Dell Networker vs. NAKIVO Backup & Replication

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.

Incentivized

NAKIVO Backup & Replication is well suited for a variety of scenarios. Firstly, it is ideal for businesses with virtualized environments, such as VMware or Hyper-V, as it offers seamless backup and recovery solutions tailored to these platforms. Secondly, organizations with a mix of virtual, physical, and cloud environments can benefit from NAKIVO's ability to provide unified data protection across these platforms. Additionally, businesses requiring fast and reliable disaster recovery capabilities will find NAKIVO Backup & Replication valuable, thanks to its site recovery and orchestration features.However, there are scenarios where NAKIVO may be less appropriate. For organizations with exclusively physical infrastructure and no virtualized environments, the full range of NAKIVO's features may not be utilized to its fullest potential. Similarly, companies with limited data storage requirements may not fully benefit from NAKIVO's deduplication and compression capabilities.

• Seamlessly integrates with DataDomain
• 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

• Can be installed natively on nas appliances leveraging the use of underutilized appliances. No need to install the software on Windows or Linux Servers.
• Backup natively Vmware Virtual Machines and File Shares (you need to buy the right license modules).
• Destination storage for backups (or of the backup copies) can be Microsoft shares, Amazon S3, Wasabi, Backblaze and remotely to other sites using their transporter vm.
• To not overload the system with overlapping jobs, they can be chained one after the other.
• Rapid add/remove/reorder priority of vm to backup and their backup archive. Jobs can be easily changed or chained.
• Quick support service

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• Backups have the option of "screenshot verification". Screenshot verification doesn't always work for us when our vmtools is out of date. If we are on an older version of VMware and that version of vmtools is up to date, NAKIVO still thinks it is out of date.

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

It is a product that contains most of the features of its big competitors but at an affordable price for small businesses. In addition, the support is very good even if they only have support in English. Another important factor is its compatibility with NAS devices, which greatly simplifies deployment. The implementation is simple and in a matter of minutes you can define the first copy Jobs

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.

Incentivized

NAKIVO Backup & Replication is very easy to set up. I did it by myself, and it went perfectly. Online documents are very well written, and also the tech support asked to help me set it up. I want to do it by myself and the setup process is very easy to do. The connection to your VM and servers is very easy to do.

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.

Incentivized

The support is fast and perfect. If u have any questions, you can contact the support team via mail or chat and you always get a fast answer. You can also find a lot of help in the FAQ in the help center to resolve your problems. Anytime I had to contact the support, they helped me and solved my problem.

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.

Incentivized

It is very easy to do in all the formats in which it is implemented, whether as an appliance, in a windows machine, or an implementation in NAS. I only use the appliance one, but I have tried all of them in trial mode to know which one interested me more.

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.

Incentivized

NAKIVO Backup & Replication stands out as a more cost-effective and robust solution compared to Veeam ONE. With competitive pricing and a comprehensive feature set including incremental backups, global deduplication, LAN-free data transfer, and built-in WAN acceleration, NAKIVO offers efficient data protection and optimized storage usage. Its user-friendly interface and streamlined setup process make it appealing for organizations with limited IT resources. Additionally, NAKIVO's support for VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V, and Nutanix AHV further enhances its versatility. When evaluating data protection solutions, NAKIVO's affordability, robustness, and ease of use make it an attractive choice for businesses seeking a comprehensive and cost-effective backup solution.

The pricing for VM backups is good value for money as it does not limit how many VM's per socket. This works well for smaller sites with simple backup requirements. Physical machine backup pricing would more attractive with a sliding scale based on the number of physical machines.

Incentivized

I contacted a few times Nakivo representatives, once for technical doubt and the other ones for commercial ones. Both support services are fast and reliable.

Incentivized

• When you get into the deep dive of features there is quite a learning curve for those options so it's a lot to learn.
• Restores and restore verification is very fast so you save some time there.
• Costs are fairly high so an ROI may take some time vs a standard backup software.

Incentivized

• One of our contributors has permanently deleted worksheets from our file server. From Nakivo, we were able to recover all the data in less than 10 minutes.
• An authentication server was encrypted by ransomware, through NAKIVO Backup & Replication, we recover the entire server within 1 hour.

Incentivized