EMC NetWorker Reviews

User Rating

4.1/5 (Based on 40 Ratings)

Rating Distribution

Excellent
35%
Very Good
47.5%
Average
10%
Poor
2.5%
Terrible
5%

User Sentiments

Reliable Backups, Data Domain Integration, Extensive Platform Support, Powerful Command Line Interface

Complex Configuration, Outdated User Interface, Inadequate Reporting Capabilities, Inconsistent Support Experience

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Review Summary

Users highly praise the product's reliability, ease of use, and strong customer support. Many reviewers emphasize its stable performance, minimal downtime, and seamless integration with various platforms. The user-friendly interface and intuitive design simplify backup and recovery tasks, enabling efficient data management. Additionally, reviewers commend the prompt and knowledgeable support team for resolving issues quickly and effectively. However, some users mention occasional performance issues and suggest improvements in documentation and reporting capabilities. Overall, the product receives positive feedback for its dependability, user-friendly design, and exceptional customer support.

Pros

Flexible and scalable deployment options, with both onpremises and cloudbased solutions available.
Enterprisegrade features such as deduplication, replication, and encryption ensure data protection and availability.

Cons

Steep learning curve for administrators due to the complexity of the product's feature set.
Higher cost compared to some competing solutions, especially for larger deployments.

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Reviews

Adam N

January 19, 2018 Source: G2.com

"Networker solves all my backup needs."

What do you like best?

Networker has so many features that allow me to backup in a very detailed manner.

What do you dislike?

Troubleshooting could take a while, due to all the options available. However, this is a good thing.

Recommendations to others considering the product:

Learn all the features, and you’ll enjoy the granularity the product offers.

What problems are you solving with the product? What benefits have you realized?

Network is excellent for file level backup. I also like the deduplication.

Administrator in Information Technology and Services

June 5, 2015 Source: G2.com

"EMC NetWorker"

What do you like best?

Managibility, since EMC bought it, my opinion, is at least 500% better now than it was. We have it writing to Data Domain now, tape is gone. I've worked with Avamar too, but the ability to find a file when the location (directory) is unknown is one of my favorite reasons. The indexes may be found to be its undoing one day, Avamar keeps the index in the saves (self referencing). But as it is now replication, cloning in NetWorker, to a hot site, works as three saves, the one at home site, the save to the hot site, and the index of the save to hot site. So, if you're thinking of implementing it, assure you test DR until you can recover at the hot site before signing off on replication functionality. Implementation of NetWorker can be completed by the client, Avamar and Data Domain require EMC or EMC partner to implement. So NetWorker is possibly more affordable, but if you get it, you'll definitely want Data Domain too, unless you don't have much data to save. NetWorker is saving over 20 petabytes at some implementations currently, and exabytes are probably less than 10 years off. With the amount of data being generated, I wouldn't trust anything but EMC NetWorker or Avamar. I think NetWorker will recover from a disaster faster than Avamar currently though, where you don't have a hot site. I've worked with NetWorker since version 4 in 1999 and Avamar 5 since 2011. I currently use NetWorker 8.2 on Data Domain and Avamar 7 on Avamar Data Store Gen4s. NetWorker and Avamar will most likely merge in the not too distant future with Data Domain or the Avamar Data Store as the storage media in the near future; no one will come close to the value in that for data protection.

What do you dislike?

Indexes in NetWorker for very large clients, where retention time is long and often. Very large indexes may be its downfall. If you're going to implement with very large servers, millions of files per server; over 5 million, go with Avamar. Indexes have to be in excess of 2.5 gb also go with Avamar. Avamar has index size solved by saving the index into the save. Even Avamar isn't designed for systems with over 10 million files per client. The presave has to look at all the files they will save and deduplication has to also for both products.

What problems are you solving with the product? What benefits have you realized?

Protecting data. Since no longer using tapes, recoveries haven't failed.

