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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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Carbonite Server (also replacing the former EVault products acquired from Seagate in 2016) is a full backup and discovery solution. Designed to recover anything from a single file to an entire system with the click of a button, Carbonite Server users can protect virtually any type of file on both…
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.
Attribute Ratings
Reviews
(1-5 of 5)Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
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.
93.07692307692308%
9.3
- It has kept our customers protected and confident in our services, especially in the current ransomware climate
- As a Managed Services Provider, it has helped us reduce the man-hours involved in managing backups for many different customer environments
Our trust in DataDomain as a premier deduplication technology naturally leads to [Dell EMC] Networker being the appropriate backup application to integrate with. Networker provides the most favorable dedup with DataDomain when compared to other backup technologies, and provides the highest combination of protection flexibility and performance that most other applications cannot provide. For example, Veeam provides excellent VM backup capability, but is unable to protect Meditech. If you go down the list of backup applications, you'll find that Networker is unique in what it is able to protect and in its backup performance.
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.
30%
3.0
- The negatives are how much time we have to devote to the product.
- The plus is that when we needed to pull the backups out of Networker, we were able to.
We've been actively looking at other products such as Rubrik or Cohesity in order to get a better experience as well as lower our overall time invested in running backups. Dell EMC Networker fails to stand up to these products in most ways. In our evaluations it was both easier to understand the different systems as well as talk to the software/hardware via APIs.
We use Dell EMC Networker to protect about 90 virtual machines and a handful of physical servers across two AD domains. We had been looking for dedicated backup hardware and settled on Data Domain as the solution. At the time we were using Acronis as the software side of our DR strategy and were aware we needed something more robust, but this was secondary to having dedicated storage appliances. Dell offered to bundle Networker with this hardware and the price/feature set seemed to be a good fit.
- I don't think this product does anything well. It shines only because of the Data Domain integration.
- The support teams is excellent, which is good, because you'll need them. Frequently.
- The project implementation team is also competent and professional but their hands were often tied due to poor direction from the sales team.
- 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.
47.857142857142854%
4.8
- Now that it's been implemented and the many kinks worked out, we have far less exposure to downtime, but that's only because we didn't have an adequate backup solution in the target environment initially. We used native tools to protect SQL data and a few other tricks, but really didn't have anything proper. In other words, the bar was low.
- We have reduced the load on some of our application servers through the use of Networker's agent for Microsoft. However, compare that with Veeam, which just has a checkbox and no agent required to properly back up a SQL box.
- Agent-based backups require monitoring and periodic updates. This adds complexity and additional staff time to manage.
- Veeam Backup & Replication, Quest Rapid Recovery (formerly AppAssure), Veritas Backup Exec, Commvault, Data Protector (formerly HP Data Protector) and System Center Data Protection Manager (DPM)
I've used many DR platforms over the years: HP Data Protector, Veritas (formerly Symantec) Backup Exec, Acronis Backup Advanced, AppAssure (another Dell product), Commvault, and a few others. We selected Networker based on its integration with the Data Domain hardware we wanted and the agreeable price point. I should have demanded more time to work with the product before buying but there really isn't a demo outside of a tightly controlled sales pitch that hides a lot of warts. We've since partially moved on to Veeam in one of our two AD domains. Veeam talks to the Data Domains natively and is a far better product that doesn't require nearly as much administration. I occasionally have issues with Networker as it relates to stability - and I will never fully trust it as I've been let down in some very creative ways when attempting restores.
Yes
Networker supplanted HP Data Protector. Our licensing for DP had expired and was extremely costly to renew and the product was so far out of date that a new implementation would have been required.
- Price
- Product Features
- Positive Sales Experience with the Vendor
The promised deduplication features and integration with Data Domain were key points. The promise of leaning out the amount of data transferred over the wire was alluring.
I'd definitely have made sure to get more hands on or multiple visual demos. The UI is just that bad. Now that I'm more familiar with the CLI, it's not as bad but I think its true power lies in its scriptable nature. Unfortunately, I don't have the time or resources to build a custom solution particularly when I'm paying for it. I just need it to be reliable and straightforward to implement.
- Details on current operations are plentiful and will satisfy the hardcore backup geek
- The UI is completely incoherent and behaves like an old Java app mimicking modern systems... because it is
- Backing up and recovering Microsoft Exchange and/or SQL is very messy and is also agent based
- Managing storage destinations is awful and hard to do from the UI
- Why do I have to open an application and then open an application again? And why is it Java based?
- Despite good recovery options they're buried in multiple clicks and windows
- Customizing the "dashboard" to show information you deem relevant is not always possible and definitely not pretty
No
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.
52.142857142857146%
5.2
- Networker has been reliable for an extended amount of time to meet our minimal needs for backup and disaster recovery.
- The software, with few exceptions, has operated normally without problems and upgrades have gone fairly quickly, ensuring positive impact in terms of continuance of backup integrity
- Networker's costs, however, have caused us to recently look at other solutions as the licensing model prior to the capacity based model has become confusing and too complex.
Networker appears to be decent against NetBackup and Backup Exec as far as policy-based backup solutions are concerned and for stability. But it isn't as close to the virtualization layer as Veeam is and is not as feature rich as CommVault is, especially as it relates to integration with other applications.
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
83.33333333333334%
8.3
- Good customer service
- Lengthy process, but 100% doable
- Avamar and Veeam Backup & Replication
Avamar is better but expensive
Veeam, most suited for VM backup, doesn't work too well with the rest of backups\applications
Veeam, most suited for VM backup, doesn't work too well with the rest of backups\applications