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Dell Avamar

Dell Avamar

Overview

What is Dell Avamar?

Dell Avamar is a hardware and software data backup and deduplication product. It provides protection and recovery through a complete software and hardware solution when paired with Dell Data Domain for virtual environments, remote offices, enterprise apps, NAS servers, and…

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Recent Reviews

TrustRadius Insights

Dell Avamar is a versatile backup solution that has been adopted by organizations across various industries. Many users have found that …
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Avamar Experience

9 out of 10
December 28, 2021
I can say that it effectively meets our virtual server and file backup needs. With its easy-to-manage interface, we can quickly create …
Continue reading

Avamar backup solution

7 out of 10
December 10, 2018
Incentivized
Avamar is our companies backup solution. We use it to backup all servers in the environment as well as Exchange mail and file servers. A …
Continue reading
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Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

Popular Features

View all 14 features
  • Incremental backup identification (21)
    9.3
    93%
  • Deduplication and file compression (22)
    8.6
    86%
  • Universal recovery (20)
    8.5
    85%
  • Multiple backup destinations (20)
    6.0
    60%
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Pricing

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What is Dell Avamar?

Dell Avamar is a hardware and software data backup and deduplication product. It provides protection and recovery through a complete software and hardware solution when paired with Dell Data Domain for virtual environments, remote offices, enterprise apps, NAS servers, and desktops/laptops.

Entry-level set up fee?

  • Setup fee optional

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

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Features

Data Center Backup

Data center backup tools send data to a secure storage location after encryption and de-duplication

7.8
Avg 8.2
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Product Details

What is Dell Avamar?

Dell Avamar is a hardware and software data backup and deduplication product. It provides protection and recovery through a complete software and hardware solution when paired with Dell EMC Data Domain for virtual environments, remote offices, enterprise apps, NAS servers, and desktops/laptops.

Dell Avamar enables backup and recovery by reducing the size of backup data at the client–before it’s transferred across the network and stored. Avamar's variable-length deduplication reduces network traffic by only sending unique blocks, compressed and encrypted over local area networks (LANs) or wide area networks (WANs). Blocks that were previously stored are never backed up again.

Deployment Options

Avamar Data Store – According to Dell, Avamar Data Store is the easiest and fastest way to deploy this solution. It combines a Dell EMC-certified purpose-built backup appliance and Avamar deduplication backup and recovery software in a fully integrated, scalable, prepackaged solution.

Avamar Business Edition –Dell Avamar Business is a deduplicated backup solution designed for midmarket companies, featuring simplified management, making it ideal for organizations with limited IT resources.

Avamar Virtual Edition – Avamar deduplication backup software and virtual appliances deployed in AWS, Azure, and VMware Cloud on AWS.

Integration with Dell EMC Data Domain deduplication storage systems – Utilize Avamar with Data Domain devices sold directly through Dell

Dell Avamar Video

Avamar Fundamentals Free e-Learning

Dell Avamar Technical Details

Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo

Frequently Asked Questions

Dell Avamar is a hardware and software data backup and deduplication product. It provides protection and recovery through a complete software and hardware solution when paired with Dell Data Domain for virtual environments, remote offices, enterprise apps, NAS servers, and desktops/laptops.

Reviewers rate Recovery verification highest, with a score of 9.4.

The most common users of Dell Avamar are from Enterprises (1,001+ employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(79)

Community Insights

TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!

Dell Avamar is a versatile backup solution that has been adopted by organizations across various industries. Many users have found that Avamar allows them to consolidate their backup infrastructure, making it easier to monitor and manage all enterprise backups with a single tool and console. With Avamar, users are able to back up a wide range of assets including physical servers, virtual machines, network attached storage, and even cloud environments. The flexibility of Avamar has made it an ideal choice for businesses with diverse IT architectures.

One prominent use case for Avamar is its ability to simplify backup operations for remote plants and offices. By installing the Avamar agent on physical servers located at remote sites, users are able to perform image-level backups of the virtual machines in those environments. This not only reduces network traffic over the WAN, but also ensures that critical data from remote locations is protected. Additionally, Avamar's deduplication technology helps optimize storage usage, allowing organizations to efficiently manage their capacity and scale as needed.

