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    Cassandra Cinar

Provides excellent visibility and helps reduce costs and time

  • January 23, 2024
  • Review from a verified AWS customer

What is our primary use case?

Commvault handles our backups across both cloud and data center environments. It manages our short-term backups on-premises, followed by a transfer to disaster recovery for data older than 30 days, ultimately migrating them to long-term storage.

We are seeking a solution for secure and encrypted backups that comply with both our information security policy and the data retention requirements for database archive logs. Additionally, these backups must fulfill all customer service level agreements for all storage under our responsibility, including NAS, SAN, and any other backup methods specified in our service catalog.

Our deployment model is a hybrid of public cloud, private cloud, and on-premises infrastructure. We primarily use AWS as our main cloud provider, with Azure as a secondary option.

How has it helped my organization?

We use intuitive administrative tools that readily reveal the volume of backed-up data. Our Commvault CommCell servers alert us to failed backups and provide detailed information. This transparency allows our managed service provider to easily grasp our pre-established thresholds and readily scale up with new technologies.

We're highly satisfied with Commvault's automated data security and management policies. They meet our stringent requirements for secure and private data storage, including anti-ransomware protection and encryption. Notably, they also ensure compliance with GDPR for backups stored in Europe and other regions, fulfilling our regulatory obligations.

Threat Scan's ability to scan backup data for threats is invaluable because it proactively identifies and neutralizes certain viruses and threats that may originate from our G Suite or be reported by our security incident response team, preventing potential outages.

Commvault provides excellent visibility across our entire organization's data. They perform regular health checks, informing us of areas of strength and offering recommendations for improvement. These recommendations may include upgrading to newer product versions or addressing issues identified during the checks.

It is important for our organization that Commvault provides a unified platform for recovery across cloud, on-premises, and software-as-a-service workloads. This is particularly important because many of our existing cloud environments rely on basic backups that are insufficient for our needs. Commvault empowers us to address this issue. We have implemented it not only in our own operating company but also across the corporate structure, rolling it out to virtually all AWS users. This is because the standard backup methods, such as snapshot backups, fail to meet our stringent requirements for recovery, service level agreements, and crucial functionalities like threat detection and other security features. Commvault ensures a robust and comprehensive backup infrastructure that satisfies all our essential needs.

It has improved our organization by ensuring we meet our infrastructure requirements, adhere to our vulnerability methodology, and achieve service level agreements for both backup and storage requirements.

The quarterly risk analysis allows us to effectively manage the lifecycle of both data and backups. It also sheds light on the types of data and backups we have, providing valuable insights.

Commvault's risk analysis is one of the tools we use to meet our compliance requirements and implement the necessary controls for immediate security policy action.

To ensure comprehensive data protection and comply with international regulations like GDPR, we rely on Commvault alongside our established financial systems and SOC-compliant practices.

Commvault has helped us reduce our organization's data management costs by 75 percent, particularly for long-term backups. We ditched tapes and virtual tapes thanks to Commvault, replacing them with a fully disk-based backup system and cloud backups in AWS and Azure.

By implementing Commvault, we've significantly reduced our backup times. This is achieved through a combination of incremental backups and data aging. Aged data is then moved to cheaper disk or cloud storage, ensuring cost-effective long-term retention while still meeting our recovery SLAs. While the overall time savings may be around 10-15 percent, the main benefit is not keeping everything on expensive primary storage and efficiently aging it out. Consequently, retrieving data from the Azure bucket typically takes five days or more, reflecting our agreed-upon SLA.

It has reduced our recovery point objective, allowing us to store more backups. However, new regulatory and compliance requirements mandate that some backups cannot be deleted and must be retained indefinitely. To address this while still improving efficiency, we've implemented solutions for long-term data storage and improved data management practices.

Commvault has helped our organization not only decrease our threat detection time but also improve threat prevention to such an extent that we often avoid facing the full impact of a threat altogether. By preventing these incidents, we're often unsure of the precise amount of time saved, but the benefit is clear: we don't need to activate disaster recovery mechanisms.

It has not only helped us reduce our recovery time objective, but it has also ensured that our backups and long-term storage are secure, thanks to its comprehensive capabilities.

In terms of total cost of ownership, Commvault has enabled us to significantly reduce both hardware and media costs for storage and backup. After factoring in encryption and compression, the total savings amount to close to 80 percent.

It has been able to reduce downtime, but having a quick recovery plan and policy and SLAs that are published are met regularly.

What is most valuable?

The features I find most helpful in Commvault are its ability to perform incremental backups and significantly reduce backup times for our diverse multi-architecture, multi-environment environment. This includes everything from Cisco equipment to IBM equipment, as well as SAN and NAS storage. Commvault allows us to back up these systems quickly and efficiently, and even recover data at equally impressive speeds.

