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 8.3, while ExaGrid is ranked #8 with an average rating of 9.0. Dell Technologies holds a 9.6% mindshare in DS, compared to ExaGrid’s 8.0% 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 89 Dell Avamar reviews

5,750 Views
2,128 Comparison Views

87% willing to recommend

ExaGrid EX Series

Read 6 ExaGrid EX Series reviews

2,016 Views
1,976 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: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Dell Avamar vs. ExaGrid EX Series

July 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

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Backup and Recovery (7th)

ExaGrid EX Series

Ranking in Deduplication Software

8th

Average Rating

9.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Deduplication Software category, the mindshare of Dell Avamar is 9.6%, up from 8.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ExaGrid EX Series is 8.0%, down from 9.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Deduplication Software

Featured Reviews

Ayodeji Oyewole

Managing Director at Atlantic factorial

Reliable with good backups but has occasional failures

I use Dell Avamar primarily for backup and recovery The most valuable feature for me is the backup functionality. It gives large enterprises the comfort of knowing their workloads are being backed up. There are instances where backups fail on certain applications, which is an area that could be…

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Daan Lieshout

Server and Storage Specialist at a manufacturing company with 201-500 employees

With great features like deduplication and landing zone, the tool also provides stability and scalability

Speed-wise, ExaGrid is much faster than the other solutions in the market. When you choose between or from several different manufacturers, you need to understand a little bit about how the product exactly works and why its speed can be so high while being able to compare it to other solutions, allowing you to know of the backup window if you ever need it. You have to understand how it works and the product's preferences, even though the price may be slightly higher. Learning about the solution is not at all a problem, but when you open a console, you see so many things, and in the beginning you don't understand it all. Later on, it becomes more usable when you start understanding it. In general, ExaGrid provides you with a lot more information than any other system in the market. It is difficult to say what is additionally required in the solution because, presently, it has a lot of things like immutability, anti-hacking, and retention. The solution does put efforts towards improvement. The product's interface provides you with a proper overview of the deduplication rate and the status of how many storage systems you are left with through a visual screen, which is more than enough. When you go deeper, you can access all the enhanced consoles. The product can easily be integrated with third-party products because ExaGrid has all its best practice documents for integrating it with many other products. I rate the overall product a nine out of ten.

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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

"Client deduplication."

"The solution is very stable."

"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."

"The deduplication feature is the best aspect of the solution."

"It is a cost-effective solution."

"The solution integrates well with Unix, Windows, Hyper-V and VM."

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

"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."

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."

"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."

"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."

Cons

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

"I think they could also move more towards cloud solutions. It already has some cloud tiering, but I think that could be more extensive. They should work with all cloud providers and I think in the future they will be on all cloud platforms."

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

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

"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 licensing price must be reduced."

"The user interface still needs to have some level of improvement. It could be more user-friendly and intuitive."

"This solution could improve by introducing daily verifications and another repository."

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 product's documentation can be made more precise."

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

"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 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 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

"It might not be beneficial to smaller businesses due to its high cost."

"When it comes to competition the price is not what is important, it's not the problem."

"Dell Avamar is a moderately priced solution."

"The current pricing is generally satisfactory."

"Regarding pricing, I would say Avamar is slightly expensive compared to its functionalities. It's not high-priced or low-priced but somewhere in between."

"Licensing was generally on a per VM or terabyte basis. They changed their licensing model a couple of times and turned it into socket-based licensing, which is an improvement in their licensing model."

"The cost is high."

"Dell Avamar is expensive."

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."

"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."

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

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Government

11%

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Government

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...

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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.

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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?

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 r...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 36% of the time

Veeam Data Platform vs Dell Avamar

Compared 14% of the time

Dell NetWorker vs Dell Avamar

Compared 8% of the time

Commvault Cloud vs Dell Avamar

Compared 6% of the time

Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) vs Dell Avamar

Compared 5% of the time

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Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) vs ExaGrid EX Series

Compared 47% of the time

HPE StoreOnce vs ExaGrid EX Series

Compared 21% of the time

Quantum DXi Series vs ExaGrid EX Series

Compared 15% of the time

NetApp FAS Series vs ExaGrid EX Series

Compared 6% of the time

Veritas NetBackup Appliance vs ExaGrid EX Series

Compared 6% of the time

More ExaGrid EX Series Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Dell Avamar

August 2025

Download Dell Avamar product report

Buyer's Guide

ExaGrid EX Series

August 2025

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

July 2025

Free Report: Dell Avamar vs. ExaGrid EX Series

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Avamar vs. ExaGrid EX Series and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.

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