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Dell EMC Networker is a versatile backup solution that is widely used across various industries and organizations to protect critical …
Overview
What is Dell Networker?
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.
Recent Reviews
Popular Features
- Deduplication and file compression (10)6.969%
- Instant recovery (11)6.060%
- Incremental backup identification (11)4.848%
- Multiple backup destinations (10)3.030%
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What is Dell Networker?
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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- No setup fee
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- Free Trial
- Free/Freemium Version
- Premium Consulting/Integration Services
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Product Demos
Dell EMC Networker: NVP-vProxy Health Check Tool Demo Using Networker Troubleshooting Tool
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What is Dell Networker?
Dell EMC 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.
Available Modules
Dell EMC NetWorker Module for Databases and Applications – Protection for business-critical databases and applications including IBM DB2, Informix, Domino (Lotus), MySQL, Oracle, and Sybase
Dell EMC NetWorker Module for MEDITECH – Integration with certified MEDITECH Backup Facility (MBF) disaster recovery capabilities for backup and application-consistent local and remote replication
Dell EMC NetWorker Module for Microsoft – VSS-based online protection for Microsoft applications including Exchange, Hyper-V, SQL Server, and SharePoint
Dell EMC NetWorker Module for SAP – Availability of mission-critical enterprise resource planning (ERP), business warehousing, and high-performance, in-memory analytics by delivering fast, online backup and recovery for SAP and SAP HANA.
Dell Networker Video
This video provides an introduction to NetWorker version changes: https://dell.to/2Q43u4l
Dell Networker Technical Details
| Operating Systems | Unspecified |
|---|---|
| Mobile Application | No |
Frequently Asked Questions
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.
Reviewers rate Encryption highest, with a score of 7.2.
The most common users of Dell Networker are from Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees).
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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!
- Business Problems Solved
Dell EMC Networker is a versatile backup solution that is widely used across various industries and organizations to protect critical data. For example, Provident Funding relies on Networker to back up virtual machine images, physical Windows systems, and Cellera NAS, ensuring the safety of their data. The IT team at Provident Funding uses Networker directly and can easily make recovery requests as needed. By leveraging Networker, Provident Funding reduces the risk of data loss and maintains the integrity of their information.
Additionally, Networker has been chosen by numerous companies to safeguard their data. Although there have been experiences where the product did not meet expectations, such as backups failing regularly and encountering poor support at one undisclosed company over the past three years, for the most part, Networker has proven to be a reliable backup solution. It is utilized by both SMBs and enterprise-level organizations to protect a variety of systems including file servers, application/database servers, VMs, and databases. Moreover, Networker is often paired with Dell DataDomain to create a comprehensive backup infrastructure that handles a large volume of critical backups. This combination offers peace of mind and enhanced data protection for organizations across different sectors.
Overall, Dell EMC Networker provides valuable backup capabilities for protecting crucial data assets in diverse environments. Its versatility makes it suitable for businesses of varying sizes and needs, offering a single application to manage different backup datasets effectively. While there have been instances where users encountered challenges with the product or received subpar support, many organizations rely on Networker to ensure the integrity and availability of their data.
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Reviews
(1-6 of 6)Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
April 29, 2021
NetWorker, better called "Not Workin'"
We have been using NetWorker for the past three years for all Open Systems (Windows and Linux) backups. It has been the worst nightmare of my 40+ years in IT. We never had even one day when all of our backups completed successfully. Support was horrible. We are now in the process of completely replacing it with a different solution.
- When used with a Data Domain appliance, using either DDBOOST or a VTL, it is quick and does a wonderful job of deduplication. We have 2.3 PB stored on a 140 TB DD 4500. While this is expensive storage, the cost for 2+ PB would be even higher.
- It does a good job of brick-level backups of Exchange mailboxes, and does so in very good time. A few hours backs up our entire organizations mailbox stores in a way that provides object level restore.
- Used in combination with DPA (Data Protection Advisor), it has a very good reporting capability. DPA, however, requires more than just surface knowledge in order to get really good reports, and the DDOS changes can wreck havoc with customized reports.
- NetWorker has a number of glaring flaws. For starters, it does not have any built-in vaulting capability. I simply cannot believe that EMC thinks nobody takes tapes out of their libraries. Their response to our inquiry about it? "We can write a program for you that will cost x-thousands of dollars, or you can develop one yourself." We wrote our own customized program to vault tapes.
- NetWorker does not posses any Disaster Recovery reporting capability. Again, we had to custom code reporting for this so that tape librarians would know what tapes to recall from offsite storage for entire groups of servers. During a crisis there isn't time to be doing that on a one at a time basis for hundred or thousands of servers.
- NetWorker is extremely sensitive to DNS changes, and appears to cache DNS data in hidden locations. We have servers being reported by NetWorker as not connected when they were decommissioned years ago, removed from AD and DNS, yet we still cannot get NetWorker to stop complaining about them.
- NetWorker does not play well at all with multi-homed clients (more than one network interface). In environments where it is not conducive to backup servers of a production network, it becomes crucial to do so over a dedicated or secondary LAN. This causes huge issues with NetWorker.
