Commvault Cloud Reviews

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.

We had a requirement to store our database and virtual machine backups in the cloud instead of having local backups. To fulfill that requirement, we use a Metallic solution. The reason that we are moving to Commvault Metallic is that, at that moment, we are using a Commvault backup solution. While using the Commvault backup solution we got positive feedback. So, we didn't hesitate to move to their own cloud solution, Metallic. While using this product, we've also received the same positive feedback.

We had a backup solution. We were trying to find a better backup solution than the old one. We were searching for backup solutions based on the below criteria:

• Backup-taking method
• Backup retention and the ability to change retention
• WORM feature availability
• Security tools
• 24/7 Availability
• Portability of Backup and VM
• Deduplication ratios
• Encryption mechanism

While we were looking out at the market, we found this solution perfectly matched so we decided to try it.

The most valuable feature is the deduplication ratio. It saves most of our space and reduces the network traffic. Space is a very important factor. Thanks to this deduplication ratio, we are able to maintain our backup retention time for a variety of reasons. It also reduces network traffic and saves us from network-related issues. When the backup gets smaller, we can easily transfer between locations very quickly and accurately. It provides good cost savings as well.

We are using a production environment with customer-sensitive data on it. As per our central bank rules and regulations, we can't keep our customer's sensitive data in the cloud. So we are looking forward to having a good solution that can work with us. The Metallic team is working on this and will come up with a better solution in the future. If we can figure out this issue, we won't have future issues relating to our government authorities, and we can also fulfill our company's requirements easily.

I've been using this product for the last year.

It is maintaining our backup without failing.

The scalability is very good.

The support team wants to improve its SLA.

Neutral

We did use a different solution; this is the better solution for us.

The initial setup is straightforward.

We implemented with a vendor team and I would rate their services eight out of ten.  

We have noticed an ROI related to good space and network utilization savings.

In this product, the cost-benefit is very high.

We also evaluated EMC NetWorker, Veeam, et cetera.

This is one of the best solutions I've come across.

I use Metallic to back up a customer's environment. It's the solution offered by our partner, a South African company called Data Protection Management. I'm just the intermediary, providing data loss prevention to my client. I've never seen the interface or used the platform. My client uses Metallic to backup data from Microsoft solutions like SharePoint and OneDrive. 

The reporting could be improved because the reports we get from our partner aren't sufficient. It isn't very detailed. I'm not sure if it's an issue with our partner or Metallic. They do a full backup on Monday and incremental backups throughout the week. However, we don't get detailed reports about the size of the incremental backups. The report just tells us whether a backup was successful. 

In addition to the core backup features, I would also like to see Metallic add patch management. It's a crucial way to minimize threats against data sources. 

I have used Metallic for six months.

I rate Metallic eight out of 10 for stability. 

I rate Metallic 10 out of 10 for scalability. 

I rate Metallic support 10 out of 10. They did the setup for us. Metallic support was exceptional, and they knew what they were doing. 

Positive

I rate Metallic nine out of 10 for ease of setup. Metallic set up the solution for me, but they walked me through the process. It seemed easy and took a few hours. 

I rate Metallic 10 out of 10 for affordability. It's highly cost-effective compared to other products I've used. I pay a monthly fee of 57 rands per user as a reseller and sell it at a markup to my client. 

I rate Metallic 10 out of 10. Metallic is user-friendly, cost-effective, and the technical support is impressive. 

We primarily use the solution as a backup for databases, VMs, or servers. 

Not everyone has agents for everything and Commvault has agents for most products. It's the most complete.

It's easy to install. 

It is stable and reliable.

The solution can scale. 

I don't have any notes for improvements. 

The price could always be lower. 

We'd like to have local support in Germany.

The POC is only 30 days, and it really should be 90 days. 

I've been using the solution for ten years. 

The solution is stable and reliable. There are no bugs or glitches. I'd rate the reliability nine out of ten. It doesn't crash or freeze. Based on what is possible, it is okay.

The solution is very scalable. I'd rate it ten out of ten in terms of the ability to extend.

Everyone uses the solution. We have 20 to 30 people using the product. That includes consultants. 

Technical support is currently based in India. I'd like to have more local support. 

