Dell NetWorker Reviews

My main use cases for Dell NetWorker include handling initial bugs in older versions, but with new releases, it proves to be stable, fine, and flexible.

The most useful features of Dell NetWorker for me are its support for all platforms, allowing me to take backups of Oracle, SQL, and AS/400, so it is flexible.

I use Dell NetWorker analytics tools as we have NSR get and a reporting tool, but I do not see a specific tool for analytics; there is only something for troubleshooters, such as getting configuration guides.

Regarding the effectiveness of Dell NetWorker in terms of role-based access controls, I have experience with it, but I find it somewhat lacking in flexibility as it offers limited features, and I would rate it around seven out of ten.

It is not that there is something wrong with the role-based access controls in Dell NetWorker, but it lacks many permissions or roles to assign, providing options only for administrator or user.

To improve Dell NetWorker for the next release, I recommend enhancing flexibility in the policy, allowing selection of multiple options within the same policy, and addressing issues like the DNS lookup dependency to make it more controllable from Dell NetWorker itself rather than relying on other applications.

Looking forward, I would like to see improved policy features and a more enhanced GUI, as it is still slow.

I have been working with Dell NetWorker for almost eight years.

I have faced some problems with Dell NetWorker, particularly in older versions where there were bugs, but the newer version is a bit more stable.

In terms of stability, I would say it is about 80% stable now.

Dell NetWorker is scalable in the sense that I can migrate to a higher spec server.

I have contacted Dell support for some Dell NetWorker issues.

I think the support provided by Dell is good when compared to other vendors, so I have a positive view of it.

Positive

Before working with Dell NetWorker, I have worked with Veritas, but I have not evaluated other tools afterwards.

While Veritas does have some more features, I prefer Dell NetWorker for my current needs.

The initial setup of Dell NetWorker is very straightforward and not complex at all.

I have seen some return on investment with Dell NetWorker during this period.

However, I have not really calculated a precise return on investment.

Regarding the pricing of Dell NetWorker, it depends on the deal or negotiation we have with the vendor, making it reasonable, although I cannot make a definitive decision without knowing the specifics of each deal.

I do use the deduplication feature, but not from Dell NetWorker; it comes from the back end Data Domain, which provides the deduplication capabilities.

In terms of Dell NetWorker's backup and recovery integration with cloud platforms, we are not using cloud services; our operations are entirely on-premises.

For troubleshooting, I do use the tools available in Dell NetWorker.

I recommend Dell NetWorker to others considering it, but emphasize that it depends on their environment and applications; the decision is not straightforward and should consider factors like the size of the company and frequency of backups. In general, I have no problem recommending it as it competes well with other market solutions.

Overall, I would rate Dell NetWorker eight out of ten.

We are using Dell NetWorker for backup. We have a huge data center hosting big databases, and those backups get stored on this centralized Dell NetWorker.

At this moment, regarding affordability, it is fine. I have noticed both money and time savings. That is the point we need from your side - if we move to this, will it help us? Along with that, in the same pricing, are we going to get more features, integration enhancement, and other capabilities? The main advantages of the product are price and support.

From my personal experience, I am still in the phase of discovery, as I joined some months back. I need more time. I was looking at feasibility studies when we check points regarding customization. When it comes to customization, if I have a site in the US and want a site in Europe somewhere, and need a DR setup, we need to examine how backups can be restored quickly, along with modification and integration capabilities with Oracle products and Microsoft products that we are using.

Regarding disadvantages, these points relate to integration with all products. In some use cases, it is supporting, and in some cases, it is not supporting. Another case involves redundancy and storage addition - it should be dynamic.

I would prefer that it should be compatible with most technologies, such as vendors Oracle, Microsoft, and others. For integration, we need to check the alerting system capabilities. Some scripting integration and customization would be beneficial so Dell NetWorker can throw us alerts and manage retention. Retention should allow us to store the data for specific periods of time.

Regarding scalability, I am not satisfied with that option. That is the current problem. We are not so scalable, so we want a scalable solution. With data growth being exponential, we want scalability to be present in the existing system, which can support growth for a given period of time before being reclaimed.

I am new to the environment and organization, having joined six months ago. However, Dell NetWorker has been in use at the organization for approximately nine or ten years.

Regarding whether Dell NetWorker is easy to set up, I am not aware of this information. I would need to check and provide feedback later.

Stability assessment is still ongoing. It would be too early to make definitive statements, but I think it is stable at this moment with no major issues. I have seen some performance issues, but I am not certain whether these are entirely related to the product. Investigation is still ongoing.

I am not satisfied with the scalability option. That is the current problem as we are not so scalable. We want a scalable solution that can handle exponential data growth. We want scalability to be present in the existing system that can support growth for a given period of time before being reclaimed.

