves.

I have one person doing the migration, and that one person does other things too. The lab time is going to be about 15 days, but he is not working a hundred percent on that. He has got other responsibilities. It is not difficult.

All the time, we have only had one engineer dedicated to this platform. Our SOC uses the output, but the person who manages it day to day takes upgrades, performs the upgrades, and does those types of things. There is just one person, and that is a part-time person, not a full-time person.

The maintenance is largely around what decoys you have deployed and the tuning of those decoys. Some of the maintenance is just internal processes, such as when the decoy gets tipped over, what exactly did that? Did somebody start up a new engine or a new scan internally that we did not know about? We have to manage that change process to make sure that we put an exception on the decoy so that it does not get alerted when it is not necessary.

Originally, it was really attractive when we were deployed on-prem. They have since built and moved it to the cloud, which I am a big fan of. I have all my security tools in the cloud, but it came with a significant increase in pricing. We ended up negotiating a better price because we have been a long-term customer, and I have also spoken on their behalf quite a few times, but if I have to buy it at its current rate, I am not sure if I would be a customer. It is expensive.

We did look at a couple, but I cannot say what they were because it was a while ago.

To those evaluating this solution, I would advise looking at the maturity of their security organization. Do they have a SOC and are they going to be able to address the alerts that they are going to get on the decoys? If it is just more noise on top of the noise they are already dealing with, they probably should not put this type of technology in until they clean up their environment and have a good handle on the alerts they are getting. That is because you cannot put it in and ignore it. It is a decoy. Something is hitting it, and that something might be real, and you need to take action on it.

I would recommend Commvault to others. They have been an easy organization to work with. They have good technical support, and I still like their technology.

Overall, I would rate it an eight out of ten.

The solution has the fastest backup and better licensing.

Compared to Rubrik, MongoDB Data Protector, and NetBackup, Commvault is better. The licensing team was quite tricky recently because they stopped the unlimited files for that license. Commvault made a bank of 500GB only, a node-based license can take it, which is disappointing. Reporting needs to be more granular. Also, there should be a showback of data being backed up, and the backup cost to share the cost internally with the department.

I have been using Commvault HyperScale X as a customer. I have almost nine HyperScale nodes and expect four more nodes this year.

The product is scalable. To scale, we need to buy more agents. We’re using HP hardware for HyperScale. We’ve three backup administrators working with the solution.

The customer support is interesting, but they need to work on their competency. My team is happy.

Positive

I work with a couple of other solutions, such as HP Store, Veeam, NetBackup, MongoDB Data Protector, and Rubrik. Commvault is the most competitive in the market because local support is easy and faster.

The solution is easy to implement if you have a proper infrastructure and require two people to set up.

The solution is bundled with hardware licensing. If I want to increase the hardware, I have to buy exactly the same because it's based on the core hardware license. We cannot tell discount because we have an NDA signed with Commvault because of my academic license. The solution is more expensive than NetBackup and Veeam but cheaper than Rubrik.

The solution is easy to use after four months of training. Before implementing, make sure you negotiate well and agree to the terms and conditions in advance. Once you implement it, you will use it for at least the next five to six years. So, you must negotiate and file a contract, the best way to know the cost of ownership in the beginning itself. Overall, I rate the solution an eight-point five out of ten.

On-premises

The product is a little honeypot server or technology we can deploy in our network. If an attacker gains access to our network and looks around for things, they would find assets that look real but are honeypots. We have a couple hundred of those deployed in our environment, looking like various servers, other types of technology, and workstations spread out across our network.

The tool gives us a lot of heads up if there's a potential threat in our environment. We've seen it when we have had penetration testers running tests. They trip all over it, thinking they're finding vulnerable services to exploit, but they were just alerting the security about their presence.

The solution looks like workstations and servers. If somebody tries to poke at one of them, they would think they're interacting with a real live service. The product alerts the security team about threats.

The solution must provide deception files across the network.

I have been using the solution for two years. My organization has been using it for four years.

I haven't seen any performance issues with the solution.

Once you have an appliance deployed somewhere, it's very scalable. It's pretty easy to deploy more traps. We have 14 different locations. So, we needed 14 different appliances that had to be configured, shipped out, and installed on the network. Generally, the product is pretty scalable, considering it has a physical deployment component.