What needs improvement?

Commvault could benefit from increased automation to streamline processes and enhance predictability. This includes automating routine tasks where appropriate, which would improve efficiency and reduce the need for support tickets. Additionally, when support is required, automating elements of the process and providing faster data access would enable quicker issue identification and resolution, preventing potential SLAs from being breached.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Commvault Cloud for seven years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We haven't had problems, so Commvault is a very stable product from our perspective.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Commvault is highly scalable. We've successfully extended its reach by replicating the on-premises environment in the cloud and leveraging additional capacity across other utilized environments. This flexibility aligns well with the subscription licensing model.

How are customer service and support?

We don't send many support tickets because Commvault is very reliable. We mainly handle user inquiries about how to use the product, conduct regular quarterly reviews, and provide dedicated technical account management.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Our primary backup solution has been Commvault, although different teams have utilized IBM Tivoli and other capabilities like Rubrik in the past. Commvault's stability and cost-effectiveness have solidified its position as our preferred choice.

How was the initial setup?

The initial deployment was straightforward, except for some network connectivity issues related to specific aspects of connectivity, e.g., bandwidth, latency, and routing. Thankfully, there were no significant problems with the tool itself.

Our strategy was to be able to connect globally, from our data centers to our cloud solution.

Our deployment involved six individuals: two working on AWS, two on-premises, and two at the disaster recovery site.

What about the implementation team?

We implemented our solution using Accenture, our third-party managed service provider. This was beneficial because we could leverage our existing relationship and account team, who were familiar with our environment. Their expertise proved invaluable during upgrades and major changes. Furthermore, we obtained the necessary technical skills and support from both Commvault and Accenture.

What was our ROI?

Preventative measures against outages limit their impact on customers, thereby maintaining near-perfect SLAs. This translates to increased customer satisfaction and minimal business disruption, which essentially constitutes our return on investment.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Using a subscription-based license has been advantageous. We've been able to significantly reduce costs by tailoring our spending to our actual usage. This is a stark contrast to the earlier model with its prohibitively high fixed-price licenses.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

After evaluating Rubrik, we compared it to our existing backup solutions: AWS backups used by other teams and the IBM Tivoli TSM environment. The key differences between these options lie in their deployment and recovery capabilities. Some solutions are cloud-based, while others require on-premises infrastructure. Additionally, some have limitations in recovering data from specific environments, making them less suitable for multi-site backup scenarios.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate Commvault Cloud a ten out of ten.

Transitioning from various solutions made implementation quite smooth. However, due to its extended use, we lack a comprehensive baseline for evaluation. We simply don't have enough prior cases to compare Commvault's implementation difficulty against.

Our company has implemented a large-scale global deployment with 5,000 endpoints across multiple data centers, regions, locations, and cloud providers.

We perform standard upgrades on both the Commvault servers and the storage environments NAS and SAN we deploy. These upgrades are determined by the operating system requirements of the Commvault servers. For short-term backups, we utilize on-premise storage, while long-term backups leverage AWS cloud storage.

While customer references are valuable, the ability to tailor our environment to meet our specific needs is equally important. This means defining the backup architecture based on the specific requirements of each application, like SIP shares and databases. Each application has unique needs, so understanding those requirements is crucial for crafting the right architecture to fulfill them.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Hybrid Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Amazon Web Services (AWS)


    Michael L. Mathews

We can easily find and restore files, save backup time, and limit exposure

  • November 02, 2023
  • Review provided by PeerSpot

What is our primary use case?

All universities today have both on-premises and off-premises data. Therefore, Commvault is our go-to service for on-premises and off-premises storage arrays and data recovery. Thus, the best way for us to think of IT as a service today is to consider that whenever we have lost a file or something has crashed, we have been able to retrieve it 100 percent of the time for over ten years now. This is significant for us, and Commvault provides us with data backup as a service.

How has it helped my organization?

On a scale of one to ten, with ten being the easiest, Commvault Backup & Recovery is a ten for monitoring and managing our environment. It is so transparent and easy to use that nobody realizes we are using it, which is a plus.

I love Commvault's automated policies.

The Threat Scan feature works great.

Commvault provides excellent visibility across our organization's data.

The most critical function we have is Commvault's platform which offers recovery on cloud, on-premises, and SaaS workloads.

Commvault's risk analysis is excellent. In all the years we've spent millions of dollars on technology, no one has ever suggested that we don't need Commvault or that they don't like it. It's that good, and it's transparent at the same time. With other systems, people will ask why we're using them and if we can get rid of them or scale back on them. But that never happens with Commvault.

