Commvault Cloud Reviews

We use it in the most traditional way: for backup and restore. We don't use it for all the other things that are also possible with it because we are quite a big company. We have all the specific tools we need for specific purposes.

We tested Commvault in the past for archiving, but in those days it was not really stable yet. So we selected other solutions for that.

We use Commvault on everything. We are using it in our own data centers but also in the cloud. We use Azure for most things, but we also are working on testing some things on AWS.

The benefits to our company are the performance and scalability and the willingness of Commvault to connect to talk with us about any requests we have for changing the product, and to do understand what we're looking for. If possible they also implement these things in quite a short amount of time. If a new feature is needed, or it should be doing A instead of B, they're always willing to listen to requests and build them. That's great.

The fact that the solution is a single platform has enabled our company to accelerate growth and drive innovation. We're using it in a traditional way but our resources and services are moving to the cloud. It helps that the way the product works, what we are used to doing in the traditional way on-prem, can be done the same way in the cloud. That makes it easier overall and makes the transition easier.

There are ways the solution helps our admins to minimize the time they spend on backup tasks, but in some ways, the solution doesn't. But that's more related to our way of working and not related to Commvault. Using it saves us about 40 hours in a month, thanks to its automation features.

In terms of saving on infrastructure costs, in our environment that's not measurable because we have a dedicated platform and dedicated infrastructure for it. But we see the benefits of the deduplication. It's saving petabytes in our environment.

The backup and restore activities are valuable and being able to use it in a hybrid space. You can easily back up on-prem and restore to the cloud and vice-versa. The scalability is also good.

The solution's interface is easy to use. For manageability, it doesn't matter where the resource is coming from or going to. That's the great power of the Control Panel: It's easy to use and does not matter if you manage on-prem or cloud resources.

Commvault works quite well as it is. But we are an MSP, so for us it's fairly hard to customize it for branding it.

There is also room for improvement in the multi-tenancy and security. That's been a hard thing for us and for Commvault as a vendor. Sometimes it's hard to implement new features in multi-tenancy environments. The new features are great, and it's good that they are there, but they are not always usable in an MSP environment.

The solution's breadth and depth of cloud support are good but could be better. Some cloud features that are common-sense, especially on AWS, are not completely integrated yet in the product. They are a work-in-progress. Overall, cloud is moving and innovating also very fast. That also makes it very hard for Commvault to comply with all the new features. Sometimes a cloud provider like Microsoft changes something and a feature is broken in Commvault.

We have been working with Commvault as a backup product for about 12 years now. As an MSP, it's very hard to switch from vendor to vendor. But the solution also works great. We have no real reason to switch to another product at this moment. We are always looking at the competitors, but not all the competitors can comply with all the things that we need.

It is very stable. We have some little issues with it, but when we have issues they're always related to the application we want to back up, not to the product itself. We ask a lot of the product; we use it in a fairly hard way on several things. Sometimes we hit the boundaries of the product and we encounter issues. But in day-to-day business, we don't see any real issues related to the infrastructure or the load we can give it.

It scales very well. If we need more capacity or more power for performance, then we add additional nodes without needing to do a complete redesign of the product or the environment. We can easily add extra power.

We have about 10,000 clients running with approximately 2 petabytes of data being backed up. That will double in the upcoming year to two years. We also have about 1,000 end-users of the product and most of them are doing restore activities.

Their technical support is very good.

But a hard thing for them is understanding how to work with an MSP. They assume, sometimes, that as an MSP, we have access to everything. But that's not the truth and it's not possible. That makes troubleshooting hard for us and for them as well. But they are quite fast in responding and try to help as quickly as possible. Still, most of the cases that we have with customer support need to be escalated directly to development.

We previously used an IBM solution. The main reasons we switched to Commvault were cost and complexity.

The setup of Commvault was complex but that's related to our environment. As an MSP we have very high security guidelines, so that made it hard. But that's not related to Commvault, it's related to our security environment.

Our deployment took almost a year. We had to make sure our design was good before we did anything. Most time of the implementation time was in the design phase. The actual building-up of the solution was quite fast. We were done in a month, starting from scratch.

For deployment and maintenance we need four to five people who are backup system admins.

We did it by ourselves.

We have seen ROI in several respects, but not as fast as we want.

We look at everything on the market. Every year to two years we do a new evaluation of the new techniques and products. We are always comparing it with Veeam, for example. We have Veeam running in several places. We test the two solutions and compare the results with each other.

