Commvault Cloud Reviews

Our customers use Commvault as a backup solution.

I work as a system integrator. We implement and support Commvault in our customers' environments.

We usually deploy the latest major release.

We can monitor, with normal detection, from the regular backup. We can determine whether it is suspicious if the client suddenly has major changes in their data.

The most valuable features are the integration with the storage center and support for most applications, databases, and security system platforms that exist on the market. 

The user interface for Commvault is quite user-friendly. It is easy to manage the Commvault environment using the user interface.

Commvault Command Center is fully supported and has many features for us to manage the environment.

Commvault is able to do the recovery process from their console, so we don't have to actually log into it. Also, Commvault can direct information to another server. The recovery option is a very good feature.

I can collect the target data, then we connect it to Commvault. There is not another system that can connect to our target database or target storage. This is very important for us, because there is the threat of malware right now. This can protect not only the product, but also the backup data from outside threats.

Commvault supports remote office backup. It backs up the local data, then keeps monitoring and managing it.

I would like Commvault to have a feature for cybersecurity threats, e.g. securing the target backup repository. Commvault just started testing and releasing this feature, but it needs to be stabilized. 

We have been implementing Commvault for our customers for around three years.

Commvault is very stable.

Commvault is very scalable in terms of the data that Commvault can maintain.

Commvault support is very good and helpful. We receive a lot of help for our problems.

Positive

The deployment of Commvault is pretty straightforward. Commvault can do remote installation for the client. The deployment time depends on the customer's or user's permissions.

One of my customers has seen savings when using Commvault compared to other storage solutions. They compared the price of Commvault with performing maintenance on their backup system, and Commvault's price is competitive versus other backup software.

Commvault helps our customers' admins to minimize the time they spend on backup tasks and other projects. Commvault is very good in terms of performance backup. I think support time has been reduced by around 25% to 30%.

Commvault is quite high in terms of pricing and licensing.

I have also worked with IBM Spectrum Protect and Veeam. Overall, Commvault has better support than other backups. Their support is very fast when resolving our problems.

My customers use dedupe applications, so we don't use Commvault's feature to reduce storage costs.

Commvault is very feature-rich. Its licensing is quite easy to configure, though we must pick the right size for the backup environment so the customer can have the best price.

I would rate Commvault as eight out of 10.

We are a solution provider and we have contracts with some of our customers to support their data centers and infrastructures. Our support is based on their needs and we choose solutions for their environment. One of the products that we use in this capacity is Commvault.

Commvault is an enterprise-level data platform that is used for backup and replication. It offers four product lines including complete backup and recovery, the HyperScale integrated appliance, disaster recovery, and Activate Analytics. We use the backup and recovery solution.

Commvault provides us with a single platform to move, manage, and recover data. Most enterprise solutions in this area provide similar functionality but the Commvault GUI provides better reports and access to your assets. All of the features have been integrated within one interface. On the other hand, Veritas has third-party solutions that generate better reports and offer better control over your environment, such as OpsCenter.

In terms of recovery options for data and workloads, Commvault has several features available. An important feature is that you can recover data based on your policy. It also provides the capability to back up and recover specific types of data, such as an SPS server.

The next step, after having a good backup solution, is disaster recovery. This has to take into account the software that you are using in your environment and Commvault can help with this in some aspects. For example, it can replicate your SQL servers on your disaster site. In a regular recovery scenario, I think that most backup solutions are the same.

This solution allows us to easily isolate storage targets from public networks. When we implement our backup solutions, the first step is to separate the network. We create a private network and we use separate storage for the backup in order to isolate all production services from backup services. It is very important to separate the working area because of ransomware and other threats.

Commvault also has other features to protect backup data but I prefer to have a separate backup environment with its own equipment. All of it should be physically separated from the production area. One service is for production data and the other is for backup data.

