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Dell Avamar 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

Dell Avamar
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
7th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
89
Ranking in other categories
Deduplication Software (3rd)
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 May 2025, in the Backup and Recovery category, the mindshare of Dell Avamar is 3.4%, down from 3.7% 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

Rahul Sarangdhar - PeerSpot reviewer
Works excellently for on-prem backup but not the best for Azure backups
Avamar is not the best tool when it comes to taking Azure backups. Like Commvault, if Avamar can support VM-level backups for the cloud, that would make it a bit better. There is another Dell EMC tool called NetWorker, which is a bit centralized tool. If you deploy a storage node locally, you can use the same UI tool for central management, but in the case of Avamar, it needs to be deployed individually on a site, irrespective of whether it's small or big. So, if I have 10 sites, I have to manage 10 Avamar. That's a bit of a headache. The Dell EMC solution professionals who connect with the clients should suggest NetWorker to clients with multiple sites rather than Avamar. That's because NetWorker gives more centralized control, but they keep recommending Avamar, which isn't the best practice. There are no free or cheaper training plans. Unless your company is a partner with Dell, you don't get the student guide training, etc. Their administrator guide does not have all the information required for a new person. It doesn't cover the basics. The student guide is good, but it's not free. If you are a partner, only then it's free. Otherwise, there is a cost of $2,000 to $3,000. For people who are new to Avamar, there should be some resources to enable them to study on their own at least 50% of the basics. If I want to study Commvault, I get so many documents and resources to study, but in the case of Dell EMC products, there aren't any free resources. Only if you're a partner, the resources are available for you to learn. The user manuals and administrator guides are just for deployment. They aren't good for learning the basics for a fresher.
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

"I always recommend Dell Avamar to our enterprise customers because the product is costly, and enterprise customers can afford it."
"We love the instant recovery functionality. It's very useful."
"The stability of Dell EMC Avamar is very good."
"The most valuable feature for me is the backup functionality."
"Avamar's source side deduplication is very strong, it can easily back up remote sites' data, and not much bandwidth is required on the Avamar side."
"Scheduling is valuable. It does a good job of backing up, and it does a good job of restoring. Nobody has got a problem with that. The agents are well supported."
"Dell Avamar has a push upgrade feature that lets you simultaneously push updates to thousands of clients. I also found the self-service part of Dell Avamar helpful."
"The solution is very user-friendly."
"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."
"The most valuable feature is the deduplication rate."
"We don't need to manage different devices."
"Instead of four or five tools, consisting of backup software, storage where the backup resides, and a separate system for reporting and central monitoring, they all now come in the virtual edition for IDP."
"It backs up our Windows systems and our Linux systems and everything."
"Dell PowerProtect is stable and scalable."
"The product is integrated with Huawei software and its backup and recovery time is very fast."
 

Cons

"The product could be improved by simplifying the components available."
"Avamar is dependent on the hardware. It can't be implemented with ordinary storage. It can only be implemented with an EMC product. We want to have a backup solution that allows us to use independent storage and other hardware. It would be good if they can simplify its technology and make it possible to implement it with another storage. This is probably not possible because Avamar is an EMC product, and EMC would like to sell its own products."
"If you don't have DPA, the reporting features are not as user-friendly, so reporting is something that they can improve on."
"The challenges we do face typically revolve around aligning specific features with our accustomed tool usage."
"When you get down to doing certain things, such as somebody wants a particular file restored, the process by which you do that is stupid. You kind of have to know exactly where to look for in order to find it. Even on older backup products that I've used, I didn't have that kind of problem. If we were looking for a file with a particular kind of a name, the solution would find that file anywhere irrespective of where it resides within the backup system. So, we didn't have to know the name of the specific server, the specific timeframe, almost all the characters of the file name, and all kinds of data in order to find a file. In Avamar, we got to know these details. We've gone around and around with them on that, and their attitude seems to be that it is working just fine. There is nothing for them to improve. The organizational system of other products that I'm working with, such as Zerto and Cohesity, seems to be centered around the tasks that you would most commonly do and want to do, as opposed to we've laid it out in a really neat technical hierarchy."
"The technical support from Dell is very poor, especially in terms of response time."
"If you need to pull data out of it to offload to tapes, that's messy. You have a mechanism for it, but it is painful."
"The product could offer more integration capabilities."
"The product's index master feature needs improvement."
"Dell PowerProtect DP (IDPA) requires more updates and innovations in AI-powered cyber resilience."
"The two-factor authentication is missing from Dell products."
"We would like to see the pricing drop a bit."
"After resizing and compression, the system continuously runs out of space. Dell EMC doesn't do automatic cleanup or other things, so we constantly have to manually go in there or work with Dell support on this. The solution has not been working as advertised."
"We cannot add IDPA to DPC, and each IP has a DP Central, which cannot monitor other IDPAs."
"The only thing that could be improved would be the complexity of the initial setup."
"There is room for improvement in terms of network connectivity."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is very expensive. It's a trust based licensing. So that's an ethical challenge."
"The current pricing is generally satisfactory."
"It was approximately $70-80,000 when it was under support, but right now EMC has not been supporting this product for two years."
"The cost is high."
"When it comes to competition the price is not what is important, it's not the problem."
"It is easy to use."
"The price of this product should be lower."
"Dell Avamar, including its virtual add-ons and cloud-based offerings, is cheaper than other solutions, but in the end, the price still depends on your use case. Price-wise, I'm rating Dell Avamar as six out of ten."
"I would rate the solution's pricing a seven out of ten."
"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."
"Dell PowerProtect DP (IDPA) has a yearly subscription fee."
"We have a perpetual license. It is a capacity-based license."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Government
11%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Educational Organization
29%
University
12%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What's the difference between Dell EMC Avamar and Dell EMC NetWorker?
From the very beginning, Dell EMC NetWorker considers users and those who might potentially become users. In terms of both pricing and setup, this product offers an experience that is significantly...
What do you like most about Dell Avamar?
Easy to configure and highly reliable for backup.
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

Avamar
Dell EMC IDPA, Dell IDPA, EMC IDPA
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Dodge County, St Laurence's College, FieldCore (a GE Company), Comanche County Memorial Hospital, Getronics, Lewisville Independent School District, EnvisionRxOptions, Cincinnati Bell Technology Solutions
Under Armour, Christian Brothers University, Presidio
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Avamar vs. Dell PowerProtect DP (IDPA) and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
851,604 professionals have used our research since 2012.