Dell Avamar vs ExaGrid EX Series comparison

Dell Technologies and ExaGrid are both solutions in the Deduplication Software category. Dell Technologies is ranked #6 with an average rating of 7.9, while ExaGrid is ranked #8 with an average rating of 9.0. Dell Technologies holds a 10.8% mindshare in DS, compared to ExaGrid’s 5.7% mindshare. Additionally, 87% of Dell Technologies users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of ExaGrid users who would recommend it.

Dell Avamar

Read 90 Dell Avamar reviews

5,936 Views
2,256 Comparison Views

87% willing to recommend

ExaGrid EX Series

Read 7 ExaGrid EX Series reviews

1,742 Views
1,707 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Dell Avamar

ExaGrid EX Series

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 5, 2024

Dell Avamar and ExaGrid EX Series compete in the data backup and recovery market. Dell Avamar often holds an edge in pricing and support, while ExaGrid EX Series stands out for its advanced features and rapid recovery capabilities, appealing to businesses with significant data volume needs.

Features: Dell Avamar offers source-side deduplication, integration with VMware, and efficient data protection, reducing network bandwidth requirements. ExaGrid's features include a landing zone technology for faster backups, an adaptive deduplication for optimal storage use, and scalability that grows with the organization.

Room for Improvement: Dell Avamar can improve by expanding its plugin support, enhancing performance in non-VM environments, and refining its user interface for more intuitive navigation. ExaGrid could enhance its dashboard functionality, improve data deduplication for long-term storage, and streamline processes for even faster initial deployments.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Dell Avamar is praised for its smooth integration into existing environments and responsive customer support. ExaGrid boasts a straightforward deployment process, facilitated by pre-configured appliances, with customer service noted for its proactive and hands-on approach, ensuring efficient implementation and support.

Pricing and ROI: Dell Avamar is attractive for its lower initial costs, appealing to budget-conscious buyers, with ROI enhanced by storage efficiency and deduplication. Conversely, ExaGrid, with a higher initial investment, justifies its ROI through significantly reduced backup times and enhanced scalability, suitable for businesses focused on long-term growth and performance optimization.

To learn more, read our detailed Dell Avamar vs. ExaGrid EX Series Report (Updated: March 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Dell Avamar vs. ExaGrid EX Series

March 2026

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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

Dell Avamar

Ranking in Deduplication Software

6th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Backup and Recovery (11th)

ExaGrid EX Series

Ranking in Deduplication Software

8th

Average Rating

9.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Deduplication Software category, the mindshare of Dell Avamar is 10.8%, up from 9.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ExaGrid EX Series is 5.7%, down from 9.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Deduplication Software Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Dell Avamar	10.8%
ExaGrid EX Series	5.7%
Other	83.5%

Deduplication Software

Featured Reviews

SamuelThomas

Consultant at Key Information Technology L.L.C.

Have supported critical environments despite room for improvement in legacy backup options

It is very efficient in cyber resilience. Deduplication, automation, and everything is very efficient. It is multi-cloud enabled and has broad protections. The software delivers flexible and efficient backup and recovery options through its cyber resiliency features. Dell PowerProtect Manager provides insights in managing backup processes. Its encryption mechanisms are very efficient, helping to secure sensitive data. Its integration with Dell EMC Data Domain is very good. It is easy to integrate with Data Domain. Multi-cloud options are enabled, and backup in cloud options exist in Dell Avamar.

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Daniel Gillber

Information Technology advisor at Lotus Consulting

Improvements in data storage efficiency and customer support experience

ExaGrid EX Series and Veeam was easy to set up, and it worked seamlessly. It was very simple to use. We rarely needed to touch the ExaGrid boxes, except for upgrades. With the systems engineer from ExaGrid, and with our common knowledge of backup software, it was very easy to use. The performance was good, the interface was good, and the GUI was good. When ExaGrid introduced the air gapped feature, it was almost complete. Almost every hardware vendor has an air gapped feature, but they were significantly ahead of other vendors. The air gapped and immutable storage are very nice features. The price compared to other competitors was good with better features. It is not a cheap product, but compared to the features, it is a good competitor.

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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 solution is very user-friendly."

"This product is very easy to use; the interface is easier to use than other backup solutions, and the product is mature and can handle all of our data protection."

"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."

