Dell NetWorker is an enterprise-level data protection software product that unifies and automates backup to tape, disk-based, and flash-based storage media across physical and virtual environments for granular and disaster recovery.
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vSphere Data Protection Advanced (discontinued)
Score 8.7 out of 10
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VMware vSphere Data Protection Advanced (or vDPA), now part of vSphere, was a VMware data protection and recovery offering. The product is no longer available standalone.
For users with a basic backup system that does not provide advanced data protection this is a life saver in the age we live in where hackers are looking to encrypt and ruin your important backups. I would recommend [Dell EMC Networker] based on its features, price, and ease of use. If you have a similar product already it does not offer many unique features however.
VMware vSphere Data Protection Advanced is well suited for a thin client environment, and/or an environment that runs multiple virtual servers. It is also well suited for an environment with disaster recover requirements that require backups of everything. vSphere is very expensive, so it would probably not be a very good choice for a startup that could use a cheaper alternative in the beginning, or a physical machine environment.
Seamlessly integrates with vmWare for extremely fast VM backups
Provides agent-based integration for a very wide array of applications-aware backups, including but not limited to: Microsoft SQL/Exchange/Sharepoint, Meditech, Oracle, DB2, Informix, SAP
Integrates with a wide family of NAS solutions for NDMP backups
The GUI is horrible. Giant windows that don't size properly, confusing terminology, multiple clicks to get things done, it's just a disorganized mess. I can't put this in front of my junior techs because it requires some background in DR software to fully comprehend, and even then it's not easy. It feels very much like this was tacked on to a command-line based product as an afterthought.
Better management features. It's difficult to integrate with Active Directory, for one. You'll need a Dell EMC tech to help you. Items can't be renamed and have to be recreated. Options are buried in multiple GUI tabs and often are just command line strings in a free-text field. Diagnosing failed jobs and workflows is cumbersome and the errors are often cryptic without some experience. Design it well and pray for uptime, because you need this to work when disaster requires it to.
Poor reporting features for an enterprise class product. You can't schedule any type of simple summary (an audit requirement for us) in the base product. To do this requires the additional cost of Data Protection Advisor, which is also horribly designed and impossible to get working quickly.
Post-sales contact is non-existent. We've been through a few reps and the project team dropped us at one point with a half-finished implementation when the original sales guy moved on. We only got the the promised product implementation by telling Dell that we weren't paying the bill until they delivered what they promised and were contractually obligated to.
There are three reasons for not renewing our use of NetWorker: 1) the rising and extremely high cost of support and proprietary hardware needed for deduplication, 2) the complete unreliability of the product (we couldn't recover from a true disaster if we wanted to), and 3) the horrible support from EMC for the product
NetWorker has the clunkiest interface and unfriendliest CLI with which I have ever had to work. I spent three years hating this application because it took ALL of my time just to keep it running. Even then, I had no confidence in our ability to recover from a disaster because of its unreliability.
The support team has always been good, and there is never an issue that can't be resolved. The techs are competent and know the product. The slightly less than perfect rating I'm giving is because Support shouldn't carry the burden themselves. We hear from Dell sales people all the time, but they never call and ask about this product, nor do they offer to upsell it or make it better. That lack of sales support and coherence hurts the overall rating a bit. When I spend my company's money on your product, I expect you to at least ACT like you care, if not actually care for real. It influences my opinion and future purchasing habits.
How can anyone build a house without a blueprint? NetWorker was ramrodded into place here without a design or implementation plan. The result was a setup that was doomed from the start and never worked reliable over the full three years of our contract obligation.
EMC and Unitrends are equal at the file level and SQL backups. What makes Unitrends the better product is the ability to backup VMs as a whole. They both have the ability to email reports about failures and hardware issues. Unitrends has superior support and knowledge base and support is available 24/7.
CloudBacko is the only similar product that I have used, and while it worked by backing up my virtual machines to Google Drive, VMware vSphere Data Protection Advanced not only backs up the virtual machines, buton databases, physical servers and more, and backs them up to a centralized location, and has 24/7 live support.