Managed service providers have also found great value in Avamar as it enables them to effectively manage backup and restore operations for their clients. Leveraging Avamar's deduplication technology and always incremental method, service providers are able to offer reliable and efficient backup services while minimizing storage costs. The easy-to-use interface of Avamar allows these providers to quickly set up backup scenarios and achieve desired results, ensuring the continuity of their clients' business operations.

The compression and deduplication properties of Avamar have received positive feedback from customers, highlighting the effectiveness of the software in optimizing storage utilization. Users appreciate the simplicity and speed of the restore process with Avamar, enabling them to quickly recover important files or entire servers when needed. Furthermore, customers have confidence in Avamar's long-term reliability, knowing that it will continue meeting their backup needs as their infrastructure grows and expands.

Overall, Dell Avamar serves as a valuable backup solution for organizations seeking to streamline their backup operations, protect critical data, and optimize storage efficiency. Its wide range of use cases, from consolidating backup infrastructure to simplifying remote site backups and supporting managed service providers, has made it a trusted choice for businesses around the globe.

Data deduplication greatly reduces backup traffic and backup times: Users have stated that Avamar's data deduplication feature has significantly reduced the amount of backup traffic, even in virtual environments with change block tracking. This has resulted in a considerable decrease in backup times, transforming hours-long backups into mere minutes.

Ease of use in configuring and maintaining data retention periods: Reviewers have praised Avamar's management interface for its ease of use when it comes to configuring and maintaining data retention periods. The specific menu dedicated to managing retention periods has been particularly helpful for users who need to retain certain data for an extended period of time.

Highly resilient system with minimal loss of backups: Users value Avamar's ability to recover itself from hard failures with virtually no loss of backups. The daily checkpoints provided by the system ensure a recovery point in case of catastrophic failures, instilling confidence in the resilience and reliability of their backups.

Complicated Upgrade Process: Some users have found the upgrade process for Dell Avamar to be complicated and requiring support from EMC. They mention that there are diagnostics and tests that need to be performed before scheduling the upgrade, and upgrading additional modules can be a separate process.

Issues with Client Interface: Several reviewers have expressed frustration with the client interface of Dell Avamar. They report constant JAVA issues, slow performance, and a cumbersome user experience. The interface tends to break when using current versions of JAVA, rendering it non-functional.

Expensive Renewals: Many users have mentioned that renewing Avamar contracts after the initial support package expires is extremely expensive. This has been a concern for customers as they find the cost of maintenance renewals to be high.

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-22 of 22)
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December 28, 2021