Out-of-the-box, the manageability is one of the big differences. For end-users, sometimes Commvault is too complex and, while it's getting better and better with the latest versions, it is still not there. The most important thing is what my end-users say to me about using Veeam. It's very straightforward, easy-to-use, and does what it needs to do. Veeam and other competitors are point solutions. They are very good in specific situations and specific environments.

On the other hand, Commvault is a product that can manage a lot of things, and most competitors don't have the scalability and the large support-matrix for as many products, versions, and applications. Commvault allows us to use one product for almost everything. It's better than the competitors. We want to have everything in a single console, if possible, and that's what Commvault does for us.

The biggest lesson I have learned from using Commvault is to take your time. Especially in complex environments, the design stage takes a lot of time, but you need to do it well. Otherwise, you will have trouble in your implementation. We learned that the hard way. We wanted it built fast but, when the design was ready, we needed to rebuild several times.

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 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.

We are using it as a backup and recovery solution. 

We have a server on-premises. Our hardware is running on HP devices. We are only using the on-premises solution. In the future, we will use the hybrid or cloud solution. Our management is trying to go for hybrid solutions.

As a company, we faced ransomware attacks twice, and both times, we recovered because of Commvault's backup and recovery solution. 

It helps in protecting our customers' data very easily. Compared to other vendors, Commvault has a lot of features. If something happens, we end up spending a lot of money to recover data, but Commvault protects the data. Considering that, its cost is very low. It has reduced the cost of recovering data. 

It is very easy to isolate and segment storage targets from public networks to mitigate lateral moving threats. 

It helps our admins to minimize the time they spend on backup tasks. They can spend time on other projects. Previously, we had to manually check every weekend whether the backup is okay or not. Now, things are running automatically. Commvault has a good notification system. Altogether, these features reduce a lot of manhours. They have saved 48 hours weekly.

The recovery features are useful. It is easy to recover data. If something happens, we can easily recover data. We have faced ransomware issues twice, and we recovered because of Commvault. 

It provides consistent recovery processes across platforms. In terms of recovery options for our data and workloads, I would give it a 10 out of 10. We can easily recover files and data in case of any issues.

It is user-friendly and easy to use. If you have a technical background, you can easily identify the features and use them. There is nothing complex. 

They can improve the security level for Windows. When mapping to the Windows, Commvault can take full control over data volumes so that the attacker can't delete the volume data, but the Windows admin can access the volumes. It would be great to block access at that level. 

We have been using the Commvault product for more than three years.

We have been using this solution for more than three years, and there have been no major failures. It has been running day-to-day backups without any issues. We have backup scheduled over the weekends, and we also have daily backups. We are running full backups over the weekends and incremental backups on weekdays. 

Their support team is very friendly, and they can easily understand our situation. They are very fast to respond and knowledgeable. They can understand the issues that we are facing, and it is very easy to work with them. They provide good support. I would rate them a 10 out of 10.

We got good training notes from Commvault's side. There are a lot of documents, and if we want to find something, we refer to their documentation, which makes it very easy to use. There are no major issues.

We earlier used Veeam as a backup solution. We were using Veeam's Community Edition. We also used HP data protector previously. We finally tried the Commvault solution.

Commvault people came and gave a presentation to us, and as compared to Veeam, Commvault had many features. It was user-friendly and easy to use, and it also had a lot of features. It had ransomware protection and data recovery. Veeam didn't have protection features. Our management agreed to use Commvault, and they gave their permission.

Initially, it was complex for us to understand things. They gave us training, and since then, we have been using it easily. Now, it is very easy to understand.

We work with a reseller in Sri Lanka.

We have seen an ROI. It is saving a lot of money, but I don't have the number. It is a good solution to recover our data if something happens. We don't need to spend a lot of money. 

It is a bit more than other products, but when you consider the time savings, it is saving money.

We looked at a few other solutions such as Veritas.

Commvault is a good solution, and we would recommend it to others. There are no major issues with Commvault. We have full trust in it when it comes to protection. They have built a good customer reputation when it comes to protection. Our management is also very satisfied with it.

I would rate it a 10 out of 10 in terms of protection and features.

Generally, we use the product for backup capabilities as a primary function, and we also use it for disaster recovery.

Previous to this solution, we were on tape. Its restorations were very painful. We've been able to accommodate more use cases for restorations now that we have this product in play.

