Cohesity DataProtect vs Dell PowerProtect Data Manager comparison

Cohesity DataProtect vs. Dell PowerProtect Data Manager

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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

Cohesity DataProtect

Ranking in Backup and Recovery

8th

Average Rating

9.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Backup (8th)

Dell PowerProtect Data Manager

Ranking in Backup and Recovery

11th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Deduplication Software (7th)

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Backup and Recovery category, the mindshare of Cohesity DataProtect is 3.3%, down from 4.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell PowerProtect Data Manager is 4.4%, up from 4.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Backup and Recovery

Featured Reviews

Giovanni Golinelli.

Hybrid IT Architect at Quanture Spa

Easy to use, offers good scalability and responsive support

The deployment depends on the environment. Deploying on VMs is relatively simple. But for most of our customers, we implement physical clusters with at least three configured hosts using the existing model. So, it depends on the setup. Implementing DataProtect itself wasn't particularly challenging. One key requirement for successful DataProtect deployment is proper network configuration. If the network setup isn't right, you won't achieve optimal performance. We have developed a service for some of our customers where they implement an appliance or physical cluster of Cohesity at the customer site. Then, we use cloud clustering to replicate, and even in production, a second copy of the protected data. And in some cases, we have developed some disaster recovery procedures using Cohesity.

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MinaMagdy1

Senior System Engineer at Nutanix

Comprehensive integration and user-friendly dashboard enhance data protection workflows

PowerProtect Data Manager lacks the tape-out functionality, which is important for organizations relying on it for offsite backup. While PowerProtect Data Manager offers a workaround, it's not always accepted, notably by sectors like banking. Additionally, I would like PowerProtect Data Manager to provide microservices and container backup for modern applications.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The spin-up of a VM within a test environment for backup testing along with quick restores."

"Instant volume mount and the SpanFS filesystem itself, which has great dedupe and compression across all of our backups."

"The support is awesome. They are very fast, competent and friendly."

"A robust, verifiable backup with a restore solution, which decreases our backup and has a restore window."

"We are very satisfied with the product as a whole—all the backup functions, the data protection functions. We are very satisfied with those, and the product is very simple to use."

"It is also very easy to determine which VMs are being backed up and which ones aren't. This is helpful to make sure nothing is being missed."

"The customer service and support are fast and professional."

"The solution's SQL cloning is great, and its Instant Mount restoration of virtual machines is brilliant."

More Cohesity DataProtect pros

"The product's initial setup phase was easy."

"The solution adequately handles data storage."

"It's the perfect solution for virtual and container directives. The data reduction feature works well, and we haven't had any issues."

"The most valuable feature of the solution is its integrated approach."

"Dell PowerProtect Data Manager is a comprehensive backup software that integrates with Dell backup storage to enhance data protection."

"The management part of Dell PowerProtect Data Manager has improved significantly."

"Dell PowerProtect Data Manager helps to reduce the amount of data being transferred and stored."

"Dell EMC PowerProtect Data Manager is user-friendly and easy to use. it does what it needs to do."

More Dell PowerProtect Data Manager pros

Cons

"We would like it to have more capabilities for different kinds of PaaS or SaaS services in the Azure cloud, such as Azure SQL or Azure Cosmos DB."

"We are waiting on the AIX agent to be released."

"I'd like to be able to pause a backup while it's running and have it resume when I tell it to resume."

"Cohesity DataProtect needs to improve its reporting capabilities."

"Physical RDMs on virtual machines could be a bit easier to configure and plan out."

"This solution is only compatible with a limited number of storage arrays, including Pure and Cisco Hyperflex."

"Initial setup can be complex if you need to change IP addresses. Hopefully, they improve that in a future release."

"Many of the reports are basic, at most, and at times we had to open a support ticket to help find or develop a report for our needs."

More Cohesity DataProtect cons

"The marketing strategy is lagging behind competitors such as CommVault. Dell needs to improve its market presence and communication with customers and solution providers."

"PPDM requires further development. It is primarily integrated with DevOps systems."

"They should include a feature similar to S3 bucket."

"The Dell EMC PowerProtect Data Manager reports could improve. There should be different kinds of reports on failures, such as dashboards that we can submit to top management or auditors."

"The main issue that needs improvement is the support system. When I raise a ticket, it sometimes takes a while to get a response."

"The solution should enhance its user interface and make it more flexible."

"PowerProtect Data Manager is missing a feature for takeout, which means I cannot store backup data off-site within the software. This is a limitation for organizations that require off-site solutions."

"When I raise a ticket, it sometimes takes a while to get a response."

