Dell Avamar vs ExaGrid EX Series comparison

Dell Technologies and ExaGrid are both solutions in the Deduplication Software category. Dell Technologies is ranked #5 with an average rating of 8.0, while ExaGrid is ranked #8 with an average rating of 9.0. Dell Technologies holds a 10.3% mindshare in DS, compared to ExaGrid’s 6.4% 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

5,396 Views
1,943 Comparison Views

87% willing to recommend

ExaGrid EX Series

Read 7 ExaGrid EX Series reviews

1,695 Views
1,661 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: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Dell Avamar vs. ExaGrid EX Series

December 2025

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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

5th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Backup and Recovery (9th)

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 January 2026, in the Deduplication Software category, the mindshare of Dell Avamar is 10.3%, up from 8.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ExaGrid EX Series is 6.4%, down from 9.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Deduplication Software Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Dell Avamar	10.3%
ExaGrid EX Series	6.4%
Other	83.3%

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

"Quick incremental backups and product replication are the two highlights of the product. Once you capture a full backup, incrementals are pretty quick. It is fairly efficient from that perspective."

"The most valuable feature is the virtual backup."

"I found the most valuable features of Dell Avamar are the user-friendly interface and ease to use. Our clients have administrated this software and there is no additional training required."

"The stability is okay."

"Client deduplication."

"Dell Avamar has helped our organization by allowing us to do backups."

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

"The solution is easy to use and has high performance."

More Dell Avamar pros

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

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

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

Cons

"Setup and deployment of this solution is complex and requires expert engineers."

"Dell Avamar could improve by adding more backup features."

"A huge storage space needs to be bought with Dell Avamar, even when it's unnecessary for an organization"

"The solution could improve by having better integration and more flexibility."

"It's very slow to backup and store information. It has two consoles and an application which are more difficult to use than a solution like Veeam."

"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."

"I would like to see better integration with third-party applications and platforms."

"We have had a lot of problems with the Dell EMC Avamar solution. The snapshots are not being erased after backup."

More Dell Avamar cons

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

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

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's a very high-end solution and comparable to Rubrik and Cohesity."

"Dell's pricing structure is not overly expensive."

"It is expensive. The maintenance comes with it for five years. So, you buy the whole thing for five years, and your maintenance is included with it, but it's a big chunk of change upfront. We like capital expenses because we can CapEx them. We pay once every five years, so we spend a big chunk of change. You'd have to divide that out by the five years to come up with how much it costs. It's just about three-quarters of a million dollars for five years."

"It is expensive. Its cost is the main thing."

"The price of this product should be lower."

"The current pricing is generally satisfactory."

"The cost is high."

"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."

More Dell Avamar pricing and cost advice

"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."

"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."

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

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

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

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Government

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Energy/Utilities Company

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.

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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 37% of the time

Veeam Data Platform vs Dell Avamar

Compared 8% of the time

Rubrik vs Dell Avamar

Compared 7% of the time

Commvault Cloud vs Dell Avamar

Compared 5% of the time

Dell PowerProtect Data Domain vs Dell Avamar

Compared 5% of the time

More Dell Avamar Competitors

Dell PowerProtect Data Domain vs ExaGrid EX Series

Compared 39% of the time

HPE StoreOnce vs ExaGrid EX Series

Compared 19% of the time

Quantum DXi Series vs ExaGrid EX Series

Compared 16% of the time

Veritas NetBackup Appliance vs ExaGrid EX Series

Compared 8% of the time

More ExaGrid EX Series Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Dell Avamar

January 2026

Download Dell Avamar product report

Buyer's Guide

ExaGrid EX Series

January 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

December 2025

Free Report: Dell Avamar vs. ExaGrid EX Series

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