We did not previously use a different solution. 

The solution is simple to set up. It is not complex. 

It takes approximately two weeks to deploy the solution.

You simply download the .EXE file and start the installation. 

We had one person that handled the setup. We had an engineer, myself, handle it. 

We handle the initial setup ourselves. We did not need any outside assistance. 

I have not really noticed any ROI.

Inside the 30-day trial period, you do not need a license. After that, you need to pay yearly.

The prices are pretty high. It's quite expensive. 

I'm an end-user.

We are using the latest version of the solution. 

I'd recommend potential new users talk to a proper consultant and do a proper POC. 

I would rate the solution nine out of ten. 

Our company uses the solution to implement cobots for customers. 

The global application provides a lot of storage for customers.

There are good security features for Google, videos, irregular encryption, and backups. 

The solution includes the best compatibility metrics for integration and they are managed by Google support. 

The Google reporting is very, very good. It lets us know our data or any losses so we don't need tickets to check our data. 

There is a lack of marketing in our region so there needs to be a focus on improving the solution's reputation. We believe in the solution but competitors like VIN have an edge in the market. 

The network and service need to cover more regions than just the Middle East. 

The solution should provide virtual updates on Linux OS via a host address or in utilities instead of via a secret database. 

I have been using the solution for seven years. 

The solution is very stable so stability is rated a nine out of ten. 

The solution is scalable so scalability is rated an eight out of ten. 

Technical support is helpful but it can take one or two weeks to sort out issues. 

I rate technical support a seven out of ten. 

Neutral

The initial configuration file can be a bit complex. A professional technician who is provided by the vendor should assist with setup. It would boost the solution's reputation to provide configuration, expansion, and upgrade services to customers. 

We implemented the solution in-house and the initial configuration took about four hours. 

The cost of an integrator license is moderate and its features cover most customers. Application features for government or compliance require a separate license. 

Our company proposes solutions to customers depending on their use cases. We have multiple applications and multiple technologies. 

For example, we propose a particular solution to customers in the banking or government sectors. We propose another solution for small or medium companies in the general business sector. 

For every security level, there is good stability and integrity. 

Support could improve and the initial configuration would be easier with assistance from a professional engineer. 

I rate the solution an eight out of ten. 

We use it to back up everything in Office 365: our Exchange mailboxes, SharePoint, OneDrive for Business, and Microsoft Teams. And we use it for Azure Active Directory. The thing we use it the most for is recovering email messages or mailboxes.

We moved our email to Office 365 and, when we did that, we were using an on-premises Commvault solution but that was not an efficient way to back up the O365 mailboxes. Metallic has definitely improved our ability to back up and restore email, as well as the other online systems.

Also, we spend very little time with the Metallic solution because it just runs, so it has reduced the amount of manual work required to manage our backup operations. With our former solution, I was spending two hours a week on that, so it's saving me that much time. The other benefit is that I now have three or four other people on my team who can do the backups and the restores, as necessary. With the on-premises solution it was very complicated and I was the only one who could do it. Not only have we reduced the time from two hours a week to almost zero, but we now have multiple people with the ability to use the tool.

And when it comes to infrastructure costs, it's saving us about $25,000 a year.

It is very easy to use and that's been good for my team because I can have multiple people use the solution. It's very intuitive.

In addition, the granularity of the Office 365 Backup & Recovery feature is very good. We've used all of it, recovering data from each of the four systems that we back up with it, and it works very well.

It has also been very reliable.

The speed of the Office 365 Backup & Recovery feature is adequate. Microsoft controls the amount of bandwidth that people have when they're using Azure and the O365 environment. It's not really a Metallic issue, it's more of a Microsoft limitation. If they could work out something with Microsoft to improve the speed, that would help. But, generally speaking, it's been fine. I don't know of anything else that I'd want to see improved.

I've been using Commvault for about 18 months.

We're very satisfied with the stability.

The scalability is excellent. Any plans to increase our usage of it in the future will come naturally with time.

I've contacted their technical support a couple of times and they were very good.

We switched to Metallic from Commvault's enterprise backup because that solution is not in the cloud. Given that it was on-premises, trying to back up the resources in the cloud was inefficient. Metallic is in the cloud and it can talk directly to those other cloud resources. It was designed better for what we need to do.