The support’s excellent. The team is always willing to get on the phone and work through our issues. We can go straight to our account manager. It's very convenient.

Positive

We have a cloud management component of the tool, but all the hardware is physically deployed in different locations. We have appliances deployed to each location that run all the different VMs, and it looks like they're on those particular networks. The deployment will be a little bit of a heavy lift if we have a big distributed environment. We've just been using the products since we migrated from the on-premise appliance to the cloud-hosted one. We don't have to do any support or maintenance.

For the price that we spend, the peace of mind that the tool gives us is an ROI.

I’m happy with the pricing of the product.

It's a very good solution that meets most needs in the deceptions space. Overall, I rate the tool an eight out of ten.

Hybrid Cloud

Overall, Metallic has helped us out tremendously from a backup and restore situation. We just had a pretty major restore that we had to do from Metallic two weeks ago for a file that was basically deleted five days ago, and they needed a copy from seven days prior to that. My whole team walked through the restore in about two to three minutes. We basically figured out which buttons to push, then the restore was done 30 seconds later. That was an eye-opener at that point, because we understand what a great decision we made by going with Metallic.

If you ask me today whether Metallic was appropriate for an enterprise-level environment, then I would say, "Yes." If you asked me a year and a half ago, I would have said, "No." Normally, you would think that a cloud-only backup type solution probably wouldn't work for an enterprise environment. Then, here comes NDOT and we're about as enterprise as it gets when it comes to the state of Nevada. Right now, we are doing all kinds of neat stuff with this solution where normally you would need an on-premises solution. They have me convinced now. We are backing up stuff that I couldn't get MABS or Rapid Recovery to backup, and those are on-prem and cloud, e.g., hybrid solutions. If we wanted to, we could go to hybrid with Metallic, but their cloud solution is so stable right now.

I ran the solution through my CISO. When it comes to server guys, I am probably the security-conscious systems guy on our team. I went to the same training that our CISO did. Between him and me, we love Metallic. We think their security is definitely acceptable at a high level.

The ease of use is the most valuable feature, which keeps the training down. Pretty much anybody in my group right now can do a whole bunch with Metallic compared to what we could do with our previous solution, on-prem Commvault. The ease of use is probably my number one priority. With the amount of systems that our systems team deals with, the ease of use is the most important thing. We were bouncing around all of the time from this system to that system to this system, trying to remember how things work. Whereas, Metallic keeps it simple.

It is just about as flexible as you can get; simple. You can put it anywhere you want. You can put it on-prem or in your cloud. I could see where a team that's looking for more of a follow the bouncy ball type of solution might get a little confused. "Oh, no. What do you mean I might have to do it this way or I can't do it that way?" Sometimes, people just want to be told what to do. For an enterprise environment, like we are at NDOT, everything we do is not standard. It is not industry standard; it is not normal. We have all kinds of one-offs. We do need flexibility in the solutions that we get. I will say that Metallic has been extremely flexible in that sense, where we are able to follow the bouncy ball if we wanted to. Obviously, we didn't. We did it our way and Metallic, as a whole solution, provided that to us with no issues.

Permissions can be tricky. There is granularity when trying to get people to write permissions to be able to view, backup, and restore. It is just hard to understand that granularity. I can't even 100% say that it is Commvault. I can say it is not super cut-and-dry right out of the gate. However, I would also say it is great because it is granular.

Getting my guys the right access has a learning curve. Sometimes, it is, "Oh, okay. I think I got it for you." Then, they say, "Oh, nope. I logged in but I can't see this." Then, it is, "Okay, hold on. Give me a second. Let me change that. Okay, it's this one." That learning curve has probably taken a little bit longer than some simpler things. So, Metallic has some granularity, and as a systems administrator, I appreciate that. At the same time, I also realize that I have to learn it.

Seven to eight months ago, the documentation needed improvement, but they have caught up on it now.

I have been using it for a year. My team has been using it for about seven to eight months.

It is a very stable platform.