Separating the production and backup data not only helps with attacks but also helps to manage performance. In IT, we are always faced with two important metrics, which are security and performance. Using physical isolation, data protection is improved, and I prefer to use physical isolation rather than logical isolation that is available using the software.

Using this type of configuration, we were able to successfully recover data for one of our customers. They were faced with a ransomware attack and had lost more than 40% of their data. We were able to completely recover their data in less than three days.

Like other enterprise backup solutions, Commvault is very well suited for enterprise-level customers.

Commvault integrates well with all types of operating systems and supports heterogeneous environments. It integrates well with storage solutions such as NetApp, and we haven't had any trouble integrating with hardware such as tape drives or otherwise.

I like using the command-line interface versus the GUI. I find the CLI is easy to use for customizing and generating reports, as well as for managing the software. That said, I think that the GUI is enough for many administrators in a simple environment.

The support documentation is good. Based on the help and documentation, I have been able to generate scripts that I run on a daily basis to get the reports and features that I need.

The deployment process should be simplified because it is not something that just anybody can do. 

One of my colleagues in Australia is using Commvault and has told me that the solution does not yet have complete support for integrating with cloud providers. Specifically, it is not integrated with Amazon services. In the future, I would like to see better integration with cloud environments.

Commvault is only installed in our Windows environment, on Windows server, and I prefer to use Linux because I find the environment simpler to use. In a Windows environment, it is not easy to use command-line-based products.

There are two people on my team that manage Commvault for my customers. It is supposed to be one of the least time-consuming solutions but in reality, it consumes 60% of their time. Compared to other backup solutions, it takes more time to manage and operate.

Commvault doesn't support container-based systems and does not offer agentless backup.

I've been using Commvault for one of our customers for less than three years.

Stability-wise, Commvault is one of the best backup solutions on the market.

This product is scalable enough, although it will be complicated to do, depending on your environment. Veeam, for example, is not as complicated to scale. The same is true with Veritas NetBackup.

I think the reason for this is that Commvault is installed only in Windows environments. Veritas NetBackup, for example, can be installed on Unix or Linux, and those operating systems are easier when it comes to scaling. Most software depends on the features that are available in the host operating system.

We don't have access to support due to sanctions, so the support and management are done by our local engineers. It is difficult for our customers to use this type of software without support.

I have worked with other similar solutions including Veritas and Veeam. Veeam is easier to implement than Commvault, although Commvault is quicker to deploy than Veritas.

Veeam is suitable for a small business but when it comes to enterprises, Commvault is one of the solutions that we implement. Generally speaking, Commvault Backup and Commvault Complete Data Protection are good solutions for enterprise-level companies.

Veeam is easy to use and is easier to implement but we do not only deal with small businesses. Most of our customers are enterprises and we have to select the best solutions for them. Other disadvantages to Commvault are that it doesn't support container-based systems and agentless backup is not supported in this software. However, it is more powerful when it comes to integrating heterogeneous environments.

Commvault is not a product with an easy deployment process. It is not something that just anybody can do on their own and it is best suited for enterprise users. Documentation is available online but other similar products, such as Veeam, are easier to implement. There is not enough documentation for Commvault available online.

One of my customers implemented Commvault in less than one month, which is not bad compared to other enterprise solutions like Veritas. An enterprise often includes complexities such as a heterogeneous environment, so a deployment that takes less than one month is quite reasonable.

My advice for anybody who is implementing Commvault is to make sure that they have a support contract. Support is very important, as this is a time-consuming product when it comes to management and regular maintenance.

In summary, this is an enterprise solution that you can trust in your environment for backup and recovery. In fact, it is one of the top 10 backup solutions on the market.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

We are doing backups for a customer's 365 tenant details. This is for 365 backup and recovery. The applications that it protects with backups include: all the details on 365, SharePoint, Team, and mailboxes.

Our client does the needed backup within our required window. We have a daily backup at 11:00 every day. We have not felt any pressure or performance issues with our 365 tenant.