Avamar Experience

Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
I can say that it effectively meets our virtual server and file backup needs. With its easy-to-manage interface, we can quickly create backup scenarios and get results. The restore process seems simple and fast. Compression and deduplication properties are good. It is a product that will meet our backup needs in the long run. With the flexibility of growth and expansion, we can better manage our capacity.
  • Creating fast backup profiles.
  • Compression and Deduplication performance is nice
  • Restore operations are easy and fast
  • Datadomain dependency is not a good feature.
  • Compression ratios are not good for 2nd time compressed data
  • A lot of integration is required during the setup phase.
It offers a very effective backup comfort with profiles suitable for virtual server backup operations. Support services are underperforming in low-level cases, but very good in high-level events. status. Installation configurations have a complex process. We expect it to be a little more affordable in terms of cost.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use the Avamar solution for the protection of our entire environment. We are protecting all the virtual machines using it and the backup center stores information extremely fast. The de-duplication is great. All of this is available under one hood. The complexity is hidden from you so in the end, it's easy to implement and to maintain.
  • Extremely reliable and scalable.
  • The source site replication feature is valuable.
  • The initial setup is easy.
  • It would be helpful if there was cloud support.
  • It lacks support for certain plugins, like SAP HANA, for example.
It's well suited when you are looking for something to keep your on-premise environment safe and you don't want to spend a lot of time doing the setup. It's easy to scale and a very reliable solution. I think it is not a really nice solution in terms of pricing, so the challenge here is to check if the value [is] worth it.
Score 1 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We purchased Avamar as part of IDPA (Integrated Data Protection Appliance) and it has been a complete disaster. The version we are on does not support vSphere 7 and to update the appliance to supported version is like pulling teeth with EMC support. There is a very long backlog of customers doing updates, so the timelines are usually 2-3 months out. Dell owns EMC and VMware yet they cannot make their own products work with one another. Currently Avamar is not being used at all so the appliance is effectively an expensive paper weight. Previous versions of Avamar were no better and we constantly had issues with maintaining backups as job would simply not run and break the entire appliance.
  • Integrates with vCenter very well
  • [I think] The appliance is terrible at doing steady backups
  • does not work with vCenter 7
  • [I feel] support is awful
  • configuration is very complex
  • [I think it is] unreliable
Do not waste your time with this product. [I think] it is awful and and will only cause you headaches. Support from Dell/EMC is awful and it is not even compatible with their own brand (vSphere 7). [I believe] it was a huge mistake to purchase this product and I lost all trust in Dell sales team who vouched for this solution. Please do not buy this, there are way better solutions out there and [I feel] this one is not worth it even when free (back when Avamar was included as VMware Data Protection for free)
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are a managed service provider and therefore we are using it for two clients to manage their backup and restore operations. We are leveraging through the dedupe technology and always incremental method, EMC Avamar BMR is one of the best in the market.
  • Variable length block level deduplication.
  • Always incremental.
  • Easy integration with data domain.
  • Backup and recovery speed.
  • Cannot do the restore of a individual large file from VMs as timeout occurs.
  • Cannot browse more than 14999 files for restore.
  • Database backups are clumsy.
Dell EMC Avamar is well suited for backup of DFS servers with huge amount of data and daily repeated backups, due to global dedupe less data is being transferred across the network. EMC Avamar is well suited to do physical and virtual machines BMR as less information needs to be provided and very fast.
It is less appropriate for backup of SQL database, a lot of configuration required in dataset level and very clumsy.
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Dell EMC Avamar is being used at 3 of the locations that I support. We used it to do system and file-level backup, database backups, as well as replication. This system works very well at backing up these items. The restore process is rather lengthy depending on what you are attempting to restore. The UI is not as user-friendly as would be expected.
  • System-level backups.
  • File-level backups.
  • Replication.
  • Time to recover is lengthy.
  • The user interface is not user-friendly.
This system is very well suited for an environment that needs a dependable backup solution that doesn't require a quick restore. If you have this system as your only DR solution and you need to be up and running in a matter of minutes this is not the right for you.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Dell EMC Avamar is being use as a front end backup scheduler and restorer device. It schedules backups of our VMs across multiple environments, deduplicates them, then sends them to the data domain device for storage. Once there, the data domain ages the device to our AWS instance, reducing our on-prem footprint and satisfying our need for a hybrid model.
  • New and improved interface no longer requires separate program to run on a management server.
  • The avamar interacts with the data domain device to allow for cloud storage.
  • The Avamar AVE footprint is much easier to install and use, given the new GUI.
  • Dell EMC has solved the bloated management software installation plaguing the install for years.
  • Dell needs to move the Virtual Edition piece into their hardware platform, to allow for better management and daily use of the product.
  • Using VMware for snapshoting a VM is older technology, holding back larger VM's from being backed up, to allow for a file system copy only. Real innovation would allow for better methods of snapshoting a VM.
The new Avamar VE has a better management front end, thus allowing for faster deployments and allowing customers including myself to easily create backups and perform restores. This new VE platform needs to be retrofitted to the Avamar hardware devices as well. This is a great solution, when bundled with Data Domain and AWS cloud, to allow for hybrid model.
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We have been using Avamar as a simple cloud backup solution for our customers, considering that it does only files and folders and it does a good job with deduplication, so the backups get well compressed when sent offsite. That flexibility makes it easy to set up and inexpensive for our customers because they can control the amount of data they send to the cloud and what they pay.
  • It has a variety of plugins to backups different types of applications or to do only files and folders, so you can be very specific about what to back up and how much data you would like to send to the cloud.
  • The deduplication feature is very efficient, especially when the datasets are created with specific plugins, so the system knows how to process the backups.
  • The restore option is user-friendly.
  • The Avamar Client and Administrator are desktop applications, easy to install and set up.
  • The application is not secure enough to be compliant. It does have basic encryption for the transfer of the backups but it doesn't allow to encrypt the backups itself to make them more secure.
  • The creation of users is very simple, doesn't have password restrictions and doesn't have strong user profiles that can allow restricting the access based on specific options.
  • The management of the application is not cloud, it requires to install Java and a Console to access the settings and perform restores.
  • Is not intuitive to configure the datasets, schedules, alerts, among other things. You have to go to different options to finish the configuration of these features.
  • The software requires you to have proprietary hardware for the cloud that is always up to date on the generation, otherwise, it could easily reach its end of life in several years, which would require a new big investment, which makes it expensive.
This software is well suited for companies that want to be very in control of their backups but need a simple tool. It could be convenient for them to just buy their own node, locate it in a different location, and set up the jobs for their machines to backup to the cloud with the specific plugins. However, it would not be convenient for companies looking to have a tool that needs to be secure and compliant, and that need to have different other options for business continuity.
July 29, 2019

