Pole Vault over the Disaster Recovery bar
Updated August 08, 2019

Pole Vault over the Disaster Recovery bar

Graham Murison | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with CommVault

CommVault is in use throughout the organization. The primary reason for the purchase at the time was for NDMP direct to tape backup of a NetApp storage appliance. However since the initial implementation in 2008, we now use it to solve several problems. It is used for email journaling compliance, archive replication to a DR site, server, email and SQL backup.
  • Support is always top notch. They always exceed expectations and I am always left with a very positive experience. They always meet callback SLA's as well.
  • They have close ties to the major technology players, like NetApp, EMC and VMware to create API's making it seamless to implement new solutions.
  • Once the the solution is setup and running, it requires very little hand holding and maintenance is quite easy.
  • CommVault's products can be confusing from an architecture standpoint. discovering where each piece plays a part can be hard without some additional support
  • Training is almost a necessity if you are like us, a small organization with limited time to just learn a product on the go.
  • Licensing could be better designed for the smaller guy. They have made attempts, but some additional work is need. Not all of us are big enough for capacity licensing to make sense.
  • The IT ROI, especially in our law enforcement environment has been extremely beneficial. The time it takes for FOI requests for email have been cut down to at least half.
  • The management servers are difficult to host on virtual servers due to storage requirements, so this impact of limited data center space is less beneficial.
  • I usually only have to contact support about 2 or 3 times a year at most, so IT is save the time of having to troubleshoot with support.
CommVault is extremely flexible, almost to a fault. If you can think a a weird and crazy way that you want set up a backup option, schedule or rentetion, this suite of software is more than likely able to do it.

The ONLY time that I found where they couldn't do something was related to Content indexing and that was because of Microsoft's FAST engine. Luckily they have moved to One Pass so no problem anymore.
Support is almost perfect and I hardly ever...I mean ever give that rating. Sometimes I feel like they know the issue's resolution before I have picked up the phone.

They never talk down or make you feel inferior for your questions or problems.
We initially compared only the two solutions, since at the time (2008) were the only two companies to provide NDMP support for NetApp (on the QVL at least). We selected CommVault since it did that and showed a superior approach to email compliance. Server backup was usually be done the same by everyone.
CommVault is great for compliance and backup scenarios. The server backups are seamless and just work! Their NDMP backup for our NetApp appliances are fantastic and unless you have hardware issues, it works every time.

CommVault is less suited for those smaller organization that have a limited budget and are looking for a great backup solution. If you are only looking for server backup, CommVault may be less attractive.

Commvault Cloud powered by Metallic AI Feature Ratings

Universal recovery
Not Rated
Instant recovery
Not Rated
Recovery verification
Not Rated
Business application protection
8
Multiple backup destinations
10
Incremental backup identification
8
Backup to the cloud
9
Deduplication and file compression
8
Snapshots
8
Flexible deployment
10
Management dashboard
8
Platform support
10
Retention options
10
Encryption
8

CommVault Support

ProsCons
Good followup
Knowledgeable team
Problems get solved
Kept well informed
No escalation required
Immediate help available
Support cares about my success
None
Yes - Premium support gives us shorter SLA's and quicker resolution times. This gives us 24x7x365x7 support. Their support is also enterprise level offerings since there are multiple Call center around the workload. So not matter when you call you will get in contact with a knowledgeable representative.

The only thing to worry about is whether you can understand and converse with the person on the other end who has an Australian for those late North American nights. There are also centres in UK, Japan and China.
If I were to describe times when I receive exceptional service from CommVault this page would run so very long. I can only think of a few instances when the support was only 'okay'. Other wise it is fantastic.

Their support portals are well thought out. They are able to efficiently discuss and resolve your issue if you are new to the product and don't know a whole lot, or a seasoned veteran who has enough knowledge to make things worse.

Using CommVault

ProsCons
Technical support not required
Well integrated
Consistent
Feel confident using
Difficult to use
Slow to learn
Lots to learn
  • Finding documentation
  • Policy creation
  • Agent management
  • Inter-policy linkages
  • Understanding retention