The restore has been great. It has been faster than doing restores with the on-premises solution.

Quick backups and restores of data are the most valuable features. It is important that it is an easy solution to integrate with the SAML authentication of the tenant, so we can have the users log into the systems and do their own restores, if needed.

Metallic's backup & granular recovery of data for Office 365 works great. We have tested it many times for production reasons. We have done some tests and have always managed to do the recovery as we wanted and without any issues.

For simpler environments, they have some templates for startups. Possibly for a smaller environment, they need to do more automatic configuration and selections of users who want to do backups. This is mainly for smaller environments. I would like them to have the same system fit for all environments: small and big environments. Currently, we have to do a lot of configuration of the layout, which takes time. This solution is appropriate for enterprise-level enterprise, but I would like it to be easier to use for SMB environments.

Less than half a year.

Up until now, it has been a hundred percent working great. So, it looks stable.

Our customer's environment is not that big, but it looks like it can easily handle a big environment.

We back up a little less than a thousand users, whom we are licensed for, and a lot of them are company employees. 

There are two sysadmins managing the solution. One of them mainly does the monitoring and getting the work on the system.

The technical support was good enough when we needed their help. They were available for assistance and gave us good support. They fixed the issues that we had in the system. 

When we looked specifically for a solution that would hold the backup on their cloud environment, Metallic Cloud was what we wanted. We didn't want to bring the solution into our environment, but we wanted the whole solution. Metallic was exactly what we were looking for. From my point of view, Metallic Cloud was the best solution that we could find.

Previously, the client didn't have backups for the 365 report. People who deleted their emails or files on SharePoint just lost them. So, this solution was quite important, because trying to do backups from an on-premise environment wasn't successful. It took a lot of time because of the low bandwidth over the Internet.

This solution mainly gives us backup functionality that the client wasn't able to do before. It is saving them a lot of bandwidth over the Internet and giving them functionality that they previously didn't have, such as, backups to their 365 tenant. They save 150 to 200 Mbps for nightly backup runs.

Most of the important things were straightforward. It was quite easy. It is a SaaS-based, web-based configuration. It is very simple and easy. You learn by some kind of runbook, step-by-step. That's it.

In a couple of hours, we finished 80% of it. Over the next couple of days, we did a couple of tunings.

We did a PoC at the beginning. We weren't sure that we were going to purchase it because we didn't have experience with this product before. So, it was a testing environment first. When the test environment went well, we just went into production. We went from PoC status into production status. 

After we decided to move to production, we decided what would be our guiding rules for system backups, e.g., what would be the policy that we would have to decide internally. We had a small discussion about what we wanted to back up, what was the policy, who should do the management, and who should get the report. It was some type of late policy implementation after the product was already working in backups because we just moved from PoC to production immediately, which was easy enough.

The first backup is always long and takes a lot of time. After that, the daily incremental backup speed is quite fast.

We had some small issues, but we received good assistance from their support to fix those issues. The issues were mainly report type issues and changing it from HTML to PDF. These were very limited, small issues. I think they were related to small bugs in the versions. The support was helpful. So, we just got support for the issues that we had encountered during our implementation. Otherwise, we did the implementation ourselves.

One and a half people were required for the deployment, one of the system engineers and myself (as CISO of the company). I did most of the configuration, then one of the system guys helped with the SAML configuration of the Azure tenant.

Metallic has reduced the amount of manual work required to manage our client's backup operations. It is reliable. We trust it and don't need to monitor it as much as another backup. This is quite labor-intensive, manual work, so it saves our technician time. It is saving us an hour or two a day.

It is not the cheapest solution. I think the pricing is fair for mid-side customers. It is between all the other options.

Costs are fairly predictable because you pay per user. It is quite easy to do the calculation.

