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 8.1, while ExaGrid is ranked #8 with an average rating of 9.0. Dell Technologies holds a 10.1% mindshare in DS, compared to ExaGrid’s 7.3% 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

5,260 Views
1,946 Comparison Views

87% willing to recommend

ExaGrid EX Series

Read 6 ExaGrid EX Series reviews

1,847 Views
1,810 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: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Dell Avamar vs. ExaGrid EX Series

September 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 (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 October 2025, in the Deduplication Software category, the mindshare of Dell Avamar is 10.1%, up from 9.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ExaGrid EX Series is 7.3%, down from 9.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Deduplication Software Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Dell Avamar	10.1%
ExaGrid EX Series	7.3%
Other	82.6%

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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Rastislav Maniak

Partial Owner at Storage One

Improves backup and recovery time and integration with other products is good

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 was asking about the mutual appliance, which would provide the same features as the integrated client without the hardware. This would allow it to be used in the public cloud, which I heard might be available soon. However, the private cloud is not reliable.

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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

"Centralization is Avamar's biggest advantage. It moves data to a central location from various geographical locations."

"The product is very powerful and offers very good performance."

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

"The most valuable feature for me is the backup functionality."

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

"It is one of the best solutions for backing up Oracle and other servers."

"They are extremely reliable and scalable — they provide the best de-duplication on the market."

"I like Dell EMC Avamar's compression of data."

More Dell Avamar pros

"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 features of the solution are deduplication and landing zone."

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

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

"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

"The technical support from Dell is very poor, especially in terms of response time."

"Some customers need to back up to tape, but Avamar lacks support, so it costs a lot."

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

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

"I have found the support from Dell EMC Avamar to be not as good as Veeam. The time it takes to receive support could be improved. However, once we have the support the agents are knowledgeable and helpful."

"Compared with Cohesity or Rubrik, which have some continuous data protection for backup and replication, this solution tends to lack in this area."

"There are limitations when trying to use this solution with Hyper-V."

"The licensing price must be reduced."

More Dell Avamar cons

"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."

"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

"The cost is high."

"The price of this product should be lower."

"The price is fair."

"The solution is not expensive for the value one gets."

"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."

"It is easy to use."

"The solution is costly."

"It is very expensive. It's a trust based licensing. So that's an ethical challenge."

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."

"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."

"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."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Government

10%

Computer Software Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Educational Organization

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.

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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?

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Comparisons

Dell PowerProtect Data Manager vs Dell Avamar

Compared 38% of the time

Veeam Data Platform vs Dell Avamar

Compared 13% of the time

Commvault Cloud vs Dell Avamar

Compared 7% of the time

Rubrik vs Dell Avamar

Compared 7% of the time

Dell NetWorker vs Dell Avamar

Compared 7% of the time

More Dell Avamar Competitors

Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) vs ExaGrid EX Series

Compared 50% of the time

HPE StoreOnce vs ExaGrid EX Series

Compared 18% 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

October 2025

Download Dell Avamar product report

Buyer's Guide

ExaGrid EX Series

October 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

September 2025

Free Report: Dell Avamar vs. ExaGrid EX Series

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