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Commvault Cloud vs Dell PowerProtect DP (IDPA) comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 11, 2024

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

Commvault Cloud
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
3rd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
110
Ranking in other categories
eDiscovery (3rd), Cloud Backup (2nd), Disaster Recovery as a Service (2nd), File Archiving (1st), Disaster Recovery (DR) Software (3rd), SaaS Backup (1st), Threat Deception Platforms (1st), Container Backup Software (1st)
Dell PowerProtect DP (IDPA)
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
21st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Backup and Recovery category, the mindshare of Commvault Cloud is 7.5%, up from 5.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell PowerProtect DP (IDPA) is 0.6%, down from 1.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Backup and Recovery
 

Featured Reviews

Matt Reller - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides extremely fast backup, is easy to manage, and is flexible
Commvault Cloud's automated policies provide the notification we need to ensure our data is secure and managed correctly. Commvault Cloud provides excellent visibility across all of our organization's data. It is extremely important to our organization that Commvault has a unified platform that offers recovery across cloud, on-prem, and SaaS workloads. It has helped our organization improve by simplifying the way we manage our environment. We could not manage the same environment with only half of our current staff. We have yet to find anything in our environment that Commvault does not support. Commvault Cloud's Risk Analysis helps us identify, categorize, and classify sensitive data enabling us to take the appropriate actions to protect it. Commvault does a good job helping us limit our exposure and ensure compliance. Commvault has helped us reduce our data management costs significantly. Compared to Dell Avamar, the costs are vastly different. Commvault is much more cost-effective. We are licensed by capacity, so we don't have to worry about licensing different features. We have all the features that are licensed by capacity. And as far as ongoing support costs and other expenses, they are much lower than what they were with Dell Avamar. Commvault also gives us the flexibility to use any storage we want, while Avamar is tied to the Data Domain, which is not cheap to support. It has helped us reduce our backup time unless we are using Data Domain. This is because we can perform deduplication and compression on the client layer, which reduces the load on the network. We cannot do this with Data Domain. In fact, if we even attempt to perform a quick progress check before sending data to the Data Domain, the system fails completely. We learned this the hard way. We are using many more advanced features in Commvault Cloud than we ever did in Dell Avamar, simply because we had to license each feature separately in Avamar. As a result, we did not perform many backups in Avamar, such as all database backups (DB2, SAP HANA, Oracle, and SQL). These backups were performed outside of Avamar. We are now using Direct Connect agents for all of our databases. This allows us to perform incremental backups, which we could not do with the previous method. As a result, we have reduced our backup times by two-thirds, or even more in some cases. Compared to when we were backing up directly to Data Domain, Commvault is now running our backups ten times faster. This has resulted in a significant reduction in our backup times. Commvault has helped us reduce the RPO. Even in Data Domain, it has reduced our storage times by about half. It has also helped us reduce the threat detection time. We reduced the RTO significantly with Commvault. Commvault has helped us reduce downtime primarily due to the increase in the performance of resources.
SamuelThomas - PeerSpot reviewer
Ensures data safety and effective cloud integration with AI-powered protection
Dell PowerProtect DP (IDPA) offers a backup, recovery, and management tool that is very easy to use. It provides a flexible protection suite that accommodates scalability and performance needs. Integration with VMware and multi-cloud protection is effective. AI integration enhances backup operations by analyzing data and ensuring malware protection. Customers also benefit from hybrid cloud options and tiers of backup.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is just about as flexible as you can get; simple. You can put it anywhere you want. You can put it on-prem or in your cloud. I could see where a team that's looking for more of a follow the bouncy ball type of solution might get a little confused. "Oh, no. What do you mean I might have to do it this way or I can't do it that way?" Sometimes, people just want to be told what to do. For an enterprise environment, like we are at NDOT, everything we do is not standard. It is not industry standard; it is not normal. We have all kinds of one-offs. We do need flexibility in the solutions that we get. I will say that Metallic has been extremely flexible in that sense, where we are able to follow the bouncy ball if we wanted to. Obviously, we didn't. We did it our way and Metallic, as a whole solution, provided that to us with no issues."
"The email archiving feature is very smooth and better than others."
"Among the best features are the BMR (Bare Metal Recovery), Live Sync, and IntelliSnap, which is used for snapshots of hypervisor storage. It's predefined so you only need to enable it and it works. I haven't seen anything like this in other backup tools like Veritas NetBackup or Dell EMC or TSM. We will use snapshotting for all our machines."
"The ability to manage everything from a single pane of glass is another major advantage."
"Commvault integrates well with all types of operating systems and supports heterogeneous environments."
"The product has the best features for scaling up and administering all the solutions from a single platform."
"One of the most valuable features is the encryption which helps save you from ransomware. Because the data is already encrypted, it cannot be encrypted again."
"The Command Center is provided from the web interface. You can back up the data for everybody, but also you can give everybody the ability to view and restore their data. For example, if a laptop, machine, or environment is owned by X, then X can look in and see the environment and data that he has backed up. He can see everything that he owns and can manage the environment as he wishes. It gives him an excellent view of his environment and infrastructure. Also, if you are a service provider, you can back up data for multiple companies and give everyone an interface for their environment to manage, backup, and restore data. Commvault has done excellent work in this area."
"IDPA's best feature is Turbo Boost Technology. The compression and duplication features are excellent, too."
"It backs up our Windows systems and our Linux systems and everything."
"The solution is strong."
"The product is integrated with Huawei software and its backup and recovery time is very fast."
"The most valuable feature is the deduplication rate."
"We use it for complete backup and recovery. We have multiple clients and have created multiple large virtual capabilities and zoning backlogs."
"Dell PowerProtect DP (IDPA) offers a backup, recovery, and management tool that is very easy to use."
"It is very simple to perform an upgrade of the system and the environment."
 