If you have different use cases in the 365 tenant, I am not sure that the product gets the full agility of those licenses. If I want to do backups for just some of the users, I still need to do a backup for the full SharePoint and have a full license for all of the users who use SharePoint. If there could be a higher variety of license type for this that reduces the cost, that would be a nice functionality.

We were looking for a backup solution to do backups for all 365 data as well as SharePoint, Teams data, OneDrive, and mailboxes. We wanted all the data located on our 365 to be robust from one side, but easy enough to manage from the other side, not complicated, and reliable. After we did the PoC with Metallic and found it a suitable solution, we decided to keep working with it.

We mainly decided to use Metallic because Commvault has a good solution on-premises. We know Commvault as a company. They have a good product and we have a good relationship with them. Commvault is in Israel, so we decided to try the cloud product in the environment, and it was good.

We did PoCs with all the options that we evaluated. We mainly checked the supported functionalities and eliminated those that did not support our required functionality. In the end, we had two options and decided to go with Metallic.

I would give Metallic's overall ease of use as an eight out of 10. It is not too complicated. It is quite easy to use for people who are familiar with Commvault. They can understand the language pretty quickly. If you have Commvault on-premises, which we have for the same customer, you can understand the language of the solution pretty quickly.

Know what policies you need and what you want to back up beforehand. If you are planning to do backups of a few users, and not all your users, research the type of applications you need to do backups, e.g., if you need SharePoint, mailboxes, or OneDrive. Each of these applications behaves differently regarding license activities.

I would rate the solution as a nine out of ten. Nothing is perfect, but it is a really good product. There were only small issues/bugs that I found in the beginning, e.g., small report issues and it was a little bit complicated the first time configuring for SMB users, which is a bit more complicated with limited options. However, since we have experience with other products, it was fast. I don't know another SaaS product doing 365 backups better than Metallic. This solution is the best one that I'm aware of.

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. 

We primarily use the solution as a backup.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

With any product, there could be improvements made. 

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

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

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

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

The solution can be a bit complex for new users.

The solution needs better Office 365 data backup management.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We work directly with Commvault consultants.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I have been using Commvault Metallic for three months.

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

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

Commvault's technical support is responsive.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Our primary use case is for Office 365 Backup. We started out as an Exchange Online only company. Then we were looking for some sort of backup solution to augment the existing Microsoft Office 365 archiving features for a price that was more compatible with our company versus what Microsoft was offering for their archiving solution. We also needed the ability to do time and date stamp retrievals. We ended up settling on Commvault at that time. We've been with them, and we've seen it more from being in the Commvault virtualized infrastructure to being the Metallic.io SaaS solution.

We protect mostly Exchange Online, but really we do the whole breadth of Office 365 with them. We were looking at some other solutions, but with them, we're doing our entire Office 365 Microsoft Online platform.

It has helped my organization because we don't have to have tapes. We're not paying for tapes, storage tapes, or storage ourselves. It's definitely a bonus. We're more efficient in all of our backups for Office 365 because it is in a single pane of glass. If we were to integrate Commvault on-premise, we'd be able to use the same pane of glass to manage both on-prem and cloud solutions. It's taken our backup from being a full-time job to being when you need it, set it up. Our users could be empowered to access their own data backups. Which means we can alleviate a lot of the administration from the backup administrator.

It has significantly reduced the amount of manual work required to manage our backup operations. We're going from an on-prem to a non-on-prem, we're all doing nonsolutions. So we really can't compare it against anything else.

The way we look at it is that before, we used to manage a separate backup solution for our on-prem environment. We had to make sure that our logs are flushed after the backup was complete. If the logs weren't flushed then it caused our on-prem Exchange to offline. There's a lot more management involved from that point of view. The other thing is that we would have to purchase the tapes. We have a tape rotation, we would have to ship tapes to an offsite location. If we need to restore, we had to go back to the offsite location, and get the restore. In some cases, exchanging restore on-premise could be a lot harder because it doesn't give you some of the brick level functionality.