Genevieve S

June 3, 2015 Source: G2.com

"Experience with EMC Networker"

What do you like best?

I enjoy the way Netoworker makes Me think when troubleshooting. It provides reliable and fast recovery options. I throughly enjoy how it handles virtual machines as I work daily with them.

What do you dislike?

there isn't much I don't dislike. I would say that rebuilding a library is pretty tedious work, it's fun but time consuming, I have found.

Recommendations to others considering the product:

I recommend .

What problems are you solving with the product? What benefits have you realized?

library issues are huge, I like how the daemon log is easy to pull to find what my problem is.

Dennis W

June 3, 2015 Source: G2.com

"EMC Networker should be market leader"

What do you like best?

EMC support is top notch. Creating jobs and labels is more streamlined. restores are more friendlier than Netbackup

What do you dislike?

sensitive to Windows patching and Java updates.

What problems are you solving with the product? What benefits have you realized?

using multiple libraries to support multiple projects and their data retention requirements. data growth estimates through backups.

Matthew B

June 2, 2015 Source: G2.com

"emc Networker is the best enterprise backup solution I've used."

What do you like best?

Despite the revised GUI interface in recent years, which is excellent, like most applications built on UNIX technology, everything is a file/command line underneath. This gives me the confidence of being in total control of the product. I also just like the logical way it's designed, i.e. with clients that are added to savegroups, and savegroups that are run according to a schedule. It makes it easy to control the timing of the backups of specific systems in the enterprise.

I love the mminfo command for reporting on backup clients statuses - definitely one to learn!

What do you dislike?

As Networker is an enterprise backup tool, and has a necessarily comprehensive GUI that can be quite intimidating upon first sight. Once shown/trained on how to configure a client and add it to the backup schedule, it's really quite straight forward though and everything is pretty much where you'd expect to find it. For absolute confidence, I'd recommend formal training funded by your employer and embracing the command line.. It's one product that definitely justifies knowing what you're doing end-to-end.

Recommendations to others considering the product:

I'd definitely recommend official training. I was fortunate enough to have it back in 2000 and the product has evolved but the fundamental commands and the way it works remains the same. It is training you'd benefit from for your entire career as it doesn't become obsolete like many products from other vendors.

What problems are you solving with the product? What benefits have you realized?

My current client has moved a huge number of servers, storage, databases and applications to remote datacenters and networker 6 and emc data domain were the products of choice to back it all up and de-duplicate the save sets which are then replicated to a second remote datacenter for disaster recovery purposes. backing up such a large eclectic mix of different nas vendors filesystems, vmware datastores, different databases on different operating systems along with exchange etc and replicating those savesets to a remote facility with very few failures is no easy task, but emc Networker makes it easy and Data Domain deduplication is so efficient that the unique blocks of saveset data achieve a 96% compression rate, making replication of that data to a remote site easy. You'd think that data that is that compressed/deduplicated would take an age to recover but in fact the opposite is true. Recoveries are insanely fast too. It is quite possibly the most impressive tech I've seen in a decade after VMWare ESXi. The details of the specific challenges overcome can be read on my blog here. I am independent and not affiliated with emc (at the time of writing).

http://www.cyberfella.co.uk/2012/08/28/emc-networker/

User in Internet

October 20, 2014 Source: G2.com

"EMC networker review"

What do you like best?

Rich feature and multiple ways to use it, I hope it is in the cloud.

What do you dislike?

nothing specific dislike but if they can improve some UI, it will be better.

Recommendations to others considering the product:

It is pretty good if you are a large organization.

What problems are you solving with the product? What benefits have you realized?

Disaster recovery

David V

October 3, 2019 Source: G2.com

"Works well to make and control backups"

What do you like best?

Power database of backups, multiple options, possibility of take a backup of many dates. Works well.

What do you dislike?

A bit slow, not intuitive menus. When you have many backups it's difficult to find you want

What problems are you solving with the product? What benefits have you realized?