Risk analysis is excellent for helping to limit exposure and ensure compliance. This is one of the first questions that comes up when applying for cybersecurity insurance: do we have the capability, and how well does it work? With Commvault, we can answer this question by showing how Commvault has been tested by cybersecurity insurance companies in the past three years.

Commvault reduced our backup time by 50 percent. Our backup time decreased, while our data volume increased significantly. This improvement is due to a combination of our improved internet connection or switching and Commvault's technology. What used to take 8 hours five years ago now takes only one hour.

Commvault reduced our RPO and our organization's threat detection time.

What is most valuable?

Commvault Backup & Recovery's search utility is its most valuable feature. I call it a "search and replace" utility because it allows me to quickly and easily find and restore files without anyone even knowing there was a problem. This is the feature that our IT department uses the most, but it is so transparent that most people don't even realize it is working behind the scenes 24/7.

What needs improvement?

Commvault is a behind-the-scenes operation that's working flawlessly. So how do I know what Commvault is doing for me every month? I would like more communication informing us on what Commvault is doing in the background.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Commvault Backup & Recovery for ten years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Commvault Backup & Recovery is stable.

How are customer service and support?

The technical support is excellent.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Ten years ago, we were using a rudimentary backup system that I can't even remember the name of. It was not a major project or product, and I think we were using it to create disk backups on-site. Commvault allowed us to move to off-site backups with great visibility and transparency.

How was the initial setup?

The initial deployment was moderate.

What about the implementation team?

We used Eaglesoft, the vendor from whom we purchased Commvault Backup & Recovery, to implement the system. One and a half full-time people for over two months were required for the deployment.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Commvault Backup & Recovery is priced fairly, and its performance-to-cost ratio is also better than fair. I am not here trying to figure out how to get Commvault to reduce their cost by ten percent because I am satisfied.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We evaluated NetApp but it was too expensive and did not make sense for us.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate Commvault Backup & Recovery ten out of ten.

Commvault Backup & Recovery does not require any maintenance.

I suggest conducting a fair evaluation, as it is very difficult to make a pure cost comparison due to the value that Commvault provides. Therefore, consider the full value that Commvault has brought to the table, not just data backup.


    Matt Reller

Provides extremely fast backup, is easy to manage, and is flexible

  • October 06, 2023
  • Review provided by PeerSpot

What is our primary use case?

We use Commvault Cloud for backup and recovery with Air Gap Protect and Risk Analysis to be more cyber resilient.

We deployed Commvault Cloud as a hybrid model both on the cloud and on-premises, and it will continue to be that way. It was 100 percent on-premises. With the migration, it will be about 90 percent cloud and 10 percent on-premises.

How has it helped my organization?

Commvault Cloud's automated policies provide the notification we need to ensure our data is secure and managed correctly.

Commvault Cloud provides excellent visibility across all of our organization's data.

It is extremely important to our organization that Commvault has a unified platform that offers recovery across cloud, on-prem, and SaaS workloads.

It has helped our organization improve by simplifying the way we manage our environment. We could not manage the same environment with only half of our current staff. We have yet to find anything in our environment that Commvault does not support.

Commvault Cloud's Risk Analysis helps us identify, categorize, and classify sensitive data enabling us to take the appropriate actions to protect it.

Commvault does a good job helping us limit our exposure and ensure compliance.

Commvault has helped us reduce our data management costs significantly. Compared to Dell Avamar, the costs are vastly different. Commvault is much more cost-effective. We are licensed by capacity, so we don't have to worry about licensing different features. We have all the features that are licensed by capacity. And as far as ongoing support costs and other expenses, they are much lower than what they were with Dell Avamar. Commvault also gives us the flexibility to use any storage we want, while Avamar is tied to the Data Domain, which is not cheap to support.

It has helped us reduce our backup time unless we are using Data Domain. This is because we can perform deduplication and compression on the client layer, which reduces the load on the network. We cannot do this with Data Domain. In fact, if we even attempt to perform a quick progress check before sending data to the Data Domain, the system fails completely. We learned this the hard way. We are using many more advanced features in Commvault Cloud than we ever did in Dell Avamar, simply because we had to license each feature separately in Avamar. As a result, we did not perform many backups in Avamar, such as all database backups (DB2, SAP HANA, Oracle, and SQL). These backups were performed outside of Avamar. We are now using Direct Connect agents for all of our databases. This allows us to perform incremental backups, which we could not do with the previous method. As a result, we have reduced our backup times by two-thirds, or even more in some cases. Compared to when we were backing up directly to Data Domain, Commvault is now running our backups ten times faster. This has resulted in a significant reduction in our backup times.

Commvault has helped us reduce the RPO. Even in Data Domain, it has reduced our storage times by about half. It has also helped us reduce the threat detection time.

We reduced the RTO significantly with Commvault.

Commvault has helped us reduce downtime primarily due to the increase in the performance of resources.