My impressions of the backup and granular recovery of features are that they're constantly evolving and we've had such great contact with the engineering and development teams at Commvault while they were building out this product. We've seen the evolution of the product, and it has gone from being a platform as a service to a complete service option. The number of upgrades, updates, and ease-of-use features that they continue to build into it, has dramatically reduced the amount of time we spend looking for objects in the backup repositories.

In terms of the speed of both backup and recovery of Office 365 data, for backup, we have a very large Office 365 footprint. We have over almost 15,000 unique mailboxes, according to their metrics. The backup is at least thrice daily. I find it to be very fast compared to other options in the market right now. Especially that it can back up 15,000 users with no problem.

In terms of the ease of use, the original learning curve was a bit steep, but now I would say the overall ease of use, now that they've started with the latest releases of it is fairly intuitive. If I need to go look at my Exchange, so I go click on Exchange. If I need to look at my One Drive backups, I click on One Drive. It's fairly intuitive and it does a great job of guiding me when I'm not sure of where to go.

I haven't gone down the security road too much. However, I've never had a security concern with the product. The scalability and availability of it are outstanding. It's scaled with us. But as far as security goes, I've never had an issue or a concern, or if I did have a concern they were able to address it immediately.

We also haven't really gone too much into the flexibility in terms of where the data is stored but it's a great feature. We're only using a head-end and we're a complete SaaS offering, but we did explore the local active copies, et cetera. We decided that there was no need for us to keep the data on-premise if they're going to maintain it in Azure or AWS. So for us, it was a very easy decision to keep it in the cloud and not on-premise.

The navigation of it needs improvement in terms of the UX. The product itself, it works as expected. It's all user experience and user interface improvements that could be made and it could be made a little more consumer-friendly. Instead of having one person or a few people that know the system intimately, it gives us the ability for other people that don't have to know the system intimately be able to navigate it.

I have been using this solution for two years. 

It's a SaaS offering. It's deployed in our infrastructure and we have a single VM in our infrastructure that we use for pulling any backups down to our infrastructure that we need.

It's appropriate for an enterprise-level environment. It's scaled with us from 900 mailboxes to 12,000 mailboxes, plus our scale of the Office 365 platform.

Before the COVID pandemic, we had six users using this solution. They're system administrators, they manage infrastructure and systems.

It has a 100% adoption rate. The product is being used every day. The backups are automated four times a day and we restore them on a need basis. We use the product every day.

Their support is awesome. On a scale from one to ten, I would rate them a fifteen. The entire Commvault team always goes above and beyond every time, for everything.

We were on-prem before with an old version of Exchange, and we used old backup software to back it up.

For us, the initial setup was complex because we were one of the first customers on this solution. However, we've reset it up a couple of times just as a demo for some of our subsidiaries, and the way the set works now is very straightforward, and very clean compared to what it was when we first got to it to 18 months to two years ago.

The configuration interface was fairly straightforward. Aside from the initial, "This is a product that we are building. You are a beta customer. You're one of our first few customers on the platform.", it was fairly straightforward. Now it's very point and click. It's very straightforward, very intuitive, and well automated.

The deployment took one week.

Our implementation strategy was to get it absorbing our email while we're still migrating users to Office 365 from our on-prem solutions. For us, it was a shotgun approach. I was adding more users to our office tenants than anybody had expected. When we were rolling out Commvault we were rolling out Office 365 at the same time, and it was overwhelming Microsoft at the same time. The implementation strategy was to try to run a slow controlled burn and cut people over as needed, but we managed to get Commvault set up. Then every day, myself and the team at Commvault, were checking to make sure that all the users we had just imported into Office 365 were imported into Commvault.

It wouldn't have been possible without the support team and the development team. The implementation that works now is very clean compared to what I went through. They made themselves so available to us when we were doing our implementation that the reason it took so long to implement was because they were waiting for me for the next step.