We used Commvault Metallic's implementation services. There was an engineer on the phone with us and he walked us through the steps and everything worked as it should. It was very simple. The configuration is all done through a web browser; just point and click. The deployment took about an hour. All I had to do was get it up and running and show my team how to use it.

Our experience with the Commvault engineer was excellent.

There are four of us who use the solution, including me. The others are all system administrators. We haven't had to designate anyone for maintenance.

It's hard to measure the ROI of a backup solution. It's like car insurance. You have to have it but it only pays for itself if you have a catastrophe.

The solution is licensed based on the number of objects that we're going to back up, and that's a known quantity. As a result, we get predictable costs for our backup requirements. The actual storage on the back end of the system is included and that means we don't have to plan for any storage growth or changes there. We just have to plan for the number of employees that we have. That makes it very predictable.

We researched Veeam Backup & Replication. The main factor in deciding to go with Metallic, at the time, was to stay with one backup vendor so that we did not have two different solutions in place.

The evaluation was to compare what Metallic was capable of doing with what Veeam was capable of doing for what we needed. We thought that Metallic was adequate so we stayed with that.

Use their professional services for the implementation. That was very helpful because whenever you're configuring anything that works in Azure, or AWS for that matter, there are complexities. The professional services walk you right through that so you don't stumble. After that, it's very simple to use.

The solution is definitely appropriate for an enterprise-level environment. The performance for both backup and recovery, in an enterprise, is very good.

When we signed up for it, it was a Microsoft Azure-based storage solution and Commvault has its relationship with Microsoft. We're just leveraging what Commvault offers, so there's not really any flexibility, but that's okay with us. We just subscribe to the service and it does what we need it to do. We didn't need storage flexibility or anything like that. We just needed what the solution had to offer.

What I've learned from using Metallic is "keep it simple." We use a very simple approach to back up everything and it works just fine.

We use Commvault to back up all our enterprise solutions, like MS SQL, Exchange, file servers, and MongoDB, but we don't use Commvault for multi-environment management. There is a primary site and a disaster recovery site that we control offsite with one console.

I know Commvault has another interface for the multi-site, but I've never used it before, so I don't have any experience with that. However, we have a passive primary server at the disaster recovery site, and if we have trouble at the main site, we can use the disaster recovery server. 

Commvault makes it easier to back up new additions to our environment. For example, when we added MongoDB, we found it in Commvault and could start backing it up. 

Right now, we are trying to integrate Kubernetes platforms into our environment, and I'm sure that Commvault can back up those. Commvault keeps up with new technologies, and if you upgrade to the latest stable version, you can find everything you need.

Backing up with Commvault doesn't require much effort. Commvault's reporting features are also excellent and user-friendly. It's easy to find anything we want. The workflow feature is handy, too. For example, we schedule an automated monthly backup and restoration test that we used to do manually. That has been integrated with Commvault's workflows and running automatically every month for four years. 

It runs all the tests and emails us the reports. We take daily, weekly, and monthly snapshots, and I integrate the storage snapshot scripts with the Commvault workflow. The Commvault workflow runs all the scripts and sends us the reports. It also features cloud-side reports and workflows. Commvault has many tools for backing up, restoring, and archiving, but we use another service for our archives. 

Commvault can show us unprotected workloads, servers, and SQL databases. It's a good feature, and I periodically get reports on this. However, it's a low priority because we are waiting for our inside customers to tell us whether they want something backed up or not. They must follow that, but we are using terabyte-based backups. We don't separate the agent— MS SQL or others—and we are only looking at the terabyte trends, so it's predictable for us. 

Our main pain point is that some of our hardware is old. For example, the SSD disks for our application database are slow. It's hard to avoid a slowdown in our environment because the size of our backups is growing every year. If you're growing and don't upgrade the environment, you will see slower backups and restores. You must enhance the environment if you are growing.

I've used Commvault for about 10 years, and we used it at my last company for around six years. 

Commvault's stability is good.

We have no problems scaling Commvault. I don't remember the numbers, but we have a terabyte license size. It's about 400 terabytes, but the backend is in the petabyte range. 

