Avamar: Chosen by evolution for natural de-selection
July 06, 2019

Avamar: Chosen by evolution for natural de-selection

Paul Lemmons | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 3 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Avamar

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.

Pros

  • 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.

Cons

  • 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 served our organization very well for many years. It was absolutely the best solution of its day.
  • We did the fork-lift upgrade twice to continue with Avamar. We could not continue to support this model of upgrades.
  • Our final decision to replace Avamar was when the nodes filled with meta-data while we had plenty of data domain space for backups.
  • We've spent too much engineer time babysitting the product.
I have evaluated ComVault, Cohiesity, and Rubrik. All three were better choices based on:
  • VMWare support: Live mounts, instant recovery, and file-based recovery from VM snapshots
  • Web-Based management: No java or flash required. Modern interface. HTML. Cross-platform.
  • Ease of use and configuration (Cohiesity and Rubrik). ComVault made Avamar look easy.
  • Upgradability: No fork-lift upgrades. Software upgrades are simple.
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.

Dell Avamar Feature Ratings

Data Center Backup
9.0
Universal recovery
10
Multiple backup destinations
3
Incremental backup identification
10
Deduplication and file compression
10
Platform support
10
Retention options
10
Encryption
10

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