The backup feature and the live sync are both really good aspects of the product. Live sync is for databases. 

Commvault doesn't store in an immutable state unless it's in archive-form. That's an advantage. We have found several instances that we have backed up a server and it started encrypting data after we started the backup and it was trying to recount the Commvault. It is very sensitive, and is positive as is very sensitive to ransomware, however, you need to understand it's not a ransomware alert; you need to understand the alert in order to figure out if it's ransomware, however, it's a good heads-up.

The solution has been quite stable.

Commvault can actually come in and assist you with aspects of the implementation - and they are quite helpful.

The only problem is that some of what we snap most of is the VMs. We found about 10% of the VMs that we can't snap because they're too interactive. It actually causes the application to crash.

It would be ideal if there was usable file states. Live sync is not live sync. It's not really live, it's live to the back it up, however, it's not keeping it up to date within seconds. We have an environment that is very transaction heavy, and the lowest we can get to is about 15 minutes. However, we need second RPOs. 5 second RPOs, 10 second RPOs.

I've used the solution within the last 12 months. I've used it in total for about three years or so now.

The solution is very stable unless you have to use Symantec Enterprise Protection. That comes into major issues. We've had corruption due to Symantec.

The scalability capabilities depends on which version you get. If you go to hyper-scale, it's infinitely scalable. If you go to an IBM object storage, it's scalable only up until a certain point.

We have approximately 50 people that have access to do restores. Ten of those having the additional responsibility of initiating backups for databases. And we have one engineer and two administrators.

We're considering going to the hyperscale version and then expanding it to have it distributed through three sites.

We've dealt with technical support quite a bit. 90% of the time they're really good. However, the other 10% of the time they disappear when the problem is too hard.

Overall, I would rate them eight and a half out of ten. They are pretty decent.

We previously used Spectrum Protect.

There were ongoing configuration problems and they continued to increase as everything was a dependency. You had to have the client and the right version with the firmware updated to the hardware and the hardware to the right version. It was a very, very complicated mess. Once it ran, it ran really well. However, when you had to upgrade, you had to upgrade everything. You couldn't do some iterations.

The initial setup was complex only due to the VAR we used. That we have since moved all away from.

The deployment ended up taking a year and we called in Commvault to actually finish the deployment. We contracted directly with Commvault and got rid of that VAR. Once they were involved, it took less than a week. They really helped speed up the process.

We only need one engineers and maybe two admins to handle maintenance.

We brought on Commvault in the middle of the implementation process. They helped us get rid of the VAR, which was giving us trouble. They were good to work with and we were glad for their help.

The team was very great. They actually provided us an engineer and he engaged remotely for probably 30 hours of that week.

It saved time. It didn't pay for itself, however, it saved time. Where it saved a lot of money was the cost of tapes and maintenance contracts with IBM.

The cost was one of the reasons we went with Commvault, however, that said, I can't give exact pricing.

We looked at Pure Storage. I don't remember what package they had for backups. However, there was one other competitor as well and I don't remember who it was.

In the end, the technology and the cost pushed us towards Commvault.

We're just customers and end-users.

We are typically one version behind the latest. We don't usually have the latest version of the solution.

We're using a private cloud on-premises as a deployment model.

My advise to other companies would be to just do your homework. Make sure it's the right solution for your company. We really didn't think about enterprise architecture. We put it in and then had a change how we operate. So make sure it's the right fit.

Our biggest lesson was the realization was that we need enterprise engineering and the enterprise architecture.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. They have some really good features. They have really good engineering. They have very good support. However, they're missing on some of the innovations that some other companies are coming up with. They either need to create their own innovation or buy it from somebody else and integrate it. 

Right now we are using on-premise and cloud backups. We run 300 to 400 jobs per day.

Compared to other products out there, we have found that Commvault is best suited for our needs. We can easily restore and deploy the data.

Previously, before the introduction of Commvault, we used other software including Rubrik. But with Commvault we can deploy multiple clients at a time and we can back up multiple clients without any issues. Right now, we are using about 1,000 VMs. Before Commvault we used to back up about 200 servers and 100 VMs. Previously, backups took nine hours. With Commvault it takes minutes.

The solution definitely helps our admins to minimize the time they spend on backup tasks and to spend time on other projects. If we need to run backups for dozens of servers, it can be done in one minute because it can be done in a click. We can select the backups by selecting the client computer groups. We can categorize those groups and, based on that categorization, we can run the backups and we can restore the VMs as well. It can be done in minutes. Running backups twice a week, it saves us about 5 to 6 hours each time.