What is most valuable?

At this time backup and recovery features are the most valuable. We haven't gotten into the more advanced features like LiveSync, just because we've been so busy with the migration to Azure.

The ability to manage everything from a single pane of glass is another major advantage. The management is also easy enough that most of our DBAs can manage their own stuff.

What needs improvement?

Commvault should keep and continue to develop the Java GUI.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Commvault Cloud for two years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I would rate the stability of Commvault Cloud a nine out of ten.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We have not encountered a scalability issue yet, and I do not foresee one in the near future. With proper infrastructure planning, I am unsure of the maximum scalability of Commvault Cloud, but we have scaled it to a significant size without any scalability issues. I believe the biggest limitation is that we are running Commvault on Windows, and Linux support is currently available. We will eventually migrate to Linux, but we are waiting for that side of the product to mature. Once we are on Linux, I believe scalability will no longer be a concern.

How are customer service and support?

Technical support is excellent. We have ESP support, so we go to the top of the list whenever we call. Their response time has been excellent. We've been very happy with the level of knowledge of the support personnel. While we occasionally encounter someone who doesn't know what they're doing, the overall level of knowledge has been impressive. Our turnaround time from opening a call to receiving a call back has been fabulous.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We previously used Dell Avamar Data Protection Software but it did not have a viable immutable backup copy option, so Air Gap Protect was the reason we switched to Commvault Cloud.

I've been doing this for about 30 years, and I've used a lot of backup packages, but Commvault Cloud for backup & recovery is the most impressive one I've ever used. Its breadth of support, stability, and configurability are years ahead of what I've seen in other products. It's more than just a backup and restore product; it's a cyber resilience product that we find new ways to use all the time, especially with our Azure migration. We're able to move data into Azure using Commvault a hundred times faster than any other method that the DBAs or server admins could find. There are several technical reasons for this. Commvault Backup & Recovery is simply light years ahead of any other backup and recovery solution I've seen.

How was the initial setup?

The deployment was of mixed complexity. The basic functions are straightforward, but the architectural aspects of laying everything out are more flexible, which has its pros and cons. On the one hand, this flexibility is a benefit, but on the other hand, it can lead to a learning curve from an architectural, deployment, and infrastructure standpoint. Once the infrastructure is in place, the rest is easy.

The number of people required for deployment depends on the size of the environment. We have five people on our team currently, one of whom is part-time. I and another team member have extremely deep experience and understanding of the architecture. We deployed and designed the architecture of our tape libraries, physical hardware, and so on. From that point on, four of us migrated 4,000 clients to Commvault Cloud in about six months.

What about the implementation team?

The implementation was completed in-house.

What was our ROI?

A backup product does not typically have a direct return on investment. However, its value can be difficult to quantify in terms of dollars. For example, on January 1st we began migrating our 100 petabyte environment with 4,000 clients to Azure. Commvault saved our bacon by enabling us to move the data to Azure 50 to 100 times faster than we could have done on our own. What would have taken us three months, Commvault was able to do in 48 hours. So, while it is difficult to quantify the ROI of our backup product in terms of dollars, it has been invaluable in other ways.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Commvault Cloud is perhaps the best value for our money that I have seen in a backup product.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate Commvault Cloud ten out of ten.

I would not consider expansions, configuration changes, or additions of more advanced features to be maintenance. Daily maintenance consists only of handling job failures, which involves reviewing and resolving them. This is simply a backup, which is unrelated to Commvault. It is the nature of things. No matter what product we use, there will always be failures. However, Commvault itself requires very little maintenance.

I suggest that instead of looking for a backup solution, look for a recovery solution. Backup solutions are common and behind the scenes. No one ever sees them or pays much attention to them. People just assume that their data is being backed up. Restore, on the other hand, is a top priority for management. In a critical situation where the business cannot function, management will come to the backup team demanding recovery immediately. Fortune 500 companies can lose millions of dollars for every hour they are down, and the management's attention will be focused on the recovery team. The faster and more reliably we can recover, the more valuable our recovery solution is. As John Deere says, "It's not how well you recover. It's how fast you recover well." That's the biggest thing to consider when evaluating backup software. If we focus on recovery backup, Commvault Cloud will sell itself.


    Robin John

A stable solution for Red Hat Linux

  • September 14, 2023
  • Review provided by PeerSpot

What is our primary use case?

Commvault is an enterprise-level backup solution that can use multiple agents at various sites. We have many customers, including banks and hospitals.

What is most valuable?

Commvault is a stable solution for Red Hat Linux.

What needs improvement?

It takes a lot of steps to implement backups. We have to do a lot of planning to make the solution work properly. It takes some time to create every policy. It's an easy task, but there are many steps. It's not as easy as using Veeam.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have used Commvault for nine months as a supporting engineer.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I rate Commvault eight out of 10 for stability.

