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Dell PowerProtect Data Manager vs ExaGrid EX Series comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 5, 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 PowerProtect Data Manager
Ranking in Deduplication Software
3rd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
Backup and Recovery (5th)
ExaGrid EX Series
Ranking in Deduplication Software
8th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Deduplication Software category, the mindshare of Dell PowerProtect Data Manager is 10.9%, down from 14.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ExaGrid EX Series is 5.7%, down from 9.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Deduplication Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Dell PowerProtect Data Manager10.9%
ExaGrid EX Series5.7%
Other83.4%
Deduplication Software
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2767527 - PeerSpot reviewer
Lead Architect at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees
Centralized backups have simplified hybrid protection and improved ransomware recovery and compliance
The majorly needed improvement is that the product should easily simplify the upgrade and installation process. Sometimes Dell support should be more active. They take time for P1 issues. Sometimes it is not a P1 for Dell, but it is P1 for the customer, and the support needs to be very mature. That is a major drawback I see. Otherwise, the product is quite well. This is an enterprise solution and a bit costlier, but it is a solution where people should be looking into if they want to go into one single umbrella and have the centralized backup solution, which integrates with the cloud and can manage their cloud workload as well as the on-premises workload, and can be managed with one dashboard. In that way, it makes their backup management easier and they can get detected anomalies as soon as possible. This is one of the solutions I would recommend. However, if it is a very small company, they really need to think about the cost, as it is very costlier for them. But as an enterprise solution and a mid-enterprise solution, this is the solution where companies think their data is very critical, in sectors such as financial, banking, and health. This kind of sector should go with that solution because it always gives the compliances of HIPAA, GDPR, and all those things that are really required for them. From management perspectives and consolidation solution perspective, the integration is quite easy. With respect to the backup administrator and everything, it is quite straightforward. There are some layers that need to be improved and should have the internal feature instead of creating the additional VMs for the NAS backup. It should be internal and directly have the agent base or something that can communicate easily with Dell storage. If it is third-party, I would understand, but it should be able to communicate. The benefit of it is that it is easily understood and you can do knowledge transfer with a lot of documents available. The drawback of it is that when it comes to the installation, Dell always takes a lot of time for all these things with third-party involvement in between Dell and the customer. Support is the major part of it. People need to understand that when a customer raises their ticket for P1, they should treat it as a P1. Instead of by their book being P3 or P2, sometimes they only treat it as such when the complete backup server is down. However, for the customer, if it is not happening with the critical system of backup, then it is a P1 for them. From Dell support, they do not treat it as a P1, or they treat it as a P3 or P2. That kind of understanding and some agreements need to be done between the customer and Dell. It is a costlier solution. Comparatively, other backup solutions make this one of the costlier solutions. However, someone who has their enterprise data or needs protection in a good way can go for it. I could say it is a mid-enterprise or enterprise level solution. Otherwise, people do have the same solution but with differentiated features. However, it is costlier compared to the other.
DG
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.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Dell PowerProtect Data Manager helps to reduce the amount of data being transferred and stored."
"The deduplication is the most valuable feature because it helps to control the overhead."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is its integrated approach."
"I love that it has an interactive GUI, and it is not complicated to use."
"The solution adequately handles data storage."
"It satisfies my customers' scalability needs and provides interactive features, allowing efficient integration."
"Dell PowerProtect Data Manager works only with Data Domain in the backend, and both products work very well together as a very powerful solution."
"There are no issues at this point in time with Dell PowerProtect Data Manager."
"One of the most valuable aspects of the ExaGrid EX Series is the support."
"The equipment is pretty solid."
"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."
"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."
"ExaGrid EX Series and Veeam was easy to set up, and it worked seamlessly."
 

Cons

"You need to use additional software to back up entire environments."
"Management is difficult and it is hard to determine when things aren't working properly."
"They should include a feature similar to S3 bucket."
"When I raise a ticket, it sometimes takes a while to get a response."
"The technical support is okay but they can work on the response time. The last time we had an issue it took a while to receive the proper support."
"There is always room for improvement. The compression ratio should be improved as well as the efficiency."
"We have not had enough time in the product yet to be able to evaluate what would be better or worse with this solution."
"The solution should enhance its user interface and make it more flexible."
"The support is not that fast to deal with our concerns. It is next day support, they could improve on the speed."
"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."
"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 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."
"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 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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is offered at a very competitive price in the market."
"Dell PowerProtect Data Manager is not an expensive solution."
"The licensing costs and pricing model are based on capacity and the license is easy to upgrade."
"The solution is not less expensive than competitors but pricing deals are available."
"The price of Dell EMC PowerProtect Data Manager is reasonable."
"The solution is more affordable than other vendors."
"We offer monthly or yearly subscriptions. The price could be cheaper."
"I rate ExaGrid EX Series' pricing eight to nine out of ten."
"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."
"In comparison to other solutions, it's affordable. They're all too expensive."
"The current agreement has 21 terabytes of free space and it cost approximately $35,000."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Healthcare Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise10
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise2
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Dell PowerProtect Data Manager?
One notable feature is its robust backup support for Kubernetes and container environments. Additionally, PPDM stands out for its ease of deployment and management compared to other backup solution...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell PowerProtect Data Manager?
Regarding the pricing aspect of Dell PowerProtect Data Manager, I am not very happy with that; compared to some other products, it is a bit more costly, and there are definitely areas for improvement.
What needs improvement with Dell PowerProtect Data Manager?
I apologize, but I'm not in a position to answer what areas of Dell PowerProtect Data Manager I would like to see improved or enhanced. There is still a lot of features that we haven't tried yet. I...
What needs improvement with ExaGrid EX Series?
Everything can always be better, so I would give it a nine.
What is your primary use case for ExaGrid EX Series?
We used ExaGrid EX Series as a landing zone for Veeam software. Initially they did not have immutable storage, but when they released that feature, we implemented it. We used it with Veeam software...
What advice do you have for others considering ExaGrid EX Series?
I was a customer. My overall rating for ExaGrid EX Series is 9 out of 10.
 

Also Known As

PowerProtect, Dell EMC PowerProtect
EX Series
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

National Bank of Greece, USC Australia, PCS Publishing, Dell Digital IT, Rushmore Electric, Melanson Health, Arrow Electronics
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
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell PowerProtect Data Manager vs. ExaGrid EX Series and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,244 professionals have used our research since 2012.