Dell PowerProtect Data Manager

I am currently working with both Dell products and HP products. By Dell, I mean Dell PowerProtect Data Manager . I have been dealing with Dell PowerProtect Data Manager  for around four to five years, approximately, and before that, it was coming with a different name.

Currently it is coming as Dell PowerProtect Data Manager, which includes the Dell PowerProtect Data Manager Data Domain systems I am dealing with along with its Dell PowerProtect Data Manager backup solution, that is PPPDM.

That environment for Kubernetes  support by Dell PowerProtect Data Manager is available, but because I am using it for my on-premise solution, not in the cloud, and my on-premise solutions do not have that type of setup, we are normally using the hypervisor options or a hypervisor integrated with my backup solution, which is why it is not explored much by me.

In PPPDM, I find the centralized console for managing all sets of applications the most valuable feature, as it gives us the feasibility to perform backup operations for physical as well as virtual applications, and all of them can be managed through the central GUI console, which is a good thing.

Overall, regarding the Transparent Snapshots feature in terms of data protection, it is reducing the workload setup by utilizing this Transparent Snapshot mechanism, and with that, the additional proxy VM requirement is reduced, meaning the ESXi host can directly send the data to the Data Domain system, thus reducing one overlapping or dependency prospect to the proxy system.

The availability of a unified dashboard is significant for my strategic decision-making processes, as it is providing a single glance of the backup status jobs and a view of the existing storage provisioned for the solution, enabling me to see prospects for growth, reduction, data compression, and deduplication, which enhances my strategic point of view to decide when and how to get it extended based on daily growth rates.

In my opinion, what can be improved about PPPDM is that for the reporting perspective, we need to install an additional reporting component. If it gets added in-built in the PPPDM solution itself without the added requirement of this reporting utility, it would make our life a little easier, especially since I have around 13 to 15 PPPDM infrastructures running, and installing additional overhead for reporting all locations complicates things. We need to improve the reporting functionality.

I would like to see additional features regarding reporting in the future, as the additional component makes it a little difficult, and the reporting is very critical right now, with different sets of reporting requested by customers, but we are not getting that much exploration regarding the reports.

I have been using Dell PowerProtect Data Manager for around four to five years, approximately, and before that, it was coming with a different name.

Currently it is coming as Dell PowerProtect Data Manager, which includes the Dell PowerProtect Data Manager Data Domain systems I am dealing with along with its Dell PowerProtect Data Manager backup solution, that is PPPDM.

The product has been stable and scalable.

The product has been stable and scalable.

I would rate the technical support by Dell as excellent, you can give it a ten out of ten.

It is easy to deploy PPPDM.

I may have gone on the portal for knowledge perspective, but as a consultant working for a different set of organizations, that is probably why I cross-checked it.

Regarding the price, I think it is reasonable and competitive. While it does not come to my head, the support for licensing and getting the license file for implementation is okay, but I am still not aware of the costing, as the costing part is managed by a different team, so I am not much aware of that.

I am not dealing with the competitors of Dell PowerProtect Data Manager, and I think it is the best option on the market at the moment.

I tried to use the anomaly detection feature, but I think somehow it got stuck. However, it is already on my agenda to get it added into our existing one, so it is still pending for me.

I am not very clear on assessing the effectiveness of Storage Direct protection in managing my data storage needs, and I may have to do some more fine-tuning or research on that.

I have tried the recovery orchestration feature, but only for testing perspective.

I would rate this review overall as an eight out of ten.

In Dell PowerProtect Data Manager , we are using it for retention policies. The retention lock policy is a very important feature for us. We have also achieved a reduction policy of about sixty-five percent reducing capacity. The capacity sizes are very efficient for our needs. We can also use hot-swap operations, which is fantastic for us to make the old product new by just changing the head.

These are very key features for us when telling customers that the total cost of ownership is better than the storage for backup operations.

For Storage Direct Protection, it is a good option for us to tell customers that we have good features for it. We are using a NAS  slicing feature that is very efficient in our solution. We are talking to customers about the new catastrophic options available to them.

We are using Dynamic NAS  protection.

For the Kubernetes  support provided by Dell PowerProtect Data Manager , we are using some additional customers that have been using the Kubernetes  solutions. They are using Dell PowerProtect Data Manager for this right now, and it is good. Sometimes we have struggled with some S3  operations, but we can solve all the problems. The customers are satisfied with the Kubernetes solutions for backup in Dell PowerProtect Data Manager.

Regarding the Transparent Snapshots feature, we are talking with the customers about PowerStore  and the Data Domain replication, and Power Snaps, or also instant backup and instant recovery operations. We tell the customers that these are very efficient for them.

We are right now using the CRS solutions with Dell PowerProtect Data Manager operations. We have sold twenty petabytes of CRS solution in Turkey. We are also using the CyberSense software for our CRS solutions every time. Data Domain is the heart of our business right now in Turkey, in GlassHouse.

I am using the Dell PowerProtect Data Manager anomaly detection feature. We are publishing to our customers that use it in their environment. We are also making the proof of concept for all customers. We are also using the Dell demo center for our customers, talking about all the experience on the customer side.