How was the initial setup?

Setting up Commvault is complex and it involves many steps. After you configure the storage, you need to set your client's policies and add a proxy server if necessary.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

I prefer selling Commvault to enterprises. It's appropriate for a company that has a headquarters plus four or five offices. It isn't ideal for a small business. The price is okay if you have the budget of a large enterprise. Aside from the license, the only additional cost is cloud fees if you are using cloud infrastructure.

What other advice do I have?

I rate Commvault Backup and Recovery 10 out of 10. I would recommend Commvault if a company has huge backup needs and a sufficient budget. If the price isn't an issue, you shouldn't compromise.


    Vladan_Kojanic

Quick support, highly reliable, and beneficial automatic operations

  • July 08, 2022
  • Review provided by PeerSpot

What is our primary use case?

We used Commvault HyperScale X to increase the security of datasets, to be sure that all data and all backups that we have are secure, and that we have them in another place, such as disaster recovery. The idea is to always have a third copy somewhere else. The initial idea was to have a third copy of that backup sets to be in the state government data center. However, before they finish, I left Ministry, and they have not finished that job.

Generally, the idea is to have a possibility, for all backup data, after some time, to be saved in another place. For now, everything is still inside the Ministry.

How has it helped my organization?

Commvault HyperScale X has increased the way our organization functions by adding more security to the backup sets. In case the primary location is disabled, or there is some problem with the primary location, the second one will continue to work. The idea is to always have a working backup.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature of Commvault HyperScale X is the automatic nature of its operation. We don't need to worry about sets of documents. It worked automatically, we don't need to think about it. When you set the solution up in a good way, you don't need to worry.

What needs improvement?

The price of Commvault HyperScale X could improve.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Commvault HyperScale X for approximately one year.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Commvault HyperScale X is highly stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability of Commvault HyperScale X is good. It is simple to add more systems or server storage.

We have approximately 400 endpoint users and 40 terabytes of data being used.

How are customer service and support?

We had to use the support and they were responsive and quick. They fixed the problem, not immediately, but the timeframe was dependent on the ticket type. They were always there to help. They did regular call checks until everything was resolved.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We used many different solutions previously. When we had some large issues in 2015, I decided to buy a professional corporate solution for all the systems. We did test some other solutions, but with Commvault HyperScale X, we received what we needed and much more. Additionally, Commvault HyperScale X was easy to maintain and use.

How was the initial setup?

The solution was easy for us to implement because we have been working with Commvault for many years, and we know what to do. The initial setup alone will that approximately two weeks. The longer portion is buying the hardware and setting it up.

I rate the initial setup of Commvault HyperScale X a three out of five.

What about the implementation team?

We did the implementation of Commvault HyperScale X with a local partner. They installed it and did the setup. For us, it was easy to add new features to the Commvault HyperScale X backup.

The company that has the solution is managing the solution.

What was our ROI?

We have seen a large return on investment by using Commvault HyperScale X.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The price of Commvault HyperScale X is a lot higher than competitors. As a government institution, we have annual costs. We made a budget for one year in advance. It was difficult to calculate the other solution's costs because each solution has another way of licensing. The solution is expensive but it is very good and we know the good quality we will be receiving.

There were not any additional costs. The new storage, software, and support were inside the price.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We did evaluate other solutions before choosing Commvault HyperScale X.

What other advice do I have?

The solution has changed since I have used it but what I know is the solution offers companies the possibility to have their own backup storage.

I rate Commvault HyperScale X a ten out of ten.


    David Nahtigal

Perfect match for complex environments, as it supports all types of infrastructure

  • November 11, 2021
  • Review provided by PeerSpot

What is our primary use case?

The primary use case is as a backup and recovery solution. We have two data centers and we have a Commvault server for replication in both. We back up all our infrastructure with this solution, from Active Directory to SQL, web servers, file servers, databases, et cetera.

How has it helped my organization?

Commvault helps to ensure broad coverage with the discovery of unprotected workloads. The Discovery feature lists all the resources that we have, all the virtual servers and all the physical servers. You can also automatically deploy agents or set up schedules. At first, we did some manual tuning to customize it before deployment. Now, the virtual infrastructure administrator just has to add the VM tag on the virtual machine and that machine will automatically be backed up in the next schedule. It's a good automation feature.

It also helps by minimizing the time our admins spend on backup tasks so that they can spend time on other projects. Before Commvault, we had two backup administrators who were using a backup and restore application to restore every test that we had to do. It was a full-time job just monitoring the backups and doing the restores. With our new solution from Commvault, we have successfully implemented web-based backup and restore management for our different teams, including our file server, database, and Exchange teams. We split operations among those teams and each one has access to the backup Web Console. This console from Commvault is very useful for segmenting the restore options. That way, the database backup administrator only has access to the database servers and can only do backups and restores of databases and does not have access to Active Directory or file servers. The web-based backup and restore is a really great option.