The technical support from Dell is satisfactory. On a scale from 1 to 10, I would rate the support as eight.

Positive

I want to see the comparison between Dell NetWorker and NetBackup regarding their overall properties and cost differences. I am trying to understand these aspects. I would appreciate receiving documentation that can help drive this understanding, including a comparison of Dell NetWorker and NetBackup from Veritas.

The company has been using it as a backup solution for eight or nine years. I am still in the phase of discovery since joining six months ago. I am conducting feasibility studies regarding customization requirements. When it comes to customization, having sites in the US and Europe for DR setup requires examining how backups can be restored quickly, along with modification and integration with Oracle and Microsoft products.

We are not using deduplication technology. The disadvantages include integration limitations with various products, where support varies by use case. Redundancy and storage addition should be dynamic.

The solution should be compatible with most technologies from vendors such as Oracle and Microsoft. Integration should include alerting system capabilities and scripting integration for customization, allowing Dell NetWorker to provide alerts and retention management.

The solution is deployed on-premises. Regarding stability, while investigation is ongoing, the system appears stable with some performance issues that require further investigation.

Technical support from Dell rates as eight out of ten. Overall, I would rate Dell NetWorker as seven out of ten. I am not interested in being a reference for Dell at this time.

Currently, in my organization, I am using Dell NetWorker for open-source solutions like PostgreSQL and MySQL databases, and some large VM environments. It also supports the Dell library and is used for the library archiving system.

Dell NetWorker allows for extensive customization, supporting various open-source databases like PostgreSQL. The solution minimizes operational issues and saves energy and money by streamlining backup and recovery processes. It has a beneficial archiving system supporting the Dell library, and the solution integrates well with open-source environments.

I love the support of integration with open-source solutions. However, I am not very satisfied with the support. The interface on the Java application makes it difficult, whereas the web interface is simple to use.

I have been using Dell NetWorker for three and a half years. I worked on NetWorker deployment and have hands-on experience in its implementation across different companies, including for the Ethiopia Pharmacy Institute and the Ethiopia Community Authority.

The solution is stable and reliable.

Dell NetWorker is very scalable and flexible, deserving a high rating for its scalability.

The technical support is very helpful. Despite some challenges in the past, the support team is knowledgeable, and they escalate issues to experienced engineers if necessary.

Neutral

I have previously worked with solutions like Veeam and Veritas. However, when compared with NetWorker, it offers more solutions, particularly for open-source environments, making NetWorker more recommendable.

The setup is straightforward with gained experience. For first-time installations, it took longer due to package prerequisites, but subsequent installations only took about an hour and a half.

Initially, two engineers were sufficient for the installation. In the current environment, five engineers are dedicated to backup databases and networker solutions.

NetWorker minimizes operational costs as it provides robust recovery solutions, particularly during incidents like server issues. It maximizes resource efficiency and financial savings.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

I have experience with Veeam and Veritas. I prefer Dell NetWorker for its integration capabilities with open-source solutions.

I would recommend Dell NetWorker, especially for environments that use open-source solutions, as it supports a wide range of these technologies and offers extensive customization.

Positive

I primarily use NetWorker for backup in my company. It is proposed as a physical backup and recovery solution, capable of replicating backups. NetWorker works well in conjunction with Avamar to provide a comprehensive backup solution under the name PowerProtect.

I find NetWorker valuable for its wide range of automation features, including replication and data processing systems. It integrates well with Dell's Data Domain as a backup storage solution. 

Additionally, it offers Dell Boost, which provides several advantages. However, the price is a significant factor when compared to other solutions.

The graphical user interface (GUI) of NetWorker needs improvement. It is complex, and compared to solutions like Tivoli, Veritas, Veeam, and others, its look and feel are not up to par.

I have been reselling NetWorker for nine years.

I would rate the stability of NetWorker as a seven out of ten. There are sometimes latency issues, potentially due to network, communication, firewall, or security concerns.

I rate the scalability between five to six. While the solution is scalable, the cost involved in upgrading or enhancing the solution can be significant.

Technical support from Dell is excellent. I rate it ten out of ten.

Positive

NetWorker installation is pretty complicated.

As a distributor, I worked as a presale consultant, ensuring end-to-end solution deployment. My role involved working with the end customer on implementation and support.

NetWorker has a high price compared to other solutions. Pricing is a major concern.

I rate the overall solution as nine out of ten. 

Although the GUI is complex, and the pricing issue exists, the technical support and integration capabilities make it a strong solution.

Positive

I use the solution since we have thousands of stores where the business needs servers as a backup for everything, and so we use Dell NetWorker and Dell Data Domain Systems.

Dell Networker helps with the backup of critical data.

There are a couple of time-tested products, like Dell NetWorker and Veritas NetBackup. Both are among the oldest backup solutions or software products and work properly.