"We've been using this solution to backup our servers. It is a simple backup and restore data application."

"We used Dell Avamar for backup and recovery of a virtual environment."

"I think the biggest advantage it offers is backup, for end-users as well as computers, not only servers and storage paths."

"It's simple to configure."

"I have found the product to be scalable."

More Dell Avamar pros

"ExaGrid has improved my organization in the way that we get reliable backups with very little administration."

"The most valuable features of the solution are deduplication and landing zone."

"The solution easily integrates with the backup targets, such as Veeam."

"It is a solid and a quite simple solution, which is a good combination. The customers like the simplicity and its scale-out capacity. They like the support pricing, and even the extension capacity pricing, a fixed price, which the executive is offering in Czech market."

"ExaGrid EX Series and Veeam was easy to set up, and it worked seamlessly."

"The tool has improved backup and recovery times. One of the key features contributing to this improvement is the landing zone and deduplication retention zone. When data is in the landing zone, the process is fast, ensuring smooth backup and recovery operations at high speeds. However, the process becomes slower for long-term backups moved to the retention zone due to fragmentation. So, if the data is older than a few days, the speed may be limited, especially for non-deduplicated data in the landing zone."

"One of the main features is the landing zone, it is a particular space where the information is not duplicated."

"The most valuable feature is the ease of use and data deduplication. It's extremely easy to use and does a very good job of data deduplication and compression."

Cons

"It's an expensive solution."

"The product could be improved by simplifying the components available."

"The configuration and expansion aspects of the solution need improvement. They're complicated and don't really integrate well."

"The stability could improve, a lot of scheduled backups failed at one time."

"Reporting in Dell Avamar needs improvement. The current reporting tool is very basic, and you have to dig deep into each function to get the information you need. For example, getting the status of failed and succeeded backups is very difficult in Avamar compared to Veeam. As for additional functionality, I would suggest improving WAN optimization. It's very important for getting offline or off-site backups. It should also include a tool to check for ransomware which would be beneficial. If a backup is vulnerable to ransomware, there should be a way to detect it, like using ARR rules to ensure your backup is ransomware-free. I haven't had any experience integrating Dell Avamar with AI solutions. It’s also a good point that Avamar doesn't offer such integrations, which is an area where Dell could improve."

"The solution is not very strong on the Cloud. They should work out how they can use this as a backup as a service."

"It would be helpful if there was cloud support."

"The tool's interface is very much in a spreadsheet format...reporting is an area with shortcomings requiring improvement."

More Dell Avamar cons

"When speaking about a scale-out, you want to have better equipment. You cannot just add a disc to the foreign equipment. You have to buy another one and put it together, like parallel."

"The one place where we are sometimes losing the opportunity with ExaGrid is that a few customers still require a fiber channel connectivity, which is not always possible."

"I would like for them to develop direct cloud integration with a third-party cloud. Direct integration with AWS and other cloud providers."

"The product's documentation can be made more precise."

"The tool reduces storage footprint. However, clients are now storing data for longer durations with increasing requirements to retain backups for longer periods, particularly as a defense against ransomware attacks. As a result, the retention zone with duplicated data is experiencing more demand, leading to space constraints. This necessitates using higher-end, more expensive models to address the issue."

"I would like for them to develop direct cloud integration with a third-party cloud. Direct integration with AWS and other cloud providers."

"The solution could improve by switching to a flash-type solution rather than the spinning drives that they currently use. However, we have not had any failure with the spinning drives. The flash-type drives are more up-to-date and are something that is in their roadmap."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Dell Avamar is expensive."

"Its licensing is weird. It is not just the licenses; we also purchase hardware. With most software products, such as Veeam, Commvault, and Data Protector, there is no hardware purchase at the same time. Because Avamar and Data Domain are tied together, they have an integrated pipe. You can separate them, but basically, they're designed to work as a couple. Because the Data Domain backend is designed to do dedupe and compression, we get 60:1. When you count it, you count it as a straight compression, but of course, that's with dedupe and some other stuff. You have to buy the hardware, the licensing, and the software at the same time. So, it's not just software."

"Avamar's pricing is quite competitive compared to other vendors."

"Licensing fees are paid annually."

"Its price should be reduced. It would be good if you could pay as per usage, and there is a subscription model like VMware. There should be some flexibility because sometimes, the customer only uses the backup for one month or three months. Currently, I have to pay whether I use it or not. Its licensing should be flexible and based on consumption."