Whereas before, we had one full-time engineer doing backups and restores, now that engineer is only working on it for two to four hours per week. Across our four teams, it's saving us about 10 to 12 hours a week.

The solution has helped to reduce storage costs as well. Commvault has an option to move data from primary storage. When you do a backup, it scans all the files from the file server and you can set a policy to remove all files that are more than, say, three years old from the primary storage. And on the primary storage, there is only a link that connects to the backup source. When a user needs a file on secondary storage, there is no problem because it only reads the file. When the user opens that old file, it's automatically restored and the user can access it. For our IT team, it has saved us between 5 and 10 percent of storage. It depends on how widely you implement the solution and the policies you set. You could save 50 percent if you have a broader policy.

We have also saved on infrastructure costs because Commvault takes less time to do the backup jobs, due to the deduplication. Also, the background tasks that are used to copy the backup jobs to tape are deduplicated. The full backup of our infrastructure can now be done in a couple of hours during the night. Before, some backup tasks would take more than a day, on the weekend. There has been a reduction of 80 or 90 percent in the backup window.

What is most valuable?

Commvault's most valuable features are its

  • deduplication
  • encryption
  • support for many OSs
  • support for different infrastructures.

We have VMware, Hyper-V, Oracle, and Microsoft SQL. We have a lot of different systems, and all of them are supported under one licensing agreement. That's one of the benefits.

We use two user interfaces on a regular basis. One is the Web Console, which is simple and has all the necessary functionality. You can add servers, back up servers, and restore. We also have a replication solution implemented and we use the Web Console for that as well. But for the initial configuration and for some deeper configurations, we also use the Commvault application. It's big and has all the fine-tuning options.

The solution's Command Center is very straightforward. It has an intuitive user interface with graphs, tables, alerts, as well as many options for alerting and messaging. Of course, you have to get used to the environment, but it's easy to use.

It is also important that Commvault provides a single platform to move, manage, and recover data across on-premises locations. That's because we have different storage and virtualization platforms. We have no problem if the file resides, say, on NetApp storage and we have to restore data to a workstation or some kind of Windows Server. Also, when we did some migrations from our old Hyper-V cluster to the new VMware cluster, those integrations between different infrastructures were successfully accomplished with the Commvault solution. We have no issues with different types of resources we need to back up.

In addition, the recovery options are pretty straightforward. For example, if you choose a virtual machine, you can restore the full virtual machine, you can restore the virtual machine on a different platform, you can restore just a virtual disk, or you can restore just a file within the virtual machine. You have all the options. In the web-based user interface, you can also restore using download options. You can browse through the files or virtual machines and download the file from the backup. They have a great range of restore options.

What needs improvement?

We had some small issues with the reporting, but that was just a matter of fine-tuning the kinds of messages we receive by email. It was a little overwhelming in the initial configuration. So we reviewed our configuration with our partner and customized the reports so that we only get the important reports. I haven't seen any big issues or things that the solution is missing.

For how long have I used the solution?

We implemented Commvault at the start of 2021, so we have been using it for almost a year now.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We had one issue. The Commvault server is an Active-Passive cluster and the Active node had some hiccups. It wasn't something serious, but the Commvault server was unable to connect to one of the agents. I believe our partner discovered it because they also receive messages from our Commvault solution. They just informed us that the Commvault server had to be restarted. We did so during working hours because backups are done at night, and there were no issues. It was a standard procedure and we have had no other big issues.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

At the start of the Commvault project, we put together a list of all the resources that we have. They counted our resources and gave us the exact number of clients we needed to buy to cover all of our infrastructure and we had no issue there. Of course, we also have some plans for the growth of our infrastructure. If we have any big upgrades, we will also upgrade the Commvault infrastructure.

We have a lot of Commvault's features implemented. We're also in the process of testing the backup of endpoints, such as laptops and devices from end-users. There are just a few features from Commvault that we don't use.

How are customer service and support?

We use technical support through our partner because our partner has a lot of inside knowledge. For the majority of issues our partner gives us the solution, but they have had to report some small issues to Commvault support. They spoke directly with Commvault support and the solution was available in a few days. It was a very good troubleshooting experience.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We used NetWorker and Veeam. The NetWorker solution was the older solution and, in some very old clusters, we also used TSM (Tivoli Storage Manager) from IBM. The TSM solution was no longer supported and the Dell EMC NetWorker solution, which we used for our physical servers, was difficult to maintain. Veeam was a good solution for our VMware infrastructure, but we needed a solution with support for a wider variety of infrastructure types. One of our major goals was to eliminate our multiple backup solutions by going with Commvault.