Dell NetWorker's features revolve around its many shell utilities that help gather reports. It is like any other backup software since you can schedule a backup, and it works.

The software itself works, but it mostly depends on the environment. If you store the tool in a remote location and you don't have good connectivity, then there won't be issues. The software does what it is supposed to do, which is take care of the backup. The one thing Dell needs to improve on is the area of NVP vProxy. Even for Veritas NetBackup, NVP vProxy is a part of the backup software, so we don't have to deploy it separately. In Dell NetWorker, you have to deploy NVP vProxy for backup using vCenter to backup VMs in VMware, which is one area I noticed is a little bit of a pain because we have to deploy, like, 10, 15 or 20 vProxy servers, which connects vCenter to Dell NetWorker and then you can add the VMs from the VMware to back them up. I know that vProxy has to be deployed. Otherwise, you cannot use vCenter as a backup for the VMs via VMware. I know that vProxy is the only thing I noticed is not a part of the software. You have to deploy a separate server, but integrating is not a problem. You can use it as a backup tool for anything you want, ranging from databases to file systems.

I have been using Dell NetWorker for fifteen to twenty years. My company is a very big Dell customer. I use the solution's latest version.

When it comes to the stability of the product, some of the stores that have bad connectivity have some challenges backing them up because they operate remotely, the connection is slow, and it takes longer to manage the backup stuff. That is where the deduplication in the tool helps because once you get the data to the storage device, only the deduplication part looks into the changes in the data going to Dell NetWorker.

The tool can be easily scaled up. Depending on your environment, you can increase the resources on the backup servers and the CPU memory. You can also increase the storage where the backup data is saved on the fly. It is really easy.

At the company, there are six to seven backup admins.

There are no plans to increase the use of the product in our company.

The solution's technical support is pretty good and helpful. The tool's support team usually responds right away to high-priority issues, and if it is something that is of medium priority, then it takes a day. If something is not important or if it is an area that can wait, then we can just arrange or schedule a meeting with Dell at a fixed time. Everything is based on the priority or the severity of the ticket. The tool's support team is pretty responsive. I rate the technical support an eight out of ten.

Positive

The product's installation phase is straightforward. You could install the software on UNIX or Windows systems, and we just run the software and then configure it based on each environment.

There is no need to have a specific strategy for setting up the solution, as it is a pretty straightforward procedure. You just install it, add clients, and back them up.

The solution can be deployed in a scattered environment, meaning some of it is on-prem and some on the cloud.

Dell NetWorker is an expensive solution. None of the backup products are cheap. The licensing model offered is usually a five-year one. The need to pay any additional charges apart from the licensing is something that depends on what kind of support agreement you have with Dell NetWorker. If it is a TLA-based agreement, then such licenses are transformational licenses with which I can send as many NetWorkers as I want to my servers. You pay according to what kind of agreements you have with Dell. You can go for a non-TLA agreement, which is like a one-to-one agreement where, after the tool is deployed, it is covered for the duration of the support. You have to pay for the hardware and buy it. Support is offered under five-year contracts. If you are for a TLA-based license, you can use any of their products within the suite without paying extra.

My company uses Dell Data Domain Systems for deduplication. Dell Data Domain Systems is a storage device from Dell, and it works really well with Dell NetWorker. Dell Data Domain Systems can also be used with Veritas NetBackup or any other backup software because it is just a storage destination, so only the deduplicated data gets packed up every day.

The maintenance of the product is not complex. Sometimes, the services die, and you just start up the processes.

I recommend the product to others who plan to use it.

I rate the product a seven out of ten.

We’re 90% virtualized. NetWorker is backing up all our VMs. Since NetWorker and VMware are Dell products, they integrate well together. We back up 90% of our virtual infrastructure on it. We also use it for database backups.

We had a security event back in February. We lost all our servers. We probably had 1500 servers. We used NetWorker to recover and restore VMs. It took us almost 30 days to get back up. It was not quick. However, we wouldn't have been able to recover without the product’s help.

We first had to restore the NetWorker infrastructure. We used data domains. We imported the catalog. We identified the tier-one VMs we needed and got those restored. We installed security products on them to ensure they were clean. Then, we booted them up. The solution allowed us to recover our infrastructure.

The solution only backs up change blocks. So, the backups are skinny, and we can revert our VM. If we did a Windows patch on a VM and the VM didn’t boot, we can restore our change blocks instead of restoring the whole VM. It takes minutes. Anybody could drive the GUI. We don't have to be a backup and storage person to use the product. It can be done quickly. It is its biggest value.

It is mostly on-premise. The product should provide integration with AWS. They have other tools, but if they want to compete against Cohesity, Rubrik, and AWS Backup, they must provide more cloud functionality. The tool must also provide some cloud snapshotting capabilities where we can manage our cloud backups from our on-premise NetWorker.