About the recovery orchestration feature, sometimes we have a struggle, but we have no problem right now. We can use it, and we are using this feature. It is working correctly.

Improving Dell PowerProtect Data Manager is a difficult question because we are using it for the tape library operation, the cloud customers' cloud operation backups, and client backups. We can make these options much better. These three features must be applied to Dell PowerProtect Data Manager for the future, which can be better for us.

For additional features, we are trying to reach the future for tape library backups. It is very important for us that the feature will come, but we do not know when it will be. Kubernetes backup is very important right now for us.

We had some problems with Kubernetes. Sometimes we are struggling, but we can solve it without problem.

I have been dealing with Dell PowerProtect Data Manager for fifteen years, with NetWorker  and also Avamar . It is now working with Dell PowerProtect Data Manager solutions.

I have no idea about the availability of a unified dashboard because I am not familiar with the customer's usage. I am pushing up the customers about using this. I would rate this product an eight out of ten.

In my current role, I mainly help customers build the solution design on Dell PowerProtect Data Manager . This product is a backup and resilience solution. Its goal is to allow customers to back up things that they consider vital and mission-critical. Once the data is backed up, they can be resilient in case of human error or data corruption. They can also work against cybersecurity threats and data center disaster recovery. For example, a couple of months ago in London, we had a fire occur near Heathrow airport. IT systems definitely need resilience and backup. This solution simply protects operations so that when bad things happen, they have backup systems and resilience data to carry on operations.

The strongest point for Dell PowerProtect Data Manager  is because of Dell's very broad product portfolio. If the customer has already invested in Dell servers and Dell storage, it certainly makes sense for them to use Dell backup as well with this PowerProtect solution. Definitely, it would synchronize, and in terms of compatibility, their support will be best for the customer. When they do the backup within a Dell environment, it is an integrated experience. Everything is Dell, so definitely there are no issues with connectivity.

When it comes to support, when bad things happen and the customer needs to call for support, they only need to call one number and reach out to one party, which is Dell support. One Dell support team will be able to help figure out what is going on. Because everything is under Dell, the Dell support side will also be able to find the root cause much more easily. That will help as well.

Although Dell has the broadest portfolio in terms of hardware as well as the software side, the customer can enjoy that piece. However, this is a two-sided blade. On the good side, the customer can have the best compatibility. On the bad side, Dell right now is not having the best interest or not having the best investment in the development of this particular product. Dell is not putting much investment in development on the backup piece. I understand this because right now the market has so many buzzwords, including AI. Every customer is more interested in putting their investment into buying new servers, new AI servers, storage, networking, and things of that nature. But on the other side, it is very common that customers are setting a much smaller budget in terms of their data protection as well as their cybersecurity side.

Because they do not have many resources or are not being actively invested in new features, I have a feeling, and this is also from customer feedback, that other vendors and competitors' products, including Veeam, Commvault, and Cohesity , are doing quite well. As a comparison, while Dell is backing up their own system, there is definitely no problem. But when it comes to a mixed environment, if the customer has in use other vendors' solutions, including HP, Cisco, or other Lenovo things, it can be a little hesitant from the customer's side.

I have been using this solution for seven to eight years.

For the licensing cost of Dell PowerProtect Data Manager, because it is software, it does not get affected by the skyrocket pricing of things including chips and memory. So it does not get affected that much, which is good. Also, for this data protection portfolio, Dell PowerProtect Data Manager, among the Dell offering portfolio, is considered a lower tier within the whole portfolio. That is also a good thing. But if compared to other competitors including Veeam or Commvault, Veeam is by far offering the most cost-effective solution. Back to the comparison, Dell PowerProtect Data Manager among the Dell side is relatively cheap, but within the market, it is still not as attractive.

The initial setup of Dell PowerProtect Data Manager can be done within half a day, less than four hours. That is what we usually do. Once the system is set up, we will ask the customer to do testing and fine-tuning. Once the backup works, the software will function accordingly. The customer will select which product or which server, for example, PowerStore . With the backup software, they select the servers, the storage, or even the servers that they host. They select those, and then they will run the backup during the scheduled time, for example, over the weekend. Once they set it up, the backup definitely takes time because usually the customer's backup network is not the premier one, not ten gig or twenty gig. Basically, it means it takes time, but the setup time is fine. Everything can be set up within less than four hours. Sometimes, I used to do a two-hour setup, and that is totally fine.

For the deployment of Dell PowerProtect Data Manager, one engineer is fine. One engineer can do it. Because Dell PowerProtect Data Manager is basically a software piece, it does not even require any physical rack-mount hardware. If this involves hardware movement, then you probably need two engineers on-site to do the rack and stack, rack mounting, cabling, and things of that nature. That will help speed things up. But on the software setup side, one person is sufficient to do the setup.

I would say yes, if the customer has already invested a certain amount of money. If they are using a lot of Dell hardware and a lot of Dell kit, and the majority of it is Dell, then it certainly makes sense. Plus, think about it in terms of a meal deal. If the customer buys A, they buy B, and potentially if they buy C as well, they will get an overall discount on everything.