Right now, we have seven guys on my team and two of us are setting up the backups. The other five of us are strictly doing restores mainly until we get all our backups entirely into the cloud and clean up the groups. I really just need two guys doing that, a junior admin and me. The junior admin has been setting this all up because he will be around for another 15 years. I might as well have him learn it now and be our guru.

For the most part, it does the updates for us. There is a piece that we own down on our network and there is a piece that they own on their network. For the most part, the piece that they own is definitely the bigger of the two. With that being said, our version that we are running on-premises needs an update, which basically means that it is waiting on a server restart. Our servers restart once a month, so I imagine it is scheduled to restart on Sunday. Then, we will get that up-to-date. Metallic pushes it out, then our server installs it. Metallic is mostly on the hook for updates and keeping things up-to-date.

It is 100% scalable.

We were on a hybrid system, which was on-prem and in the cloud as well as local. We had probably 10% of our servers that were backing up locally to themselves. We had about 40% of our big, large servers backing up on-premises. Then, the other percentage was backing up to the cloud.

Once we moved to Commvault, instead of about 80% of my servers backing up to the cloud, we will shortly have them all going to the cloud. Now, I'm not hybrid, but in a simple solution, which is a cloud backup solution. Adding to that is as simple as going to Azure, and saying, "Hey, I need this storage count to be a little bit bigger," as long as I have pre-planned the amount that I would buy from Metallic. In other words, Metallic gives us a price on 100 servers. I know that I have 50, and I am good to scale for another 50. All I have to do at that point is go into my Azure tenant, have it give me some more storage, and at that point now I am scaling.

Now, if I need to, I get a hold of Larry over there in Metallic, and I say, "Hey, buddy. I need to add another 50 servers." Then, he gives me a price quote, and we pay them again. The solution is simple, easy, and scalable. I don't need to buy hardware. I don't have a bunch of engineers down here reassessing our environment. I just got to add some more storage to the cloud, then I start sending more data out to the cloud. I would say, "Scalability is wow." They have done a great job there.

I had a conversation yesterday, between me and my manager, about when we will use Metallic's Office 365 Backup & Recovery. First, we need to get our backups. Between the Metallic solution, the file storage optimization, and now the 365, which are the three things that we have gotten from Commvault over the last year. File storage optimization is next, then 365 is after that. I am going to say sometime in October.

So far, I would give Commvault tech support 10 out of 10. We have dealt with some good and some bad tech supports. Between Microsoft, Dell, and Commvault, those three solutions are at the top of my list when it comes to support.

Anything that we find is usually something that we can fix ourselves. We can get ahold of support, then support takes care of it.

We were using Microsoft Azure Backup Server (MABS), but there were many problems with it. We turned around, started using Metallic about a year ago. I tested it out. We now have 80% of our servers being backed up to Metallic. We will probably have the rest in the next six to eight weeks. At that point, for the first time in two years, we will have all our servers completely backed up.

When we used to have the on-prem version of Commvault, it was nothing like Metallic. Metallic is a different solution, but it is Commvault. Back in those days, when we had Commvault, it was pretty complex. It was very granular. It had many features, but it was complex. You really only could have one or two guys working on it.

We left Commvault five years ago because the grass is always greener on the other side and cheaper: bigger, better, and stronger. Of course, we came to find out: none of the above. Nothing was true. Basically, we were talked into it by Dell EMC. My old manager, the person whose position I now have, was talked into using Quest Rapid Recovery product by Dell EMC, saying, "Hey, you don't need Commvault. They are one of the biggest backup solutions in the world, and we are an up-and-coming, starting company. We're going to make it cheaper for you. We are just as good. We will show you some cool demos." Those demos looked great. Of course, we went with it. To make a long story short, in the four and a half years that we had Quest Rapid Recovery, we were never compliant on our backups, not once. We were duped.

We are finally back with Commvault, and we now have a 100% compliance backup solution. 

We switched to Metallic because of money. Right now, we are paying less for Metallic than we ever were for Rapid Recovery. I have reclaimed man-hours back for my team. I had one guy for five to six hours a day managing those two other systems, Microsoft Azure Backup and Quest. I lost four to six hours a day for one of my top-level guys by having him troubleshooting that all day long. By going to Metallic, we have freed up man-hours, infrastructure costs, and the time to manage.