I have been using the solution for three years. I am using the latest version of the solution.

I rate the tool’s stability an eight out of ten.

I rate the tool’s scalability an eight out of ten.

The support is good.

Positive

We were a Veritas NetBackup shop for the first ten years of my job. We switched from Veritas NetBackup to NetWorker because we had a corporate agreement with NetWorker. We own parts of the product, so we are an EMC shop.

The initial deployment was a little difficult. We had to install VMs in every vCenter cluster where we needed to have the management box. It took us a little bit of time to design it. It had ProServ with it. We followed the best practices. It was a medium project. It took us probably six to nine months to convert from NetBackup to NetWorker.

The product provides value to us. Without it, we would have probably been down for three to six months.

The tool is pricey.

People who want to implement the tool must use ProServ, follow the best practices, and consider immutable backups. So, if somebody attacks your environment, they cannot change that data. Overall, I rate the tool an eight out of ten.

We are using Dell NetWorker in our ITC Limited to restore and manage data effectively. We have restored ten years of data with it.

Dell NetWorker has been effective and provides a good way to handle large-scale recovery tasks.

The most valuable features of Dell NetWorker are its reliability, performance, application data security, and encryption process. The compression ratio is very flexible for designing all the required policies for backup.

Dell NetWorker's support requires some experienced personnel to handle issues. In some cases, solutions are not found in one method of call and it escalates to many levels until an experienced person can join to resolve the issue.

I have been working with Dell NetWorker for the last five years.

I have no complaints regarding the stability of Dell NetWorker, and I find it to be an eight out of ten for stability.

I rate the scalability of Dell NetWorker an eight out of ten.

I haven't found solutions in the first call in some cases, indicating that the support team needs more experience and expertise. However, I have had mostly positive experiences with support.

Positive

I have previously worked with Veeam. I found the data compression ratio is very high in Veeam.

The initial setup is easy, and I rate it a nine out of ten for ease of setup.

I can do the deployment myself without anyone's help.

I am not sure about the exact pricing, but it seems to be nominal and reasonable.

I evaluated Veeam before switching to Dell NetWorker.

I recommend using Dell NetWorker due to its reliability, scalability, security, and convenience.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

In our company, we rely on Dell NetWorker for many important tasks. It is our go-to for keeping documents safe and making sure our virtual environment, especially VMware, stays secure with reliable backup and recovery. We also use it for protecting user data and meeting file recording needs. Additionally, it plays a crucial role in keeping our email system, Microsoft Exchange, backed up.

The standout feature of Dell NetWorker is its expertise in handling our VMware environment. It makes the whole backup process for virtual servers, especially in large VMware setups like ours, a breeze. The proxy setup in the VMware part is super handy. Another great feature is Client Direct, which lets our clients send backup data directly to Data Domain or backup storage. This is a big win as it skips the network traffic, making backups smoother and more efficient.

In terms of improvements for the next release of Dell NetWorker, a key area would be enhancing the user interface, especially the NetWorker Management Console. The stability of the NMC could use some attention, as it tends to be a bit shaky during jobs and other operations. While the browser functions well for general tasks, the NMC encounters various problems, impacting its overall reliability. Addressing these issues would greatly improve the user experience and streamline day-to-day operations. In addition to addressing the UI and stability issues, another aspect that could be improved in Dell NetWorker is the optimization of job management. It would be beneficial to enhance the efficiency and reliability of job execution processes.

I have been using Dell NetWorker for two years.

Dell NetWorker is not extremely stable. I would give it a six out of ten for stability.

I would rate the scalability of the solution as a seven out of ten. We have two administrators using it at our company.

I would rate Dell NetWorker's support as a five out of ten. The experience varies; the support in the US and Egypt is okay, but the support from India is not great. The first-line support isn't always super technical, so they often ask for unnecessary stuff. It takes a while to get someone with the right know-how to help, making problem-solving a bit of a waiting game. There is room for improvement overall.

Neutral

Before choosing Dell NetWorker we worked with IBM Spectrum Protect. We picked Dell NetWorker because of Dell's global presence, but we found that it is an older product with fewer features compared to others. So, we decided to switch to a newer software that better met our needs.

The deployment process for NetWorker is relatively straightforward and doesn't take an extensive amount of time. Downloading the package, uploading it to the server, and installing it are typically the basic steps in the deployment process.

Dell NetWorker is not overly expensive. I would rate it as a four out of ten in terms of costliness.

My advice to new users is that if most of your setup is virtualized, around 80-90% in VMware, Dell NetWorker is a good choice. It excels in virtual environments. But if you are mostly dealing with physical servers, you might want to consider other options like Backup Exec or Veeam, which could be a better fit. Overall, I would rate the product as a seven out of ten.