EMC Avamar

Emmanuel De Oleo | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
ResellerIncentivized
When I was working for Hexistor, our cloud solution for backups was DELL EMC Avamar. We used this for different clients that were in distinct locations around the world and we transferred all their backups to our data center in the USA. The business problems that we resolved with Avamar were that we could have a second backup solution to improve the Continuity of our clients. We have local backup and cloud backup taken with Avamar.
  • Faster Backup and Recovery
  • Flexible Deployment
  • Interface is old
  • Managing space is difficult
  • Training is difficult
It is a simple tool that allows you to backup specific information, only files and folders, and it does a good job with managing duplication. That flexibility makes it easy to set up and inexpensive for customers, because they can control the amount of data they send to the cloud.
Shawn Kane | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Avamar is our primary backup appliance for our location. We use it to protect our critical data against loss. We backup Windows and Linux servers, both physical and virtual.
  • Great deduplication.
  • Fast backups.
  • Super reliable.
  • It is expensive.
  • Initial setup of clients is a little clunky.
I found that Avamar was very easy to use when backing up physical servers. The version I had was not as good for backing up virtual servers, but it was an older version. The console you use made it very easy to see if any backups failed.
Brian Munn | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Avamar as our data center backup platform. We have been using Avamar for the past 5 years and have had great success. Our environment is completely virtual and we use the backup solution to not only backup the data within a server using the backup agents but we also use Avamar to backup the VMs.
  • Avamar's deduplication technology is extremely efficient. Each backup of a server is considered a full backup but only changed bits for data are copied.
  • The backup process is almost as easy as set it and forget it. Once the policy and schedules are created Avamar works and works without issues. It is very rare we have any failed backups.
  • Avamar offers a wide range of backup agents and a very customizable backup configuration
  • Initial purchase cost is on the high end.
  • After initial support package has expired the cost to renew is extremely high.
  • Media export option is lacking on features and then using exported media for restore is a cumbersome process.
Size of company or data center. Avamar is well suited for larger data centers with lots of data and companies are are willing to purchase the replication grids. For smaller companies Avamar is cost prohibitive. Avamar is designed for large companies and lots of data.
Rodney Barnhardt | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
At the time of its purchase, Avamar was used to replace a variety of products. This was a mix of BackupExec, NetBackup, PureDisk, and vRanger. The idea was to be able to monitor and manage all enterprise backups with a single tool and from a single console. Currently, Avamar backs up the production servers and network attached storage in our primary data center. This includes not only physical servers, but the entire virtual environment as well. The Avamar agent is also installed on the physical servers located at our remote plants. As technology has changes, we have started to deploy VXRail as an HCI at some of our remote plants. Avamar allows us to perform the same image-level backup of these virtual machines as the ones in our primary data center. This allows the backup to perform deduplication on the remote server and only send the needed data back to the grid. The greatly reduces network traffic over the WAN. In addition, the NDMP accelerator nodes were purchased two years after the initial purchase. This was to enable us to backup the new network attached storage where our primary file shares were going to be migrated.
  • Avamar performs data deduplication on the remote host. This greatly reduces the amount of traffic that each backup requires. This even applies to the virtual environment through change block tracking. Backup times are reduced from hours to minutes.
  • The management interface makes it easy to configure and maintain data retention periods. Many times certain data must be kept for an extended period of time. There is a specific menu for managing retention periods.
  • The system is able to recover itself from a hard failure with virtually no loss of backups. There is a checkpoint taken each day that provides a recovery point in the event of a catastrophic failure. Since this is a node based system, the loss of more than one node could require a recovery be performed.