It is also saving us on infrastructure costs and has helped optimize infrastructure usage, like storage space. By using Commvault we have saved about 3 TBs of space.

We have used it to recover data when there was a problem with our database. It took about four hours to bring the data back. But recently, we introduced HA and it has saved us more time. With HA the data can be brought up in one hour. With other solutions it would take 10 to 24 hours.

We do monitor all the backups using the user interface. It is user-friendly, easy to navigate, and easy to create solutions with it. It is very comfortable. We can do multiple operations at a time.

We use Commvault Command Center for backups and restores and for the creation of new clients. We use it for other functionalities as well. In terms of VMware, I can go directly to the Command Center, enter VMware, and I can search it directly. Command Center is very useful and it can be used for more advanced techniques.

The cloud support is good. The on-premises cloud is working for us as is traditional cloud. All the clouds we're using are working with Commvault. We have Office365 and Azure.

I need documentation for Azure backups. One expectation that I have is regarding PDF documentation. When I was trying to browse the documentation, I could not locate that. The documentation should be in PDF format where it can be downloaded easily.

I have been using Commvault for the past five years.

The stability has been good. We haven't had any issues.

Scaling can be done easily.

I am now looking into an orchestrator. High-availability is another future use case for us.

We do not have any issues with support. Everything is fine. Commvault helps in fixing any issues and they help us to deploy the data whenever we need help. And they provide the security as well.

In the first year we raised many issues, but now it is easier for us to manage. We refer to the documentation.

We used to use Rubrik but we found Commvault to be a better solution. It provided time savings, handled more complexity, and provided more security.

With guidance from their team, and based on the documentation, it was easy to install. The deployment took one-and-a-half hours.

There are updates every quarter and they are getting easier to deploy.

We have about seven staff members on my team, IT analysts, who handle the solution, to account for different shifts and meal breaks, etc. Within the company there are 10 clients using it, mostly within IT.

We are very satisfied. It is a very useful product, daily. 

Commvault is constantly developing new use cases based on customers' requirements. They are developing new features on a regular basis. In version 11, 19 new features were added. For example, in previous versions we did not have the Command Center and whenever backups failed we could not restore the data. Now, there are options for restoring the data. These kinds of advanced techniques are introduced from day to day.

I recently deployed Metallic for backup storage on Azure for a customer who lost all their data. Metallic helped me to restore the data within an hour, which is much faster than restoring from Microsoft services with a ticket on support services, which took four to five days.

I have a customer who uses it, but I am not a direct user, and I work with customers who use Metallic.

The functional integration could be better. For example, the replication function is not there in the Metallic products and can be complex. We were licensing the functionality in a different tool but not in Metallic's key. So it should be enhanced.

In future releases, I would like to see better VM replication because it's not available today. But there should also be provisions to have more integration.

Metallic is perfect for a customer because it is very easy to use. However, I find it difficult to find some use cases on my own and need to contact Metallic support. Moreover, in a SaaS project, I cannot open or function agents alone and require the support of Metallic.

I have been using this solution for two years. We are using the latest update of the Metallic SaaS solution.

It is a stable solution. I would rate it a nine out of ten. I have had no errors since the installation.

When I put it into the production model, it was very stable, and we had no time to do the next production review after a very simple test.

I would rate scalability a nine out of ten. It is very scalable.

The customer support team is responsive and very helpful. There were no problems, and their response time was very short.

Positive

The initial setup is very easy. It's quick and simple, and Metallic is already ready for use after two hours. It integrates well with Office 365 backup for Exchange roles, Teams, or SharePoint.

Our internal team deployed the solution.

The pricing depends on the functionality you require. For example, Office 365 is priced correctly because you have everything in one package, including the license for backup and storage. It is very attractive for the middle market, so I would rate it a seven out of ten, where one is the cheapest and ten is very expensive.

But for some projects, we may need to buy additional backup and storage for the retention period, making it more expensive. However, seven is good for me. Also, we could consider integrating with other cloud providers for secondary backup and storage to store backups. We only have Azure, OCI, or RWAIS, but exploring other options that offer better prices would be interesting.

