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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Druva Phoenix (UNPUBLISHED)
Score 10.0 out of 10
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As businesses adopt a cloud-first strategy, reducing on-premises infrastructure and moving IT and business applications to the cloud, the limitations and costs of traditional data protection and disaster recovery become more apparent. Druva Phoenix™ provides a cloud-native approach that helps businesses accelerate their journey to the cloud by reducing infrastructure management and improving business resilience. Delivered as-a-service, Druva Phoenix boasts…
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.
Durva Phoenix is well suited for the VMware platform and has great restore functionality during disaster recovery. We use a different VM platform so our disaster recovery has a longer timeline if there is a critical failure as we need to get a base OS loaded before we can restore the VM data to it. This is the tradeoff between an expensive VM platform and a near free VM platform. Druva Phoenix is well suited to file version recovery if a previous data state is required by your employees or customers. Very quick to restore.
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 best part about Druva is that you deploy, which is fairly easy especially with your technical rep being available for the whole process, and then you let the system do your work. If a backup fails I get a report, there is no need to check it every day or even weekly.
The file server backup is great. Searching is easy and the capability to pull back a full folder or individual file makes life a lot easier to support my end users.
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.
The UI is good, but a bit inconsistent. Some types of backups are shown differently to others. It never gets in the way, but a bit more consistency would be good.
The system is usage based, which is understandable, but a shock after using inSync, their other backup product, which is not. Careful planning and thought is needed if you are on a tight budget
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.
Certain backup solutions can be cumbersome on how they actually work. Where that's properly deploying hardware or software that will house the backups. Druva is different where the software and infrastructure is completely managed. All we needed to do is deploy agents and proxies and point the backups to Druva Phoenix
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.
It's been pretty easy to get a hold of the Support team and they work well to resolve our issues. I wish I could email support directly (which we used to be able to do) versus having to login to the console and report an issue from there, that's a feature I'd like to see brought back but otherwise, their Support team is pleasant to work with.
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.
Druva stacks up well against its competitors. I do not remember it being at a disadvantage in any category. Phoenix couldn't provide message-level restore on an on-premise Exchange server but after we moved to the cloud that requirement went away.
This is a necessary service to keep your information safe. I would not say that there is a tangible ROI unless you reach a point where your server gets attacked and wiped-out. Then, you can recover your information in an easy manner, which could represent a potential several-thousand-dollar savings.