  • While another grid must be purchased, the replication utility allows all backups to be replicated to another grid at a remote location. This ensures the resilience of the backups in the event there is the loss of the primary data center.
  • Also works on HCI devices performing image-level backups as in our primary data center environment
  • There is also now an All-in-One appliance for smaller locations
  • The upgrade process is rather complicated. It needs to be performed by EMC support, and there are a lot of diagnostics and test that must be performed ahead of scheduling the upgrade. Some additional modules such as the NDMP accelerator must be upgraded as part of a separate process.
  • Interoperability with other EMC products is not always seamless or immediate. An upgrade may require another EMC product be upgraded before there full interoperability returns.
  • Maintenance renewals can be a headache if different modules were purchased at different times. You need to make sure your new purchases are aligned with the renewals of your existing hardware. This is referred to as "co-terming".
The integration with Exchange has been improved over previous versions. Rather than having to install all of the components for a GLR restore (which complicated agent upgrades), a "swing" system can be used for these tools. The new interface allows for simpler recover than previous versions. The mailbox can even be exported to a PST if needed.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Our organization is currently using Dell EMC Avamar to backup all our assets around the globe (Linux, AIX, Virtuals, Windows, Mac, AS400). We presently have 22 individual systems deployed internationally to provide backup and replication protection using deduplication. We have two sites running the new IDPA (Integrated Data Protection Appliance) with a combined capacity of over 150TB and a virtual tape library. Data protection is provided by backup/restore of critical files for data loss prevention. Business data is growing at an exponential rate where storage and recovery processes are vital to speed to market. Initial installation is simple and straightforward. Backup schedules adhere it time zones across the globe and are easy to set up. Before purchasing Dell EMC Avamar other backup solutions were vetted and cost to storage and feature options were compared. The final decision came down to cost of storage and ease of setup and technical support, which of course Del EMC Avamar won us over.
  • Ease of setup
  • ROI storage to cost
  • Technical support
  • Renewing Avamar contracts internationally should be more integrated
  • More simplified technical support portal
  • Price of additional storage
Dell EMC Avamar is well suited for medium to large corporations since costs are larger for storage and contracts. Deploying large scale backup/restore topology is Dell EMC's strong point. Support and upgrades are handled on a per site basis with constant connection with tech support during the process. Small to medium organizations might not need the extremely powerful features included with Avamar. And the costs may be prohibitive.
Paul Lemmons | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 3 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Avamar was used here for over 6 years. It was the primary backup system for all file-based backup and recovery operations across Vmware (Windows and Linux), Physical Windows, Physical Aix, and Physical Linux. This addressed backup and recovery for the entire organization. Initially, it was a stand-alone collection of Avamar nodes that was eventually upgraded to nodes plus Data Domain.
  • Data compression/deduplication across all backup targets.
  • Extremely quick at recovering data.
  • Low overhead on the network.
  • Low overhead on the host.
  • It's supported all of our various platforms.
  • The technology is stagnant. It's had the same basic interface and feature set over all of the years we used it.
  • A clunky java based management GUI.
  • It only supports RedHat for the management console under Linux.
  • Meta-data continues to grow even when backup sets do not cause nodes to fill, requiring professional services to clean it up.
  • Fork-lift upgrades.
  • It requires a lot of care and feeding with a lot of time on the phone with support.
Avamar is not a bad product. It is just no longer competitive in features, support or upgradability. It does work and what it does it does well. It has just not evolved and as a result, it is beginning to feel the effects of natural selection.
If you have Avamar, you don't need to hurry up and replace it. It will keep doing what it does and is doing it well. Its best use-case is holding its current place until you can perform a thorough search to find something better.
January 29, 2019