- If a group contains a number of clients, and one of those gets hung up during a backup, the entire group fails. That is a very wasteful approach for both time and infrastructure resources. Instead, it should fail the one client and allow the remainder in the group to complete successfully. It should also allow the group run to be canceled and still keep the good clients backups rather than registering the entire group as failed.
- There is no way in NetWorker to identify specific file/directories that fail to backup successfully. It will report on savesets, but I need to know that file abc.dat or directory F:\Program Data\ failed and why. It does me no good to get a warning that the saveset for the F drive failed. What failed and why? It may have been a critical problem, or it may have been of no importance.
- We endured three years of NetWorker experiencing problems, enduring a grueling process of trying to get knowledgeable and rapid support -- sometimes taking days and weeks, and only after getting really pushy with support managers -- only to have the problems return over and over. For example, it has been a regular issue for the peer information to get clobbered for no apparent reason. The result is the backup fails for that client, and then I have to go in and remove the peer information on the NetWorker Server, all affected Storage Nodes, and the client. I can now run nsradmin -p nsrexec and then the print and delete statements for nsr peer information in my sleep.
January 30, 2021
Great tool as a supplement to your existing backup solution
Dell EMC Networker is a data protection suite that gives us peace of mind over our more important data and its backups. We are using it at the Data Center to give us another layer or level of backup prowess as well as a means to hold onto critical data. The business problems that are solved by its use are having corrupted, failed, or missing backup data.
- Gives us deep, granular control over our backups data.
- Automates a lot of the hard work for us, saving much time.
- Gives both physical and virtual environments a safe place for data to rest.
- Dell software in general feels a bit data and can be cumbersome.
- Upgrades, patches, and bug fixes are behind when an important security issue is found.
- We sometimes have trouble getting answers from support.
Teknicor uses [Dell EMC] Networker to protect our customer data. Our customers range in size from SMB to Enterprise. It is a powerful, versatile, and reliable data protection solution, especially when used in conjunction with DataDomain.
- 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
- [Dell EMC] Networker is a not a backup software that is not for the faint of heart. It is challenging to understand, implement, and troubleshoot. Many of the errors are nondescript and undocumented, and have left many a seasoned administrator in the dust. If Networker is not implemented by an experienced professional, it will cause nothing but grief for the customer. However, if it is properly implemented and maintained, it will provide reliable, robust, flexible, and scalable data protection.
- It really needs to transition away from Java ASAP. The HTML5 GUI is decent but still a far cry away from being ready to replace the Java interface from a functionality perspective. The Java UI is probably the weakest and most frustrating aspect of Networker, because it is clunky, resource intensive, unreliable, and just a plain eye-sore.
- Networker support will either be a lifesaver or will dig you an early grave, depending on who takes your call. There are Networker SMEs at Dell that have been in the business for decades. If you're lucky enough to reach one, they will provide some of the best support you'll ever come across. Of course, your odds of getting to one of those people is slim, and you'll like end up getting connected to a L1 technician that just learned how to spell Networker. I know because I used to be one of those L1 technicians, and it usually just makes the customer want to find the closest bridge.
April 30, 2020
There are better solutions out there.
Networker is being used in conjuncture with Dell DataDomain to facilitate the backup and restores of a large number of VMs as well as a number of Databases. We are using it as a department and not across the entire enterprise. It provides data recovery in the event of user or hardware error. That being said, it has been hard to work with, is not user friendly and tends to fail backups at a regular basis. We've been looking for an alternative.
- Works with other Dell EMC products.
- Works with VMware.
- UX is just horrible.
- Workflow is hard to easily understand.
- Does not feel seamless.
September 01, 2017
Networker - Solid Small to Mid-size Product With Few Drawbacks
Networker is being used as the primary backup software for our organization.
- Networker has a UI and set that is relatively easy to use. It has a policy-based backup system that is straightforward as far as configuration.
- Networker has fairly robust reporting on current save sets and easily exportable pdfs and spreadsheets of statistics and metrics
- Networker has a monitoring dialogue which allows you to find out quickly what has succeeded or failed.
- Networker's customer service could use a bit of improvement. While some problems are handled quickly, complex issues sometimes have limited responses with difficulty to escalate up the chain.
- Networker prior to version 9 is using outdated policy configuration which tends to make some backup windows and obligations awkward.
- Networker needs a bit better method for accommodating plugin integration with other applications, and better documentation on implementation of those modules.
December 10, 2015
Networker review - easy to manage, does what it says
Networker is used to back up VM, SQL, Exchange and other applications.
It's a single application to manage all different backup datasets
It's a single application to manage all different backup datasets
- One application to do all
- Multiple device integration and support, like DD, Tape, AFTD etc
- Easy-to-manage portal (Networker Management Console)
- Set-it, forget-it setup
- Price sometimes tends to be higher for mid-size companies
- Support sometimes a little delayed
- DR recovery can be a little lengthy & time consuming