I did the first initial setup all by myself. I had it set up in about an hour and a half, then I was backing up a server in about an hour and 45 minutes. It was pretty easy. That was our proof of concept testing. I did that for about three or four months, then I blew it up, broke it, and reimplemented it. 

When we started using this solution, it was seven months into its infancy. By the time we bought it, they had just hit their first year. It has definitely changed around making things a little easier, instead of having to go: here, here, here, here, and there. They have simplified things. They have created nice new little shortcuts. 

The interface now is super easy. You can fumble around in there, then after awhile, you are like, "Okay. That is how this works."

The process of switching to Metallic was really easy. We actually ran Metallic backups during the MABS backup. In other words, we were actually backing up with those solutions as we migrated to Metallic. Of course, we had to age-off. The fact that we did not have to turn off the other backups so Metallic could do its backups made the implementation extremely easy. The cut over was easy. 

We were able to run it in parallel with the other system. It didn't cause any issues. It tells me right there that it's not the same design. Because if it was the same design, then we would've had to turn off the other one which means that we would not get backups for two or three weeks while Metallic catches up. That is not always a good thing to do when you are talking about important systems. Because of Metallic's different way that it backs up, we were able to run it in parallel. The implementation was very simple. It wasn't like we had to go and pull the tablecloth out from underneath the glasses while they were still sitting on the table. It was extremely seamless because of the fact that their backups are done differently than the not-so-good solution we were going with.

I had a couple phone calls with engineers and broke it really good a few times, to the point where it even broke up their stuff there. Once we decided we were going to buy the product and implement it into our environment, they set up a couple of calls with their top level engineers and had us set it up even better than I did in my test environments. They were really good about helping us. So, their assistance and the ease of setup were great.

After it was approved through our infrastructure technical committee, I needed to get a call set up with their engineers for an initial setup of the plans. The first plan to get going the way they recommend. Because when I was testing, I tested from every angle. I broke the heck out of it to know its limitations. We created an initial phone call with their engineers, who helped us set up the first 20 VMs to get backed up under their idea of how they set the system up to work. This was good because I didn't understand this when I was doing my testing. I just did the things I thought that were supposed to be done.

We had a second follow-up call with them. That second follow-up call was for any questions that we had for the month in-between what we were doing with our backups, e.g., checking things out and playing around. They answered a whole bunch of questions for us and helped us set up single sign-on. It was a smooth process. They were willing to help us out, which helped us out tremendously. We basically used their support to help us implement the solution.

Once you set up a bunch of these backups, you will get notified in an email if they are wrong. If you're not adding anything the next day or another server, there is no reason for you to even be in there, unless there is a restore. 

At the moment, we are trying to add 400-plus servers. Therefore, we are going to have a guy in there for half an hour to an hour a day adding a few more servers. When adding a few more servers, you need to be careful. You don't want to rock the boat too much, then all of a sudden you have a big problem. So, it is just a little bit at a time. Right now, we are talking about an hour once or twice a week. Once our servers are sitting up there and this stuff is going, there should be no maintenance. 

I have made this very clear to my team. I don't need a guy in there, like we did with Rapid Recovery, chasing down errors. There are no errors. It is backing up. It will tell you when it is not. Then, when it's not backing up, we will tackle that. 

I just don't see a lot of maintenance on this solution. Management of it really has nothing to do with anything unless you are fixing or reimplementing something. For the most part, once you set it, then it is a set-and-forget SaaS solution.

We have a seven-man team. I am the supervisor with six guys underneath me, who are all veteran IT professionals. One of those gentlemen, a $100,000 a year guy, was on Rapid Recovery for four to six hours a day, every day for the four years that we had it. He was just maintaining it, fixing problems and backup errors. When we went to MABS, it was the same problem. He was now managing both of these things, because we were dual-headed at that point. Once we got into Metallic, I had one of our junior-level admins, at that point, take this project on. He moved 80% of our servers into the cloud and basically checks an email once or twice a week, looking at the backups for about 20 minutes a day.