Avamar on my mind

Juan Ignacio Carriches Alvarez | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
ResellerIncentivized
Avamar is being used like a cross-cutting service by the whole company to ensure the backup of important and critical information. Every department who owns a service or server and needs a backup uses our Avamar delivering services.
Avamar addresses problems, especially from users, such as users who delete files or folders. Also sometimes we need to use Avamar to restore information from several servers.
  • Avamar uses two cache files to speed the backup process which works very well.
  • Avamar is an object-oriented backup tool and has a very good granularity.
  • Works fine with virtual servers and VDSL.
  • Avamar agent upgrade is tedious. Avamar needs to work to create something like RedHat Satellite to upgrade all the agents with one unique process.
Avamar is an object-oriented backup but works better with medium/big sized objects than small sized objects.
Avamar does not have the Hot Backup functionality, this is why Avamar works better with big/medium sized document repository and does not work well for ECM environments.
December 10, 2018

Avamar backup solution

Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Avamar is our companies backup solution. We use it to backup all servers in the environment as well as Exchange mail and file servers. A good backup solution is necessary in order to resolve issues that range from accidentally deleted files to crypto viruses which have corrupted an entire operating system.
  • Creation of retention policies which can be applied to multiple backup sets. This eases administration as you can apply the retention policy across the board.
  • Creation of data sets which can then be added to backup policies.
  • Ability to easily manage backups and restores.
  • The system is a little complicated at first, getting to know the terminology is important as it will help to make you an efficient administrator of Avamar.
  • RTO can be slow depending on what system you are using in the background and how much data you are moving.
Compared to other backup systems it is very comparable. It is a standard backup solution so shares commonality with many other solutions such as Backup Exec, Veeam, etc. The nice part is that if you have EMC storage then integration works very well as it is an EMC product. Most of the time organizations are going to stick with the backup solution they have rather than make a radical change.
April 19, 2017