Troubleshooting is easy because Commvault support responds and finds the root cause quickly. When I've contacted support for other solutions, some of them ask you to recreate the scenario. They ask you to increase the debugging level and reproduce the scenario to get the error again. As a result, we waste a lot of time troubleshooting those solutions. With Commvault, we don't need to devote much time to the operational and troubleshooting aspects. 

I've used NetBackup before, and I think it's a good solution. It required more effort than Commvault, but I prefer it over EMC NetWorker. NetWorker was labor-intensive, buggy, and hard to use. We spent a lot of time dealing with EMC support. They have a large, competent support team, but we spent too much time with them. 

NetBackup is better than NetWorker, but it has fewer features than Commvault. NetBackup also has an old-fashioned interface that is harder to use than Commvault's. It's not user-friendly. Commvault is the best of the three.

Setting up Commvault was straightforward. You set up the primary server first, then the media agents, disks, and agents for clients. Each of those steps is easy. It's like a "next, next, finish" Windows installer. You can deploy it in half a day in a smaller environment, and it's maybe one or two days for a large one. 

Of course, it depends on the size of the agents and how many you need for your physical environment. If you have a rigid environment, it's effortless because you only define the vCenters or the Hyper-V management console, and that's it. You can take backups. 

On the other hand, you must install all the agents if you have too many physical environments. Still, Commvault makes it easy because you can install everything from the user interface on the primary server. In total, we have five people, including me, managing Commvault and all our other storage solutions. 

I rate Commvault 10 out of 10. If you're planning on implementing Commvault, I suggest doing a PoC first to try out all the features and to compare them to other products. We did a PoC for backup solutions to test some new features for our enterprise solutions, and some of the products didn't make the cut, so I would recommend a PoC.

We use it for server, laptop, and desktop backup.

We are using the latest version.

Commvault helps our admins minimize the time that they spend on backup tasks and other projects since we are now managing a single console to administer all the backups, instead of a full console.

It is a very good tool for server backup. We can restore any server, e.g., physical or VM, in a very short amount of time.

Commvault Command Center is very good and user-friendly. We can select any user's data or a server in its Console.

Commvault provides us with a single platform to move, manage and recover our data across locations. Especially for our IT, this is a very important part of our data storage.

The recovery option is very good. It is a user-friendly option to recover any data.

When we started using Commvault, we felt that there were some technical issues with managing it, but we are comfortable enough with managing it now. There were many issues, like index corrupting, when we first started, but all those issues were resolved by the Commvault tech team.

Its major disadvantage is it's expensive. Otherwise, the solution is good.

I have been using it for the last six months.

It is a very stable solution.

Scalability is very good.

We use a third-party to resolve issues first. They first try for L1 or L2 support. If they are unable to fix it, then they escalate it to Commvault technical support. 

The support is very good. I would rate them as eight out of 10.

Positive

We were using Symantec Backup, which did not have features like centralized management. Commvault has a centralized, single console where you can manage multiple locations of user's desktop data, which is one of the important features of Commvault.

We switched to Commvault because we were looking to centralize management. This reduced IT administrator time as well as providing stability and reliability for data backups in a single console, and we didn't get these features from Symantec. 

It reduces IT man-hours by an hour per day.

The cost for Commvault is very expensive, even support is very expensive. The full cost of the solution is 50,000 INR per year, which includes 20 VM backups, server data backup, and 200 desktop and laptop agent licenses.

They have recurring support changes.

They should reduce the support and license costs so anyone could start using Commvault. Due to its cost, customers are reluctant to use Commvault.

The first time, when building infrastructure, the cost is quite high.

We evaluated Veeam and Veritas NetBackup. 

We chose Commvault based on some customer feedback and technical reviews of Commvault. The main difference of Commvault is the single console to manage everything.

Go for Commvault. It is a very strong, stable solution. Technically, it is a very reliable solution with a single window console to manage all backups. Definitely, we recommend customers should go for Commvault. Though, it would be nice if Commvault could compromise on the pricing part.

I spend two hours every day on Commvault monitoring and managing performance as well as fine-tuning.

We implemented on-premises, so it is not connected to any public networks. Therefore, hacking is very difficult.

I would rate Commvault as eight out of 10.