The labor has gone down exponentially. It is insane. We are talking about a $100,000 solution that we paid for Rapid Recovery a year, plus the $100,000 a year salary for having one of my guys managing it every day. Whereas, we are paying Metallic an X amount of dollars right now and spend about five or 10 minutes every other day just to verify that the backups are good. We don't have to fix anything.

We are basically getting rid of hardware that we were paying for Rapid Recovery. We are actually leveraging some of Rapid Recovery's hardware for MABS, so we cut down on MABS and Rapid Recovery. Now, the hardware that we would need to renew warranties and get support for is no longer necessary.

I used the free trial to test it. That was our proof of concept. I had the servers up and running by the middle of the day. I think I started it some time around breakfast. It took a couple of hours. It was really simple.

Hands down, Metallic provides us with more predictable costs for our backup requirements. You are getting what you pay for. If they are charging you X amount of dollars at that point, that is what you are going to pay. So far, I have not seen any hidden costs or any kind of gotchas. It is pretty cut-and-dry. They will let you know, "Hey, you are going to use our storage and it will cost you this much. You are going to use your storage, then we are going to charge you this much to backup." What they told us they were going to charge us is exactly what they are charging us now for the next two and a half years.

We also evaluated NEC, which is another big solution out there, like Nike or Converse. NEC has their own data centers. The government uses them. They are big and their solution is robust. We tested it, and it worked well too. However, the bottom line was a huge sticker price shock. We went with Metallic because of cost. 

Since I have been in this NDOT environment for eight years, we have used Commvault, Rapid Recovery, MABS, and now we are back to Commvault Metallic. Of those four products, with Commvault being the first and now the last, those have been the two more stable products. The first one that we used was Commvault on-premises, with MediaAgent and physical servers on-prem, which was extremely stable. Then, we went to Rapid Recovery and that wasn't stable. Neither was MABS. Now, we are back to Metallic and it is stable again. Most solutions I have used from Metallic, from the on-prem now to the cloud, have been extremely stable when it comes to backup.

Definitely take advantage of the support team in your initial rollout because Commvault is not a follow the bouncy ball type of solution. It is definitely granular, configurable, and scalable. With the initial deployment, it is important to get that right because everything is going to start working off of that initial deployment. It is a good idea to take advantage of their support tier in that initial deployment and not try to set it up 100% on your own. I did, and It worked. However, once we got a hold of the engineers for the production rollout, they started answering some of my questions. If I would have known the answers that they gave me back when I rolled it out, the rollout would have been much easier and not as hard as it was. It could have been even better. 

Get a little knowledge from these guys. Have them help you roll it out. It takes half an hour. That is all it took us. We had the engineer on the phone for half an hour. He had us setup and backups going, with the vision that Metallic was built for, not the vision that I had thought it was for. My biggest recommendation is to take advantage of their support during the initial deployment. From there, you can be as creative as you want. It is always good to get that help in the beginning.

There have been discussions about doing the solution’s Endpoint Backup & Recovery. It really just comes down to the fact that we would need more push from the business. Right now, the business understands that most of their data is stored in the cloud as-is. So, backing up into a computer is not necessary, as the data that they are putting on that computer is in the cloud. I don't see us using it any time soon.

Right now, Metallic is used a lot. For the most part, it is now the entire backup of our 400-plus servers. It will be used even more with the 365 implementation, Active Directory backup implementation, and disaster recovery. One of the good things about going to Metallic in this cloud solution, where all of my servers now live in the cloud, is I have a DR solution now, as opposed to having to move it down to another place or building in Las Vegas. Now that we are central with our backups to the cloud, we can focus on a DR solution. It definitely is very important to our infrastructure. As a server team, backups are number one. Metallic has now become one of our fallbacks on solutions for all kinds of stuff.

Spend it if you got it. The biggest lesson that I learned from using Metallic is sometimes going with cheaper isn't always better. That is why we left Commvault. While Metallic might be a little more expensive than Quest or MABS, with that extra dollar you are paying, you are going to get your money's worth.

I would rate them as 10 out of 10. I can't really complain. Right now, they look like a knight in shining armor. What do you normally do with a knight in shining armor? You put a medal on him.

Public Cloud

Microsoft Azure