More Dell PowerProtect Data Manager cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The ROI is huge. Not really measurable at this point, but the price of the unit was a fraction of what a couple hours of downtime could result in."

"If SQL is in heavy use at your location, I would highly recommend narrowing your PoC testing to Cohesity and Rubrik. They will be competitive on pricing with each other, so really put them through the paces."

"We purchased support from Cohesity to ensure that should we face an issue, we don't have to deal with different service providers."

"It has reasonable pricing, and we know they can give discounts. If you look at the primary pricing or the list pricing, it conforms to the market pricing, but you have to have a discount on it. Otherwise, it is way too expensive."

"Sizing is important and it is easy to overestimate."

"Ensure that you understand the per TB licensing model. Also, Exchange backups are not native to Cohesity and require Kroll."

"Cohesity came in at the best price. Setup was included and done in half a day."

"There is monthly licensing."

More Cohesity DataProtect pricing and cost advice

"The product is offered at a very competitive price in the market."

"The licensing costs and pricing model are based on capacity and the license is easy to upgrade."

"Dell PowerProtect Data Manager is not an expensive solution."

"We offer monthly or yearly subscriptions. The price could be cheaper."

"The solution is not less expensive than competitors but pricing deals are available."

"The price of Dell EMC PowerProtect Data Manager is reasonable."

"The solution is more affordable than other vendors."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

22%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Cohesity DataProtect?

Several features enable us to perform fast recovery, such as instant fast recovery. All our virtual machines protected with the product can be quickly restored to another healthy environment with m...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cohesity DataProtect?

I find Cohesity DataProtect to be expensive.

What needs improvement with Cohesity DataProtect?

What areas have room for improvement? Is there anything that could be simplified to make it better?

What do you like most about Dell PowerProtect Data Manager?

One notable feature is its robust backup support for Kubernetes and container environments. Additionally, PPDM stands out for its ease of deployment and management compared to other backup solution...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell PowerProtect Data Manager?

Overall, pricing does not significantly impact our decision. The main concern is the solution itself, presales activities, and positioning it in the right place. Commercial aspects are secondary to...

What needs improvement with Dell PowerProtect Data Manager?

The marketing strategy is lagging behind competitors such as CommVault. Dell needs to improve its market presence and communication with customers and solution providers.

Rubrik vs Cohesity DataProtect

Comparisons

Compared 25% of the time

Veeam Data Platform vs Cohesity DataProtect

Compared 16% of the time

Commvault Cloud vs Cohesity DataProtect

Compared 11% of the time

Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) vs Cohesity DataProtect

Compared 6% of the time

Oracle Data Guard vs Cohesity DataProtect

Compared 2% of the time

More Cohesity DataProtect Competitors

Dell Avamar vs Dell PowerProtect Data Manager

Compared 21% of the time

Dell NetWorker vs Dell PowerProtect Data Manager

Compared 17% of the time

Veeam Data Platform vs Dell PowerProtect Data Manager

Compared 13% of the time

Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) vs Dell PowerProtect Data Manager

Compared 12% of the time

Dell Data Protection Suite vs Dell PowerProtect Data Manager

Compared 2% of the time

More Dell PowerProtect Data Manager Competitors

Product Reports

Cohesity DataProtect

Download Cohesity DataProtect product report

Dell PowerProtect Data Manager

Download Dell PowerProtect Data Manager product report

Also Known As

Cohesity

PowerProtect, Dell EMC PowerProtect

Overview

What is Cohesity DataProtect?

Cohesity DataProtect is a top-level, sophisticated, software-defined backup and recovery solution created for cloud environments. Cohesity DataProtect is made to hyperscale and is one the most thorough policy-based protection solutions available on the market today.

Cohesity DataProtect melds multiple-point products into a single software that is able to be deployed as on-premise or consumed as a service.

Top Features:

Hyperscale made easy: Cohesity DataProtect improves data protection by doing away with the need for backup silos and administers backup and recovery with a single user-friendly, easy-to-understand interface. Cohesity DataProtect provides extensive 24/7 enterprise-class protection for a large, varying set of sources, including virtual and physical servers, NAS and SaaS workloads, relational and distributed databases, and traditional and containerized applications.

Super fast recovery: Cohesity DataProtect offers near-zero recovery point objectives (RPOs) and near-instant recovery time objectives (RTOs) to satisfy your business service-level agreements (SLAs). Using Cohesity Helios’ unified data plane and control plane you can immediately search and recover data on any Cohesity cluster, located anywhere. DataProtect distinctively minimizes downtime by immediately mass restoring any amount of virtual machines (VMs) to any point in time, and lowers data protection costs by as much as 70% or more.