Cons

"Commvault Complete Data Protection would benefit from improving their training resources."
"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."
"The solution requires constant attention. Commvault is very complex. We are constantly making adjustments and working through hotfixes, updates, and issues."
"There are many settings that have to be done on your own. It would benefit from a better interface."
"Commvault could benefit from increased automation to streamline processes and enhance predictability."
"The workflow has room for improvement."
"Getting my guys the right access has a learning curve. Sometimes, it is, "Oh, okay. I think I got it for you." Then, they say, "Oh, nope. I logged in but I can't see this." Then, it is, "Okay, hold on. Give me a second. Let me change that. Okay, it's this one." That learning curve has probably taken a little bit longer than some simpler things. So, Metallic has some granularity, and as a systems administrator, I appreciate that. At the same time, I also realize that I have to learn it."
"It takes a lot of steps to implement backups. We have to do a lot of planning to make the solution work properly. It takes some time to create every policy. It's an easy task, but there are many steps. It's not as easy as using Veeam."
"The price could be lowered slightly, to make it more competitive."
"We would like to see the pricing drop a bit."
"Dell PowerProtect DP (IDPA) requires more updates and innovations in AI-powered cyber resilience."
"The two-factor authentication is missing from Dell products."
"The only thing that could be improved would be the complexity of the initial setup."
"We cannot add IDPA to DPC, and each IP has a DP Central, which cannot monitor other IDPAs."
"The solution's implementation was very complicated and could be improved."
"The solution should be easier to use."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Compared with other backup technologies, Commvault is a bit more costly, but we are satisfied with the support, the services, and the features that we get with Commvault."
"The pricing has improved. It is simplified compared to the way that it was a few years ago. It is fairly straightforward and pretty easy to articulate to customers, which is handy."
"It is cheaper than NetBackup, but its price can be lower. If a good solution can be cheaper, it is always an advantage. Its licensing is on a yearly basis."
"Licensing could be better explained. Sometimes, it's unclear what features are available in different licensing models."
"The price could always be lower."
"Compared to other competitors and vendors the pricing is fair."
"It was not very popular because of its previous cost, but they have been working on the pricing, and now anyone can afford to use Commvault. They changed the modeling criteria for their pricing. Previously, there was only the capacity modeling based on your content capacity. In this case, they would give you a license and you would have to pay it. Now, most of the environment is virtualized so you can have the best CPU, VMs, etc. You buy whatever you need and pay for what you need."
"Its cost is reasonable."
"I would rate the solution's pricing a seven out of ten."
"Dell PowerProtect DP (IDPA) has a yearly subscription fee."
"We have a perpetual license. It is a capacity-based license."
"It is a cost-effective solution."
"The licensing is billed on a monthly basis. Dell is bundled so that when you order IDPA, you get everything together with the license."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
Educational Organization
24%
University
13%
Government
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Commvault?
The tool is affordable. I rate the pricing a six out of ten. Implementation requires additional costs because we need Commvault Professional Services.
What needs improvement with Commvault?
Data center backup must be improved. We also want the product to provide us with a cloud-based backup. If we use Microsoft Exchange Online for email services, we want to know how to get a backup in...
What do you like most about Commvault Complete Data Protection?
IntelliSnap and file system backups are valuable features.
What do you like most about Dell PowerProtect DP (IDPA)?
What I find valuable about Dell PowerProtect IDPA is its stability and strong performance.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell PowerProtect DP (IDPA)?
Pricing is competitive with other software vendors. The product's features, network, and VMware integration contribute to its value. There are different licensing options available, such as applian...
What needs improvement with Dell PowerProtect DP (IDPA)?
Dell PowerProtect DP (IDPA) requires more updates and innovations in AI-powered cyber resilience. While technical support is generally not poor, there are challenges with expertise in Linux-based c...
 

Also Known As

Commvault Complete Data Protection, Commvault Backup & Recovery, Commvault HyperScale X, Metallic, ThreatWise
Dell EMC IDPA, Dell IDPA, EMC IDPA
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Aberdeenshire Council, Acxiom, BAM Group Ireland, Catholic Education Diocese of Parramatta, CI Investments, Clifford Chance, American Municipal Power, American Pacific Mortgage, AstraZeneca, Dongbu Steel, Denver Health, Dow Jones, Emirates Steel, Penn State Health, Prime Healthcare, Sonic Healthcare, Sony Network Communications, TiVO, UCONN Health, The Weitz Company
Under Armour, Christian Brothers University, Presidio
Find out what your peers are saying about Commvault Cloud vs. Dell PowerProtect DP (IDPA) and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
857,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.