I have experience using different products in the same category as Metallic, including CommVault and Rubrik. CommVault is the same product, but the trends are converted. It's an on-premise product. And Metallic is the first product of the merger of the company. It's the same product. I also saw Impacket, but I find it very old-school. We are missing old school.

I also see Hybrid. It's a very good product, but quite more known. There is still a lot to fix in Rubrik. I also find CommVault and Metallic with more experience and integrated with all our products. We have all products, like your old servers, the unique server. And it's quite more difficult with Rubrik. So, I prefer Metallic for this.

I would recommend using the product. Metallic is a very interesting product. My company also integrates Acronis and VM in some of our projects, but Metallic is one of the best products for cloud and SaaS. It has many functionalities and is simple to integrate.

For me, it's a ten. I haven't found any other product with so many functionalities that is also easy to integrate. It's not just good for my business, but it also gives me peace of mind and allows me to sleep soundly at night.

Most of our clients have an on-premise environment. They are traditional environments, but they are slowly starting to use the cloud for IT solutions and services. Lately, we've been shifting some workloads to the cloud and using the product there. It's been a slow transition, but we are doing it. We are partners in the Latin American region, so we are trying to find the best fit for every customer and recommend different backup solutions depending on the client. Some are easier to install but lack certain features. 

Commvault has a large customer base in the enterprise segment, so it provides a complete recovery solution for our largest clients. That's the way we use the product. We focus on enterprise solutions in large companies in Columbia and the South American and Latin American region. Commvault has a strong track record protecting the integrity of workloads, and it has many different features needed in the corporate environment. We have various technologies that need to be backed up and protected. In that sense, Commvault is a comprehensive solution.

No other vendor has such a wide range of solutions, including traditional on-premises workloads, cyber cloud members, and cloud links. All of those features are comprehensive enough to be considered for the largest client. 

The ability to manage and recover data across platforms and deployments is what we look for in a solution. Technologies are getting more complex all the time. We're seeing the emergence of different technology, including support for containers and various cloud services. These new technologies pose challenges for the backup environment. 

In the past, we only needed to back up specific databases and certain network tasks. The data is much more extended, and the interactions among different technologies and services are more complicated, so data protection is more complex. So, in this context, it's vital for a product to offer that kind of experience for us. I think that it's what the customers are looking for in this ever-growing and ever-complex environment.

One of the critical strategies to deal with risk is having an air-gapped copy of the data. In that context, tech solutions and object storage solutions help us to cope with that. So in that sense, Commvault is not different from any other solution that already offers those kinds of air-gapped copies. It helps manage a lot of different storage media and mix up all the storage media that we have so the cost of data matches the cost of the storage solution we are using. It makes no sense to store completely cold data in fast media. That is costly. Commvault has a wide range of support for storage solutions. It comes down to planning. You have to plan where you're going to put every inch of data. Then you're going to put it in the best layer possible depending on whether the information is cold or hot.

Commvault's Command Center is one of the best solutions out there. You can rely on Commvault solutions for the most complex and most demanding environments. It can meet the requirements of many Fortune 500 companies. It's great for companies that need a robust solution flexible enough to cope with all kinds of environments and technologies. 

Commvault offers broad coverage by helping us identify unprotected workloads. It helps us get to the point where we have a complete picture of the environment. I think that's a pretty good feature, and it allows us to have a good overview of our protection environment and what workloads are protected and which are not. It's one of the essentials out there for that. 

When it comes to recovery, Commvault is undeniably one of the best technologies out there. It's got all the different granularity levels that a business requires to get your information back to production. For example, we have their commission discovery, individual items recovery, mailbox recovery, databases, and different tables. Some databases can be recovered individually. This level of granularity enables us to get the most value out of the product.

Commvault is complex even if the product has comprehensive solutions and covers pretty much every technology out there. There's no unified way to manage all of the products on one single console. There are different things that you need to look for to have comprehensive management of the whole environment. I think that's not one of Commvault's strong suits. 

Also, even though I think the user interface might improve the manageability of the solution, it can be complex in some cases. You need a lot of experience and different touchpoints to get through environmental management, and it's not a comprehensive or unified solution for that. 

Commvault is also a solution that requires a lot of time. It demands a lot of time from administrators and requires an administrator to manage it almost full-time. But in this case, it's not a hindrance. While it isn't the easiest product to use, it's one of the most likable ones. It offers a lot of different options and the breadth of support that it has. I think it's just a compromise that you make. In this case, you get flexibility, great support, and a high-quality product, but you lose some in terms of administration. 