Backup as a Service: Feel free to take advantage of the elasticity of the public cloud and the cost-effective value of Cohesity DataProtect when delivered as a service. When you choose an OPEX option, you can eliminate the need for on-premises hardware. There is a SaaS option that will allow you to very simply configure your backup workloads and immediately begin protecting your vital all-important data and applications.

It’s as easy as: sign-up, connect, and protect!

Ransomware protection: Cohesity DataProtect offers stellar recovery at scale. The solution is so intuitive, it has machine learning-based anomaly detection to stop incidents before they happen. Cohesity DataProtection can provide immutable backups, Datalock write once, read many (WORM), encryption, and role-based access control (RBAC).

Cohesity DataProtect integrates well with many of today’s top solutions, including, but not limited to:

Hypervisors: VMware vSphere (5.5 and later), Microsoft Hyper-V (2019, 2016, 2012 R2), Nutanix AHV and RHeV

Kubernetes-based data and application state

Cloud: AWS EC2, Amazon RDS, Azure VM, and Google Compute

Physical: Windows, Linux(RHEL, CentOS, OEL, Debian, Ubuntu), AIX (7.x), and Solaris

Databases: Oracle (11g R2, 12c), Oracle RAC and SQL (2008 or later)

Distributed Databases (NoSQL and Hadoop): MongoDB, CouchbaseDB, Apache, Cassandra, Cloudera, and Hortonworks.

Bare Machine Recovery: Windows and Linux

Applications: MS Exchange (2010 SP3 or later), MSFT Active Directory, Microsoft 365 (Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, OneDrive, Teams, Groups), SalesForce (SFDC), and SAP HANA

Primary storage: Pure FlashArray, HPE Nimble, and Cisco Hyperflex

NAS: Pure FlashBlade, NetApp, Isilon, IBM GPFS, Google EFS, Elastifile, and generic solutions*

Reviews from Real Users

One reviewer, who is head of IT infrastructure at Kampmann says, “Cohesity really is a Next-Gen Data Management Software,” and goes on to indicate that Cohesity “works flawlessly with easy replication of backups and numerous supported backup sources.”

Another user, who is a senior network engineer at a legal firm, relates that "Cohesity is a robust and feature-rich solution"

Cohesity

PowerProtect Data Manager offers efficient data protection capabilities leveraging the latest evolution of Dell trusted protection storage architecture.

With operational simplicity, agility and flexibility at its core, PowerProtect Data Manager enables the protection, management and recovery of data in on-premises, virtualized and cloud deployments, including protection of in-cloud workloads. You can also protect cloud-native workloads across multiple public clouds via our integrated SaaS based PowerProtect Cloud Snapshot Manager.

Modernize how you protect your VMware virtual machines using Transparent Snapshots. Transparent Snapshots simplifies VM image backups for near-zero impact to your VMs or VM resources – and it works with any VMware supported storage. Transparent Snapshots innovation increases backup performance, lowers costs and simplifies management and reduces the risk of data loss.

Streamline data protection directly for applications or Kubernetes containers to Dell PowerProtect appliances and reduce application resource constraints.

Increase business resiliency with PowerProtect Cyber Recovery capabilities to rapidly recover from cyber incidents.

Modular design allows agile delivery of new features and updates. Rapidly evolve to meet future IT demands.

Software defined: Provide flexible data protection and compliance across applications and cloud-native IT environments
Multi-cloud optimized: Extend protection to the cloud with backup to cloud, backup in-cloud, long term retention and cloud disaster recovery
Self-service: Backup and restore directly from native applications
Cloud-Based Monitoring and Analytics: Telemetry, machine learning and predictive analytics to proactively take action and speed time to resolution

Reviews from Real Users

“We keep an eye on the future, and we are confident that PowerProtect Data Manager and PowerProtect DD series appliances will support our transformation project. Both products are continuously evolving and will cover our future needs, including using the cloud for data protection.” – Dimitris Mavromichalis, IT Deputy Manager at National Bank of Greece

“PowerProtect Data Manager combined with PowerProtect appliances – that’s cutting edge. That’s world leading as far as we’re concerned.” – Drew Hills, Infrastructure Analyst at USC Australia

““Most of my wish list came true with the PowerProtect Data Manager plugin for vSphere, which provides perfect integration with vCenter.” – Dave Chapman, Senior Technician at PSC Publishing

Dell Technologies

Sample Customers

Tribune Media

National Bank of Greece, USC Australia, PCS Publishing, Dell Digital IT, Rushmore Electric, Melanson Health, Arrow Electronics

Cohesity DataProtect vs. Dell PowerProtect Data Manager