Item: Commvault Cloud powered by Metallic AI
Rating: 10
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Commvault is used across the whole organization to provide disaster recovery and operational support for Windows and several versions of UNIX and Linux. Operational support includes database refreshes and data migrations. As far as I am aware, we no longer use it for Archiving because of a disastrous mistake someone made when performing some cleanup in the GUI, which resulted in loss of data. Commvault and a Data Recovery company were unable to put Humpty Dumpty back together again, although they both tried very hard. The data structures on disk are just too complex, and the purpose of the cleanup was permanent deletion of some old data, so in that sense, it worked perfectly.

Pros and Cons

Manages thousands of backups across multiple OS types and releases
Provides an easy way to locate, view and restore the content of those backups.
Permits distributed configuration and control through role-based user accounts
Balances the workload against the backup infrastructure capabilities.

The new "extent-based-backup" feature is potentially a huge win and Commvault advantage for sites with enormous files to back up (terabytes), but the assignment of extents to backup streams could use some optimization, and there should be some tuning tools for extent-based backups.
It shouldn't be so hard to figure out how to get the GUI to use a larger font. The default font is extremely small and completely unsuitable for many of us with "Senior" in our titles.
It should be trivial to clone an existing backup set or client configuration and then update just the unique bits.

Return on Investment

I am not privy to ROI, but just having confidence and trust that Commvault will back up whatever needs backing up, and that we will always be able to restore it quickly, allows our technical people to concentrate on the problem at hand, knowing that we do not have to worry about the safety of the data. This saves time for some very expensive human resources and shortens schedules by eliminating a whole class of data safety and disaster recovery issues.

Alternatives Considered

I was not part of the decision to adopt Commvault, and having developed and used many other backup/recovery tools I was a little skeptical that it could do everything that we needed, but I can say that I'm glad that they chose Commvault. It has delivered even more than we had counted on.

Support Rating

We get quick response to our queries, and the documentation is more complete and accurate that I expected. The really hard problems can take a while, but Commvault does not hesitate to connect the end-user with the engineering and development teams to solve those problems. They also do not seem to have the tendency that you see in many vendors to close the case as fast as possible (to make the closure stats better) even when you do not yet have the full answer that you need. They keep at it until every issue and question has been explored.

Key Insights

Do you think Commvault Cloud powered by Metallic AI delivers good value for the price?

Not sure

Are you happy with Commvault Cloud powered by Metallic AI's feature set?

Yes

Did Commvault Cloud powered by Metallic AI live up to sales and marketing promises?

I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process

Did implementation of Commvault Cloud powered by Metallic AI go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Commvault Cloud powered by Metallic AI again?

Yes

Likelihood to Recommend

I've been creating and using backup systems for over 40 years, and I know how hard it is for a single solution to work well in different environments. I've been very surprised to find that Commvault Complete Backup & Recovery does a really good job with just about everything in the backup/recovery space. It is both very, very capable, and flexible, suitable for very large and complex environments.

Until recently it had one fatal flaw in environments with huge files to back up (terabytes each), but that has now been addressed with "extent-based backups", allowing multiple backup streams to back up different parts of the same file(s). With more tuning and maturity, that feature will have huge benefits in all kinds of enterprise-class situations.

There's a lot to be said for not having to worry about backup and recovery.

Overall Satisfaction with Commvault Complete Backup & Recovery