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Bacula Enterprise vs Dell PowerProtect Data Domain comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Bacula Enterprise
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Backup and Recovery (24th), Cloud Backup (14th)
Dell PowerProtect Data Domain
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
87
Ranking in other categories
Deduplication Software (1st), Disk Based Backup Systems (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

Bacula Enterprise and Dell PowerProtect Data Domain aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Bacula Enterprise is designed for Backup and Recovery and holds a mindshare of 1.0%, up 0.8% compared to last year.
Dell PowerProtect Data Domain, on the other hand, focuses on Deduplication Software, holds 24.7% mindshare, down 28.8% since last year.
Backup and Recovery Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Bacula Enterprise1.0%
Veeam Data Platform7.0%
Commvault Cloud4.0%
Other88.0%
Backup and Recovery
Deduplication Software Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Dell PowerProtect Data Domain24.7%
HPE StoreOnce18.5%
Dell PowerProtect Data Manager12.3%
Other44.5%
Deduplication Software
 

Featured Reviews

GiovanniRamirez - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior IT Consultant at Xerif
Solid backup tool with good scalability
The last scenario in which I used Bacula was for a customer who needed some open-source tool which could support encryption at that time. We managed to convince the customer to use Bacula to deploy it in their environment It was a very good project. The Bacula concept, topology, and networking…
Branko Cirovic - PeerSpot reviewer
Storage Engineer at Comtrade Group
Provides seamless backup integration and long-term reliability for enterprise data protection
The price is quite high; this product is not considered cheap. Additionally, if you use higher availability boxes, they also come at a premium price. However, they provide business continuity, which is the main reason why companies invest in this solution. Tape is slow; when restoring several virtual machines or databases amounting to several terabytes, Dell PowerProtect Data Domain represents the fastest and most reliable solution, ensuring great integration with backup software. If a customer has limited budget constraints, they may opt for cheaper external storage comprised of just a bunch of disks and utilize it for backup, as backup is not a business-critical service. However, I see great value in Dell PowerProtect Data Domain because it is fully automated, features great integration with backup software, and provides good value for money. I would rate software support as a ten, while I would give hardware support a seven. I never give any product a perfect score; I think Dell PowerProtect Data Domain deserves a nine. The only minor problems are the certificate issue and the price. These certificate issues are quite rare and mainly arise when we forget to restart and upgrade the box for several years.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"It works great and it provides you with several standard tools to restore your backup, even after a big failure."
"The most valuable features are the special plugins such as SAP HANA databases, Microsoft SQL, and various types of virtualization."
"It can be used in virtually any environment we have onsite."
"The solution has extensive documentation and a very active community."
"It brought many advantages - such as the learning curve being very light."
"Bacula is pretty stable."
"It is easy to scale Bacula Enterprise even if your system is growing tremendously in data and servers."
"Bacula is very solid, very stable, and very scalable."
"The most valuable feature of Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) is its deduplication capability."
"The most valuable features are the deduplication and compression and the Data Domain Boost."
"Data Domain is an excellent repository that's compatible with a lot of different solutions. Even Veeam Backup recommends sending backup to Data Domain. Space optimization is great. Currently, it guarantees 50-to-1 compression of the application in the same device. In all these years, I never had a client who was unsatisfied with Data Domain. It is a solid appliance with VMware integration, instant access to restore and search, and analytics."
"Dell PowerProtect DD is a stable solution."
"The solution allows us to take a huge number of backups, and the footprint is quite small."
"I believe that for backup and deduplication, this is the top product."
"I don't believe we have a better solution available now for fast backup and recovery speed, capable of quickly restoring large amounts of data the way Dell PowerProtect Data Domain does."
"PowerProtect is a flexible solution that you can cover various cloud and on-premise environments."
 

Cons

"Bacula needs a graphical user interface because, for administrators, the command-line interface is okay, but for the average user it is not very easy."
"Easier setup and configuration, perhaps including a GUI, would be an improvement."
"We would like to see an improvement in the functionality of the GUI."
"Many features have been converted to commercial licensing, which restricts their availability."
"We are looking for a unique interface that can rule both enterprise and open source editions. Such a thing does not yet exist."
"A more user-friendly interface (GUI) can be developed."
"It could improve its interface or offer a specific screen for the manager of the company."
"The initial setup could be a bit easier."
"I would like to see better integration and support for backing up to cloud providers such as Alibaba Cloud."
"I would appreciate improvements primarily in the PPDM backup software because I still feel it's lacking the features of a proper backup solution and is a bit simplistic."
"The price for PowerProtect DD is not suitable for my customers. It is very high."
"The Data Domain solution appliance is quite expensive. It is on the higher side, but technically or functionally, there is no issue."
"In terms of improvement for Dell PowerProtect Data Domain, I suggest that the licensing structure could be clearer, as it is difficult to understand how capacity relates to the license capacity, which is not very transparent."
"The product lacks some security features that would make it more stand-alone and integrated."
"The price could be improved."
"They need to make migration easier."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We have a perpetual license."
"This is an open-source solution."
"On a scale where one represents high price, and ten represents low price, I rate the solution a five, which means that the solution is of medium pricing."
"The cost is expensive."
"Its price is reasonable."
"Pricing is related to size. A lower range solution might be about $33,000. My customers use higher range versions with a price of around $100,000. That's the price for both the hardware and software."
"The approximate license cost for Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) is around 5,00,000."
"There are many options in the pricing structure which can cause some confusion and necessitate the purchase of additional licensing."
"I can't remember what the license costs are. They might be paid monthly or every two months."
"This is one of the more expensive backup solutions on the market."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
University
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise4
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business35
Midsize Enterprise23
Large Enterprise38
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Bacula Enterprise?
Bacula is more expensive than various other solutions. It’s almost completely commercial now. Products like Veeam software are much more expensive.
What needs improvement with Bacula Enterprise?
Many features have been converted to commercial licensing, which restricts their availability.
What is your primary use case for Bacula Enterprise?
The last scenario in which I used Bacula was for a customer who needed some open-source tool which could support encryption at that time. We managed to convince the customer to use Bacula to deploy...
What is your primary use case for Dell EMC PowerProtect DD (Data Domain)?
I work as an implementer of Dell PowerProtect Data Domain systems, storage, and backup systems, serving as an administrator and support specialist. I have 15 years of experience implementing Data D...
What do you like most about Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain)?
The product, a disk backup solution, improves our data application tasks. We used tape libraries with Dev drives in legacy architectures, resulting in slow backups compared to modern drives like NV...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain)?
Regarding the pricing for Dell PowerProtect Data Domain, it is expensive. For small clients, it is very expensive. Large clients find it not expensive, but it depends on the solution in the environ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
DataDomain, Dell EMC Data Domain, PowerProtect Data Domain
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

NASA, SwissCom, Navisite, Turner Studios, Bank Austria, Caixa Bank, SdV Plurimedia, Leibniz University Hannover, Zeta Global, Tricore, NetLog, Siemens, LocaWeb, wbsGo, itesys, Queens School of Computing, Escrypt.
The US Army, City of Houston, Lloyds TSB, TiVo, Teck, Ingram Entertainment, The New York Mets
Find out what your peers are saying about Veeam Software, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Commvault and others in Backup and Recovery. Updated: January 2026.
881,733 professionals have used our research since 2012.