Metallic provides us with more predictable costs for our backup requirements. They charge us on a model that we understand. We understand the pricing model a little bit differently. 

We investigated Backup Exec and Backupify. Backupify and Commvault were the top two. They were the two that we had narrowed in on, based on our needs analysis. We chose Commvault simply because of the scalability and expertise in enterprise.

Backupify was a SaaS solution and they had many similar features. But at the time they wanted us to add more service than we were expecting. They were fantastic competitor and they did everything we wanted them to do, just like Commvault. But we went with Commvault specifically because of their enterprise heritage.

We started with a free trial of Commvault. It might've been a POC then we just went from there.

They do a fantastic job with their documentation, so you can follow their documentation and implement it.

I would rate it an eight out of ten. We can't compare it against another staff solution that we're using. So for now it works for us, we're not seeing any issues, and it's better than what we used on-prem. 

We really needed a product where we could extend the Microsoft Office 365 backups and archival process, as well as back up our Office 365 SharePoints and our users' OneDrives. That way we could have a seven-year retention plan and if we need to go back and grab someone's email that they accidentally deleted two years ago, we could. 

We also needed a solution that we didn't have to have onsite storage for, because we had a storage restriction onsite. This product gave me the ability to have everything stored, as a SaaS model. Everything is right there.

We recently had an issue where someone couldn't find an email that they had just recently written. When I went looking inside the backups, I was able to find and restore that email and they were able to continue working. It was very critical for a customer sale, but that email was recovered and it was perfect. Because it was just a single email, it was relatively quick. If I had had to do it another way, it probably would have taken me an hour-and-a-half to two hours longer with our old way of doing it. Before we went with Office 365, we were Exchange on-premises and it would have required me to have pulled out a SAN snapshot to recover the data that way, or go to the tape. Because this is all hosted in the cloud and works in the cloud, I was able to do it in five minutes.

Metallic has helped minimize the time spent on backup tasks, absolutely. It has reduced the time, daily, that I deal with whether the backup is up, and performing backups, by about 50 percent. I have more time to do other things.

I have been able to save on hardware costs at my site due to the low price of the application. I am looking at a reduction in infrastructure costs of at least 25 percent.

The most valuable part of the solution is that it is fire-and-forget. Everything we've programmed into this Metallic SaaS offering is what they claim it to be. It's been just a treat to use it. From starting the trial, to the 15 minutes it took to run my first backup, to the 30-minutes for my first restore of the users' email, it has just been fantastic. It works as advertised.

Since it's built off the regular Commvault product, and I use that Commvault product, the user interface has been very easy for me to get into. It's easy to use and navigate through. I've had no questions on how to find the relevant information, and their documentation has been on-point for helping me find all the hidden features inside their menus.

The Command Center, as far as providing a complete view of data goes, is 100 percent accurate. I found stuff that I didn't know about. I was able to find out that a couple of things are flowing in an odd way and I was able to get those remedied and treated in a way that ended up improving my boss' daily life.

It also provides me with a single platform to move, manage, and recover data across on-premises, hybrid, and cloud locations. It's a single window to see everything I needed to see regarding this level of backup. I really dislike like it when the company purchases multiple products that do similar things and I have to go to different windows to get full insight. This solution gives me the full insight without having to use other products, metrics, or reporting tools.

Since it plugs into my Office 365 tenant, it was literally three clicks. So it supports cloud well. And it's all documented well. They even provided training and onboarding help for that 15-minute process. It was just fantastic.

I would like to see some of the code execute a little bit better when I add new licenses and assign licenses to users. I'd like to see that information update a little quicker. It would also be helpful to be able to run a report on licensing so that I have better visibility into how much licensing I'm using.

I really have no other complaints beyond that. And they were able to get me that information relatively quickly when I submitted a ticket.

I've been using Metallic since day-one of its release in October, 2019.