"I'm not sure, but perhaps the pricing could be done better at the moment."

"On a scale of one to five, I would rate the pricing policy of Dell Avamar as five. The solution has a very good price, and a lot of improvements were done to it."

"I rate the tool's price as a three out of ten if one means expensive and ten means it is a cheaply priced tool."

More Dell Avamar pricing and cost advice

"I rate ExaGrid EX Series' pricing eight to nine out of ten."

"The current agreement has 21 terabytes of free space and it cost approximately $35,000."

"My company had to pay 1,60,000 EUR for the system we use, and the payment was made just once for the system and five years of full support."

"In comparison to other solutions, it's affordable. They're all too expensive."

"The previous solutions I have used both included the Backup Software and the Appliance making it hard to compare to this solution. However, overall the solution is reasonably priced for the features you receive. ExaGrid EX Series is priced better than HP, Dell, and possibly Commvault which I have compared in the past."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Government

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

15%

Computer Software Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	26
Midsize Enterprise	18
Large Enterprise	48

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	5
Midsize Enterprise	2

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...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell EMC Avamar?

The cost is very significant, and it could be lower.

See all answers

What do you like most about Dell Avamar?

Easy to configure and highly reliable for backup.

See all answers

What do you like most about ExaGrid EX Series?

The tool has improved backup and recovery times. One of the key features contributing to this improvement is the landing zone and deduplication retention zone. When data is in the landing zone, the...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ExaGrid EX Series?

I rate ExaGrid EX Series' pricing eight to nine out of ten.

See all answers

What needs improvement with ExaGrid EX Series?

Everything can always be better, so I would give it a nine.

See all answers

Comparisons

Dell PowerProtect Data Manager vs Dell Avamar

Compared 34% of the time

Rubrik vs Dell Avamar

Compared 6% of the time

Veeam Data Platform vs Dell Avamar

Compared 6% of the time

Commvault Cloud vs Dell Avamar

Compared 4% of the time

Dell PowerProtect Data Domain vs Dell Avamar

Compared 3% of the time

More Dell Avamar Competitors

Dell PowerProtect Data Domain vs ExaGrid EX Series

Compared 31% of the time

HPE StoreOnce vs ExaGrid EX Series

Compared 19% of the time

Quantum DXi Series vs ExaGrid EX Series

Compared 14% of the time

Veritas NetBackup Appliance vs ExaGrid EX Series

Compared 8% of the time

NetApp Cloud Backup vs ExaGrid EX Series

Compared 2% of the time

More ExaGrid EX Series Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Dell Avamar

March 2026

Download Dell Avamar product report

Buyer's Guide

ExaGrid EX Series

March 2026

Download ExaGrid EX Series product report

Also Known As

Avamar

EX Series

Overview

Dell Avamar data protection software delivers flexible and efficient backup and recovery operations that can scale from daily backup protection for endpoints to high-performance protection for large enterprises with diverse applications and workloads. With application consistent recovery, automation and fast backup and restores, Avamar can help you meet your SLAs and optimize your backup and recovery processes

If you are deploying all or part of your backup environment to the cloud, Avamar enables you to make the most of your cloud investment, enabling replication, disaster recovery and long-term retention for customers using AWS, Microsoft Azure or Google Cloud.

Avamar is available as part of Dell Data Protection Suite, which offers comprehensive data protection software applications and tools. Avamar is delivered as software and as a virtual edition.

Dell Technologies

The ExaGrid EX Series hyper-converged secondary storage for backup product line consists of eight appliance models. Each appliance is sized for a full backup and for long-term retention. Any ExaGrid appliance can be mixed and matched in the same scale-out system with any other size or age appliance, allowing customers to buy what they need as they need it. This pay-as-you-grow model allows up to 25 appliances in a single scale-out system.

ExaGrid

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

NCI Group, North Attleborough Public School, North Kingstown School Department, NPS Pharmaceuticals, Prudential Douglas Elliman, Rathbone Brothers PLC, Rio Hondo College, Ruder Finn, Sarah Lawrence College

Buyer's Guide

Dell Avamar vs. ExaGrid EX Series

March 2026

Free Report: Dell Avamar vs. ExaGrid EX Series

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