CrashPlan vs. Dell Avamar

This is a great Cloud backup solution. The cost is low, the bandwidth is managed well within the application, and the footprint for the client on a machine is very small and provides a notification menu icon with info about what is happening now or very recently. This does not backup to anything locally, so if that is a requirement, it will not meet that need. It used to be able to backup from one machine to another remote machine at one time, but now it is only cloud-based.

Incentivized

It's well suited when you are looking for something to keep your on-premise environment safe and you don't want to spend a lot of time doing the setup. It's easy to scale and a very reliable solution. I think it is not a really nice solution in terms of pricing, so the challenge here is to check if the value [is] worth it.

Incentivized

• Code42 is the most affordable backup system offering unlimited storage that I could find. I came from SOS Online Backup, which I ultimately decided to drop after my monthly rate for their unlimited plan increased by 20x.
• With Code42's unlimited storage option, I don't have to worry about the fact that my backups are significant in space. As a photographer with thousands of images at stake, I need to run large backups often.
• Code42 runs continuously and silently in the background of my desktop computer. It is truly "set and go", so I don't have to think about it when I'm away. It runs until the designated drive has been fully backed up to my cloud storage. It will then automatically email me once the backup is complete (or, it will email me if it encounters any errors).
• Customer service is above par. Anytime I need help, a chat agent is available (chat is my communication preference), they are always friendly, and go above and beyond to resolve my needs.

Incentivized

• New and improved interface no longer requires separate program to run on a management server.
• The avamar interacts with the data domain device to allow for cloud storage.
• The Avamar AVE footprint is much easier to install and use, given the new GUI.

Incentivized

• The CrashPlan program installed on your computer is Java-based vs. a native application. While this makes development for CrashPlan easier, there are a lot of drawbacks to Java programs including more resources usage, less stability, and overall more clunky interface.
• While this was also in the Pros category - CrashPlan is an extremely powerful and flexible program, which adds a great deal of complexity. Setting up CrashPlan isn't always a simple procedure, and depending on the complexity of your backup set, can take a while to tinker around with the settings to get everything to work properly.
• The CrashPlan desktop program consists of a Java program front end, as well as a backend service - there are times when the backend service will crash, and the front end Java program will refuse to load. Typically, restarting the service or restarting the computer will resolve the issue, but sometimes more in-depth troubleshooting is required.
• Perhaps one of the biggest downsides to CrashPlan is its price - at $10/month/computer CrashPlan is more than double the price of some existing backup services such as Backblaze (priced at $50/year/computer). To add salt to the wound, about a year and a half ago, CrashPlan discontinued their consumer options - which were very reasonably priced at $60/year for a single computer or a family plan priced at $150/year for up to 10 computers. When these options were discontinued, the cost of backing up with CrashPlan was effectively doubled for the same feature set.
• Along with the previous example, CrashPlan had the option to back up to a remote machine on a different network with a free Crashplan account. This option was eliminated when the consumer line of services were discontinued.
• While the backup service provided by CrashPlan are still first in class, the above two controversial changes have broken some trust between CrashPlan and its clients.

• 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.

Incentivized

No other product works as well.

I have been using the product for over five years. This has performed so well that with the current system reaching its End-of-Life with EMC next year, I have proposed replacing it with the latest version of the product. Now that it integrates with Data Domain, the cost has been greatly reduced. Instead of the need to purchase many nodes, one Data Domain can replace them creating a significant cost savings.

Incentivized

Overall, it is simple to use, lightweight, and effective.

Incentivized

The system overall is easy to monitor and see your backup/restore status. The user interface could use updating as it relies on Java and any updates to Java cause the interface to stop working need to be reinstalled

Incentivized

Friendly and knowledgeable support team available to assist with this product. Code 42 (formerly CrashPlan) offers unlimited storage options for reasonable costs, so you really can't go wrong with this product. They have been a reliable resource for our company, and I would recommend to others looking for an easy setup with unlimited storage.

Incentivized

Support is very convincing, always eager to solve issues from the root rather than workaround, don't hesitate to take webex, describe the issues to the core and recommend configuration to avoid further issues. We can ask few questions other than the main issue. They don't hesitate to answer.

Incentivized

Very easy to follow the install guide.

CrashPlan (in my specific case the CrashPlan Pro or CrashPlan for Small Business (there seems to be somewhat of an ongoing identity crisis with the products) is significantly lower overhead, in terms of cost and complexity, when compared to the other two products I have evaluated/used. The downsides are that it is also significantly less functional than the other products. CrashPlan is, as I have said a good value simple point solution.

Unfortunately, Avamar has stayed behind solutions like Solarwinds Backup and Datto in many different things, like the management of the applications being only desktop, the old fashion interfaces and configurations and specially the fact that it doesn't work as a business continuity tool, which makes it mostly and out-dated application when you compare it with how the market is evolving.

Incentivized

• Tremendous cost savings as the amount of data you backup doesn't impact cost. One flat rate!
• Implementation time was minimal and requires little to no maintenance. Since installation, I've not had to correct or fix any issues. It just works.
• We opted to supplement Code42 with another solution that allowed us to backup data to a local repository due to the amount for data that changes in our firm.

Incentivized

• Absolute Zero ROI
• This appliance does not work in its current state and to update we need to wait 2-3 months
• Can't wait to get rid of it and replace it with something else. (not even sure if we will be able to get it running before that)
• [I think] this is one of the worst mistakes we made

Incentivized