We've been using Commvault for about five years now. When we started, we were just customers, but now we are Commvault managers and consultants. 

It's a completely stable solution. We haven't had any problems with the software that make implementation a problem or prevent us from using the product effectively.

Commvault's scalability is unmatched. Very few competitors have the scalability that Commvault offers. IBM and Veritas might come close, but there are no other solutions that can grow to accommodate enormous environments. So we have to rethink or mix up different backup solutions and technologies. With Commvault, you can do it for either large environments or medium-sized environments as well.

I rate Commvault support 10 out of 10. The members of the support team are knowledgeable. They know their product well and are eager to help. Overall, it's a great customer experience. It's a deciding factor that makes customers and clients renew their licenses in a few years. You can buy a product, but you're only going to stay with it because of its quality and customer support. The support is outstanding in this case.

We've mainly contacted support to get best practices, implementation recommendations, and suggestions about operating the product. But we haven't faced any challenging problems that we couldn't tackle. The documentation has been pretty solid, too. 

Positive

Early in the process, it takes a long time to get things right and make things do what they are supposed to do based on best practices. Sometimes it takes a lot of time to do it, but it's ultimately worth it. If you put in a few more weeks to get the product implemented properly, it's going to pay off down the road. You'll see some cost savings and it will save you some effort in the future. So I think it's best to do an excellent job at first.

The savings we've realized from deploying Commvault could be around $100,000 to $300,000, including storage space, rack space, and energy charges. That's a total cost of ownership analysis.

Sometimes Commvault can be costly. On the other hand, you need to consider other use cases, verticals, and segments in the market, not just the price. But I think that those are the disadvantages of the factory features that have some room for improvement. The product is excellent.

The cost of implementing or supporting Commvault can be high. You need to pay attention to the licensing. It's imperative to do careful planning regarding the workflows you will support, and which kinds of solutions or vehicles you're going to deploy because there could be some surprises down the road. 

I think that's one of the main weaknesses of the product: it might be costlier than the competition. Of course, it's not always the case, but sometimes it could be pricier than the competition. That can sometimes be a barrier to implementing the product in certain regions and specific verticals or certain kinds of customers that are very cost-sensitive. Lowering the price is essential for Commvault to gain traction in other segments, and we have traditional companies reducing their prices. It would be good to see them more in an FNB environment, but the costs are too high for some customers.

We were looking for a solution with a breadth of support for heterogeneous workloads, so we considered solutions from different vendors, like IBM and Veritas. We also have a good relationship with IBM, but we thought their solution was somewhat archaic. It didn't have support for the latest technologies and platforms like Commvault.

Using the traditional client-server, those solutions couldn't match the amount of support Commvault offers. It was the perfect match for what we were looking for. One of the key features that led us to Commvault was its elasticity. It gives us the flexibility to run different workloads on the cloud or on-premise and to have them all protected within one technological stack. We're confident in the product because it's a comprehensive solution covering old-fashioned technologies and the newer ones. Every month there is new support for new features and new workloads. We're consistently surprised at the rate of innovation and the support that Commvault is putting into the product.

I rate Commvault nine out of 10. One recommendation I have for people considering Commvault is to explore all of the features the product offers. It has many features that aren't explored because of a lack of time or knowledge. I would invite all prospective customers to evaluate the whole breadth of functionality and suggest that they seek the assistance of a qualified implementation team. Do careful planning before implementing the product.

Isolating and segmenting storage targets from public networks to mitigate lateral moving threats can be difficult with Commvault. It takes thorough and detailed planning. You need to have careful planning before taking on implementation efforts. It's crucial to carefully consider where you're going to deploy and how you're going to divide the various segments of the product into different solutions so that you can comply with your business requirements.

Commvault might be challenging to deploy sometimes, and you need knowledgeable people to operate it. That doesn't mean it's going to be a failure. When the people are prepared and have skilled implementers, the product is a success from every point of view. So you have to be careful.

On balance, it is the most comprehensive solution in the market, with the ability to handle all kinds of applications, databases, and virtual workloads. Commvault's portfolio has a great breadth and depth in terms of quantity and quality of supported solutions. For example, Commvault is now supported on the cloud. The ability to mail snapshots back is one of Commvault, which has protection for all those workloads. Some of the competitors have just started to gain traction in this area, but Commvault has been doing it for several years.