How was the initial setup?

If we had to do the initial setup ourselves, it would be complex, of course, because we have a big infrastructure with different types of targets. But our partners helped and they managed to cover all the tests that we implemented at the start of the project. So, overall, the setup went really well. It took just a few days, maybe a week, to add our agents. After the initial configuration, it was really easy to roll out the solution to our entire infrastructure.

What about the implementation team?

Our partners, called Our Space Appliances, are system integrators in backup and storage solutions. They know our infrastructure.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We had a process for choosing a vendor. We called a number of vendors and had proposals from the Veeam, NetWorker, Cohesity, and Commvault.

The big pro for Commvault was that it was a single solution for our entire infrastructure. The licensing model was also an advantage and the experience of the partner was also a big plus. Some of the other solutions we evaluated did not make it to the second round because they did not support all the infrastructure we have in our environment. In the last round, the battle came down to pricing, as well as some small features, and Commvault was the best in all the criteria.

What other advice do I have?

Commvault is a pretty comprehensive but, maybe, complex solution when you first start with it. But that's why it is a perfect match for complex infrastructure, as it supports all types of infrastructure. Commvault is not appropriate for small businesses with just one type of virtual environment. There are different vendors that may be better for that use case. But when looking at enterprise backup and recovery options, Commvault is the easiest to use, and it has the widest range of features.

We are currently moving to Exchange Online. We have between 1,500 and 2,000 users. We have already deployed Teams on the cloud, and now we are migrating user mailboxes to cloud. Our next step, in the following month, will be a backup of Microsoft cloud solutions through Commvault.

In terms of the coverage of Commvault, we have a big Oracle Database and the Oracle administrators are a separate team. They do their own backups using RMAN. They then move the backup to the separate Sun ZFS storage. We also tried that backup with Commvault, using the Commvault agent to run RMAN. The test went well, the backup was good, but the database team was used to their old solution. So we agreed to implement a backup of the ZFS file server.

Ours is an all-on-prem solution so we don't have any other networks being backed up. We do have a DMZ with different VLANs and so there were some problems. We had to install an agent on the DMZ zone, an agent that has access to resources in the demilitarized network. But it's a no-brainer. We just have to open a specific port so that the backup agent can communicate with the CommCell server, and the resources are backed up successfully.

In addition, to protect against ransomware we use Commvault's alert options because Commvault can predict big changes in the network with its AI solution. This is the first line of defense. The second line of defense is that we are now in the process of implementing secondary, offline storage to ensure an air gap between the primary backup, the replicated backup, and the offline backup storage. In case of a ransomware attack we will have off-site backup storage.


    Mostafa Atrash

The Command Center can give people the ability to view and restore their data

  • May 27, 2020
  • Review provided by PeerSpot

What is our primary use case?

I've done almost everything with Commvault, e.g., back and forth centralization for file systems and applications like SQL, Oracle, VMware, and Hyper-V. Commvault does a lot of integration.

Most of our installations are on-premise, but I remember doing one installation on the cloud.

We always work with the latest version of the solution.

How has it helped my organization?

We are not utilizing Commvault as it should be. Most installations are for backup and protecting data. We have it on cloud or on-premise. Most of the customers need only this. So, I haven't given real value other than backup and restore. However, we are working on this with our customers, trying to give them the culture of how to use this data and product with value. For example, using Commvault to migrate your applications.

What is most valuable?

You can back up everything from this one backup solution. You can do backups, archives, and replications. You can backup 89 percent of the application.

It can support the backup to and from the cloud. The cloud integration with Commvault is excellent. It can support a lot of cloud vendors, like Amazon, Azure, and Google Cloud Platform.

The endpoint protection for PCs, laptops, and mobile devices is a feature that they have done a lot of hard work with. It can do backups anytime, e.g., when you have a device connected from on-premise, when are you connected through the WAN, and if you didn't do the right setup. This is a good feature.

If you have cloud applications and payment applications, you can migrate from the payment app to the cloud and also migrate from one cloud to another cloud. There is a lot of flexibility on what you can do in Commvault.

In Commvault, they used to use only the CommCell Console for backup and configuration. They have been working on a new console for quite some time now. The last time I installed the solution (maybe last week), I used the Web Console, which is excellent. Commvault can be a bit complex, but on the Web Console, they have done very beautiful work. You can do a lot of things easily and simply with the Web Console. It has 90 percent solved the complexity of Commvault. You sometimes need to log into the complex interface, but almost everything can be done from the web interface.