The product is a backup and resilience solution. Its goal is to allow the customer to back up the things that they consider vital and mission-critical, so they can essentially be making backups. My overall review rating for Dell PowerProtect Data Manager is seven out of ten.

Our main cases for Dell PowerProtect Data Manager  are for virtual tape library.

The features I like the most include the decompression, the duplication, compression, and deduplication.

The availability of the unified dashboard fundamentally impacts my strategic decision making because it is a fundamental dashboard.

I think Dell PowerProtect  can be improved in that I see PowerStore  supporting the synchronous and asynchronous replica, similar to PowerMax .

I have been using it for 10 years.

I don't know if prior to adopting Dell PowerProtect Data Manager we were using another solution since I have worked here for five months, and we were using this solution.

Regarding return on investment, I have worked in this company for five months, so I don't have this data.

I have had a great experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing; it is clear and simple.

I did not consider any other solutions before Dell PowerProtect Data Manager; it is supported and suggested with our software, making it the correct and right choice.

The main use case for Dell PowerProtect Data Manager  is to secure all of my company's critical data and ensure that data can be restored in case of an incident.

Dell PowerProtect Data Manager  has drastically improved our backup processes, reducing the time needed for backups from 12 to 15 hours to just an hour and 30 minutes, allowing me to efficiently manage critical data resources.

I have seen a return on investment with Dell PowerProtect Data Manager through reduced time spent managing a backup solution. I set the policies and let it do its job efficiently in the background while being alerted to any issues by reporting.

The feature I like the most about Dell PowerProtect Data Manager is Instant  Recovery, which allows me to restore a VM instantly by mounting it directly to the Data Domain and then performing a vMotion directly into my production environment, providing me instant availability and access to a backup that I took place up to seven hours ago.

I have used the Anomaly Detection feature of Dell PowerProtect Data Manager and recently turned it on, as it was not available in the version I was using prior. I upgraded to 19.22, which allowed me to start using Anomaly Detection, and I really appreciate it because it lets me train the data being backed up and provides insight before I ingest it into my Cyber Recovery Vault to be scanned by CyberSense.

Anomaly Detection has given me more awareness as a data administrator backing up all the data in our company because it allows me to see the overall grand scope of all the data being ingested into our organization structure and informs me about anomalies across a broad scope of accessible user data, making me more proactive than reactive.

I do utilize the Transparent Snapshots feature of Dell PowerProtect Data Manager, which is one of the best features, because it communicates with my storage solution, PowerStore , allowing it to take a snapshot at the storage level without quiescing or freezing the VM, thus enabling backups at any time without hindering production.

From a cyber resilience perspective, this means I can take more backups and snapshots quicker and more frequently without fearing the loss of critical services and systems provided to my users.

I have used the Storage Direct protection feature of Dell PowerProtect Data Manager by directly connecting to PowerStore , allowing me to back up my unified file system individually and select different retentions, providing greater granularity.

The availability of the unified dashboard of Dell PowerProtect Data Manager gives me an accurate idea of how much of my data is being protected, allowing me to discover which VMs are not protected and providing visibility into all VMs and their inclusion in a protection policy, ensuring I can restore critical resources.

One improvement I would suggest for Dell PowerProtect Data Manager is the ability to send data not just to a Data Domain but also to a PowerScale , which would provide faster backups for critical VMs, enhancing the Instant  Recovery backups' speed.

I have been using Dell PowerProtect Data Manager since September of 2023.

I find Dell PowerProtect customer service to be very good; while Avamar 's upgrades could take almost 24 hours, with Dell PowerProtect Data Manager, I complete upgrades in less than an hour with fast support available if needed.

I would rate the technical support from Dell for Dell PowerProtect Data Manager a ten.

In our previous solution, we used what was called Avamar , and how Dell PowerProtect Data Manager and their features helped us drastically was that if we had an outage with the main backup, our data protection application, which we called Avamar, it took me having to contact support and within 25 to 48 hours, I would have to get the unit back up online in case I had to restore critical structures.

Prior to adopting Dell PowerProtect Data Manager, I was using Dell Avamar, which was great at the time but lacked scalability and was complex, requiring support for simple tasks, whereas with Dell PowerProtect Data Manager, I can handle upgrades independently.

My experience deploying Dell PowerProtect Data Manager is straightforward compared to Avamar; with just a single OVF file, I was up and running and backing up within an hour, with the assurance of seamless connection to Data Domain for disaster recovery.

I have seen a return on investment with Dell PowerProtect Data Manager through reduced time spent managing a backup solution. I set the policies and let it do its job efficiently in the background while being alerted to any issues by reporting.

Before selecting Dell PowerProtect Data Manager, I considered a couple of solutions including NetWorker , but my Dell Solutions Engineer encouraged me to try Dell PowerProtect Data Manager, and although it was a gamble, it paid off in dividends.

My advice to organizations considering Dell PowerProtect Data Manager is to take the challenge, deploy it, and they will be amazed.

Overall, I would rate Dell PowerProtect Data Manager a nine; it will not get a ten until another application piece I am waiting for becomes available.

It allows me to sleep much better at night.