I would give the stability "five nines." I've not seen it down. I can't say it hasn't been down once, but it's been up the entire time I've used it. There have been no issues. It's snappy and responsive. I'm impressed with the stability of it.

Scaling is amazingly easy. The way they recommend the setup, it is easy to drop a user into one of my security groups and, within 15 minutes, they are in the backup schedule rotation and are being backed up.

I have 75 users enrolled. We may have plans to expand in the future to start taking advantage of their endpoint product through Metallic. We would expand from 75 seats to 200 seats in the Office 365 backup, and would add on another set of 200 seats for their endpoint backup.

Commvault's technical support for the solution is knowledgeable. I haven't been able to stump them. They've been able to answer every single question and help me with any issues I've had. They've just been, bar none, fantastic.

We were using Backup Exec for a lot of stuff and ShadowProtect SPX, a StorageCraft solution. Now that we have this online, it's fantastic. Every product that we use from Commvault, in general, has been fantastic.

We switched to Metallic from our other solutions because they didn't provide the Office 365 backup component we wanted.

We needed a backup solution and I purchased their standard Commvault for our on-premises stuff. When I attended Commvault Go, their customer conference, they debuted Metallic and I said, "That's exactly the product I was looking for, for my 365 backup, and I'm buying it from Commvault." I already knew how their software works and Metallic is same. They're just doing it in a SaaS model for 365, endpoint, and even server backup if you want. I really needed that 365.

The initial setup is straightforward. It's 100 percent accurate on their website. From start to finish: 15 minutes and you're running your first backup.

My implementation strategy for this was for the 365, the OneDrive and the SharePoint components. When we brought it online, my goal was to target the 75 most used, customer-facing mailboxes. Within 15 minutes I was able to make sure the product was working and, by the end of that day, I had everyone applied. Compared to other products, that would have taken days.

If you have technical experience it will be straightforward. We walked through their installation script just to confirm I had everything done, because, given how new the product is, they wanted to test their help script. And it was spot-on. They had it perfect. I am fully confident that, even if a person doesn't have great technical knowledge, they would be able to help that person through it.

When I purchased Commvault Metallic, they did have an onboarding process that helped me if I had any questions. It was literally a 15-minute process. I did everything before we even had that phone call, so I got to spend the call asking a few questions. It was really easy. 

I would say we have seen a return on investment, but it's a hard metric to come up with due to DR. We haven't had a DR scenario where it has paid for itself. But I view it like buying car insurance. It's better to have it and not need it, than something happening and needing it and not having it.

We are paying on a yearly basis and it comes out to about $3.80 a user per month.

There are no other costs for the specific features that I have. If I was to use server backups with them, there would be an additional cost per terabyte of storage, based on my storage targets, or an infrastructure cost if I was using it to target on-ground storage stuff. But because I'm using the platform that includes storage for the Office 365 backup exclusively, there is no additional cost.

The other products I was looking at wanted to charge me anywhere between $10 to $15 per person and I would have to do storage on top of that. That means I would be paying by the terabyte if I was putting the storage in the cloud or having to purchase hardware on-premises to do so. With the Office 365 offering from Metallic, at the price point we got it at, it was perfect. They knew exactly what the market needed and they hit their marks.

We really didn't evaluate other vendors because none of them gave me the options that I was looking for and that Metallic was offering: a low price per user, and storage included for the 365 backup. With other products I would have had to purchase cloud storage and pay for additional storage, or the cost per seat was just not something I was willing to pay.

The biggest lesson I've learned is to remind people that they still need to back up Office 365 emails. Just because it's not on their premises, they should still back it up.

Commvault gives you a fantastic 45-day trial. It's worth trying it. They have a really good, long trial period. They will answer any questions you have during that process. I know a lot of people say, "Just try the product." With this one, try the product and you'll see the ease of use.

For deployment and maintenance of the solution, for our size of company, it's just one person, a system administrator who does overall operations support.