The Command Center is provided from the web interface. You can back up the data for everybody, but also you can give everybody the ability to view and restore their data. For example, if a laptop, machine, or environment is owned by X, then X can look in and see the environment and data that he has backed up. He can see everything that he owns and can manage the environment as he wishes. It gives him an excellent view of his environment and infrastructure. Also, if you are a service provider, you can back up data for multiple companies and give everyone an interface for their environment to manage, backup, and restore data. Commvault has done excellent work in this area.

What needs improvement?

I would like them to keep working on the new web interface to migrate out of the old interface because the old interface is a bit complex. It was driving customers away because of the complexity. If they migrate everything (100 percent of the features), this would make the product be perfect.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using the solution for two years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability is excellent. Once you install and configure everything the right way, there is only the infrastructure. If there is a problem with the infrastructure, it will reflect on your backup. If there are no problems with the infrastructure, then there will be no problems. I have been working with Commvault for two years and don't remember opening more than 10 cases for a lot of customers.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is easily scalable. You may need to add a gateway, proxy, or media server to the environment before adding more data to the environment.

Something that is not commonly used is that you can use Appian as a backup storage solution in one integrated package.

How are customer service and support?

I rarely use the technical support because of the stability. The technical support is very good. Once you have a case, depending on the severity, there is an engineer who will connect with you. That's the most important thing when you have a problem. They will connect with you and solve your problem on spot. Commvault has a built-in feature that if it's connected to the Internet with one click you can upload all the logs. Then, the Commvault engineer can see all the logs he needs. Most of the time, it takes one hour for a problem to be solved as they have excellent support.

It's an excellent solution for cloud support. One of the important features that I am selling and trying to convince customers to use is the backup for Office 365, SharePoint, and OneDrive from Microsoft. Microsoft can be in your environment with high availability and everything will be good, but if you delete it by mistake, then for a short period Microsoft can't restore anything. Also, the way Chromebooks integrates with the cloud services is excellent.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I started my experience with HPE Data Protector, which I now hate, because it's now Micro Focus and it's killing me.

I have worked with Dell EMC. Their solution does the work, but there are a lot of the problems with the ESXi.

I have worked with NetBackup. NetBackup is good, but I haven't seen the new feature like they have in Commvault for integration.

I have also worked with Veritas Backup Exec.

How was the initial setup?

With Commvault, if you need basic integration and configuration but no advanced features, then you can do the setup in maximum three to four hours. However, if you need to do everything, you will need everything to be organized for you to work.

What about the implementation team?

For the backup specifically, you have to implement the basic design with every client. It then depends on their needs, environment, and how we can make their life easier. Every time, we have to change something in order to give our customers the best experience.

What was our ROI?

The solution enables our customers to save on infrastructure costs by being able to manage what were disparate data management solutions in one place. It is one of the most important features: You can do backup for almost everything from one platform. Plus, you can reduce costs by using any cheap storage and still have the deduplication feature. You can present any cheap storage for the backup and not have to worry about the B2B high cost appliances, like HPE, Dell EMC Data Domain, etc. When you can do everything from one place, it's always better. It will reduce cost on the infrastructure and human resources who manage the environment.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

It was not very popular because of its previous cost, but they have been working on the pricing, and now anyone can afford to use Commvault. They changed the modeling criteria for their pricing. Previously, there was only the capacity modeling based on your content capacity. In this case, they would give you a license and you would have to pay it. Now, most of the environment is virtualized so you can have the best CPU, VMs, etc. You buy whatever you need and pay for what you need.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

The most important feature that other backup solutions in the enterprise field are missing is a built-in feature for deduplication. It has a buildt-in deduplication engine and database. Therefore, you don't need another B2B vendor, like Appian, in order to do the deduplication. This is the most important feature that other solutions don't have. Most of them need another solution, like Appian or B2B storage. Also, the integration with storage and the snapshots (taken from the storage) have a lot of variety.

I'm a fan of Commvault. I have worked with a lot of backup solutions for about eight years. Commvault is the best until now that I have worked with.

Commvault is the best for cloud integration. I tried VMware where you can back up to the cloud, but it's not easy. With CommVault, you can see the cloud environment, cloud machines and virtual machines (such as on-premises virtual machines). With other solutions, there are a few limitations.

I am still working with Veeam.

There is also another solution, Cohesity. It is a good solution but it still has a lot to do.

What other advice do I have?

Buy Commvault. It is an excellent backup solution. I would recommend the solution.

What is important to Commvault is the flexibility. E.g., if you have a new application that you want to integrate, but it's not supported, they can help you with that. They will start immediately working on it with the development. We have talked with Commvault many times, and this was one of the things that they are proud of. They can give you an integration, even if it's not integrated yet. In addition, Commvault has done a partnership with HPE, which helps with integrations.

I would rate the solution as a 10 (out of 10).


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