Avamar review

Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Avamar is used to support the entire organization's backup strategy. It supports our need to have a reliable backup solution that is scalable and can be managed by various members of our IT staff. It allows our team to effectively manage the backup environment while not relying on the vendor to do day to day activities.
  • It is scalable
  • It is effective at managing storage volumes
  • Very easy to use.
  • Less complex setup
  • Integration with VMware needs some attention
It's well suited for an environment that that is larger in scale and provides the ability for engineers to easily create backup schedules. It may not be suited for smaller organizations that may not have much to backup or benefit from an enterprise class level backup solutions.
Score 5 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use one Avamar appliance to back up servers and then replicate to another Avamar appliance.
  • Avamar is very reliable when it comes to backing up servers. I rarely have a backup fail, where as with Backup Exec, we had backups fail every night.
  • Avamar is also very reliable when it comes to restoring data. I have never had a restore fail.
  • Avamar backs up and restores data very quickly.
  • User interface is terrible and it takes a while to figure out where to find what you need.
  • If something goes wrong you just get an error code instead of any kind of explanation of error.
  • Most issues have to be solved by EMC support, so you always have to keep a support contract on Avamar.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Avamar was purchased as an enterprise wide solution. It was used around the world at all of our locations, and would back up all of our data to our centralized data center. From there data would replicate to our disaster recovery site.
  • Avamar's deduplication and compression rate of data in transit and on disk was impressive. Once everything was going I was able to backup my entire enterprise in a 12 hour window. Prior to that backups that were only getting one site were taking 5 days.
  • Avamar is the only product that I have found that can backup data that is replicated by Microsoft DFSR.
  • Cost. Avamar is too expensive.
  • The tape out feature is garbage. It's repackaged Legato Networker and while I never worked with Legato Networker before, I can say it didn't take much for it stop working with Avamar.
Avamar does what it says it does. If you have the budget it's worth the purchase. It falls very short on tape archival, however.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We used Avamar for both image level and file level backups for VMs, most of which were Windows 2008 servers. We were able to set retention policies that satisfied SOX requirements for financially relevant servers. General file server backups were also taken and restored on a regular basis as requested by end users.
  • File level recovery is quick and easy. No more searching for sets of tapes to restore incremental backups.
  • Backup speed is excellent due to de-duplication.
  • The user interface is fairly intuitive and is easy to train junior level technicians on basic functions.
  • End user perception of data integrity is improved and confidence is high.
  • Avamar is scaleable but expansion is expensive.
  • Storage management could be improved regarding checking real-time available space. Nodes seemed to always be out of sync.
  • Corrupt snapshots were sometimes a problem. Not always, but at least once a quarter.
There are still some finance departments that require archives on physical media. What choices are available and what are the methods to export to a chosen media? How would one go about restoring data from this media?
Kevin Belonzi | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Avamar is being used across the entire organization as one of our two sources of Backup/Restore protection of our Virtual Environment. It addresses any issues we may have with VMs that go down and need to be restored by using their image level backup process we have in place within the Avamar software suite.
  • Backs up and restores quite easily. This is a huge benefit for our team members that come in green to the software as it is easy to use.
  • It is versatile in [the ways in] which you can expand and improve performance by adding proxy servers to help with the load of backups within different departments within the company.
  • Installation is a breeze! This also helps when a need for expansion or proxy servers occur, it's a simple template that can be deployed within VCenter to have it up and running in no time at all.
  • Interaction with the VMware software products. We've noticed quite a few glitches with failed backups where when they fail they leave snapshots out there with files that are locked by the proxy server still having the disks attached to it from certain VMs which causes the need to manually disconnect those disks and then perform a consolidation on the VM that failed. This can prove to be a great inconvenience as the machine will continue to fail until the problem is rectified.
Avamar is well suited for larger environments that use a virtual infrastructure such as VMware. However, I would not recommend Avamar to outfits that are not using virtual software.
October 09, 2015

Avamar Backup

Rhapsody Budiono | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We used Avamar as a backup. The only problem we see is that sometimes the backup is slow. The support; however, is really helpful and responsive. We had a lot of issues fixed by the support team.
  • Accurate Backup
  • Best Support Team
  • Never Broke Down
  • Slow Performance
  • Better UI
N/A
Tim Knarr | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Avamar is our primary backup system, backing up over 40 servers, including those over the WAN. We partner with another organization for our offsite push and we are their offsite location. Avamar would allow us to get up and running to quickly deploy our systems in another area of the country quickly is a natural disaster. We also use it for one off restores on file issues. The bare metal restore works well and quick in an all out server corruption.
  • Data deduplication is the best feature. The amount of data backed up to space used has been impressive.
  • Ease of backing up whole VMs with vCenter integration makes a bare metal restore really easy.
  • Because of the deduplication, the backup times are really quick and don't heavily impact the servers. Also makes it really light over the WAN.
  • The client interface has constant JAVA issues and can be slow and chunky. We have often had issues with current versions of JAVA breaking it so it will not even run.
  • The backup clients are split out for function. Although this makes them light, it also makes it cumbersome to upgrade clients. The naming scheme can also be confusing for the clients.
For a small business, it is cost prohibitive. For anyone who needs to back up over the WAN or has a large number of servers, it is a great solution. This is especially so if your server OSs are consistent across your organization. The dedup level and speed increases so much when your server level is equal across the board. The quality of our hardware has been really good as well. Over the five years of use, we have not dropped a drive or had a hardware failure.
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