The same descripted before

Consultant in Information Technology and Services

July 2, 2015 Source: G2.com

"Review on data, users"

What do you like best?

Install and maintain enterprise class backup / recovery using EMC Networker & Avamar. Networker architecture and functionality of all application components such as Master Servers, Storage Nodes, Media Pools, Clients and Juke box configurations etc.

What do you dislike?

Networker Management Console on a virtual Windows platform.

What problems are you solving with the product? What benefits have you realized?

we work on data center and installation, configuration of the enterprise using networker.

Administrator in Information Technology and Services

June 5, 2015 Source: G2.com

"I am an EMC Networker administrator for almost 10 years. "

What do you like best?

Multi application / platform support especially with legacy applications and less widespread platforms. We are able to protect all our applications including, but not limited to : Informix, MySQL, Oracle, SAP, SQL, AD, OpenVMS, SharePoint, Exchange, Domino Lotus products, windows, linux, Solaris, etc).

What do you dislike?

Lack of QA done by EMC on new releases, sub par backup application modules for Microsoft Applications. Expect bad Microsoft Applications Integration. (Exchange, SP, SQL, AD). Very slow compared to all other applications supported.

Recommendations to others considering the product:

Good value, excellent customer service, great product, timely new features,

What problems are you solving with the product? What benefits have you realized?

Disaster Recovery, good RPO / RTO solutions in Data Protection

Tim S

June 4, 2015 Source: G2.com

"EMC NetWorker Review - Tim S."

What do you like best?

DDBoost using client direct (DFA) is the most recent feature that I have the most appreciation for within our NetWorker environment. The distributed processing of data deduplication greatly reduces the load on both the Storage Nodes (SN's) and the NetWorker server allowing us to reduce the number of SN's in our backup environment. This reduces the administration effort required to maintain our environment.

What do you dislike?

Using DDBoost there is nothing that NetWorker reports on the will let you know when a client cannot backup directly to a Data Domain appliance effectively bypassing the Storage Node and reducing the bandwidth requirements on the SN.

Recommendations to others considering the product:

Follow best practices when implementing, train your support staff, take advantage of the support offerings from EMC and test your backups in both production and DR. Backups are useless if they can't be recovered and to often companies wait until an emergency happens to find out that they were missing critical system components and cannot recover the required data.

What problems are you solving with the product? What benefits have you realized?

Daily backups with offsite storage for DR is the main purpose of our backup and recovery/data protection systems. Benefits realized are simply that our organization is protected locally and remotely to ensure that our business can continue without data loss in the event of a system failure. We have been able to successfully recover systems within limited windows to allow business to proceed without impact or data loss.

EMC NetWorker Reviews

User Rating

Rating Distribution

User Sentiments

Do You Use EMC NetWorker?

Review Summary

Pros

Cons

Adam N

What do you like best?

What do you dislike?

Recommendations to others considering the product:

What problems are you solving with the product? What benefits have you realized?

Administrator in Information Technology and Services

What do you like best?

What do you dislike?

What problems are you solving with the product? What benefits have you realized?

Genevieve S

What do you like best?

What do you dislike?

Recommendations to others considering the product:

What problems are you solving with the product? What benefits have you realized?

Dennis W

What do you like best?

What do you dislike?

What problems are you solving with the product? What benefits have you realized?

Matthew B

What do you like best?

What do you dislike?

Recommendations to others considering the product:

What problems are you solving with the product? What benefits have you realized?

User in Internet

What do you like best?

What do you dislike?

Recommendations to others considering the product:

What problems are you solving with the product? What benefits have you realized?

David V

What do you like best?

What do you dislike?

What problems are you solving with the product? What benefits have you realized?

Consultant in Information Technology and Services

What do you like best?

What do you dislike?

What problems are you solving with the product? What benefits have you realized?

Administrator in Information Technology and Services

What do you like best?

What do you dislike?

Recommendations to others considering the product:

What problems are you solving with the product? What benefits have you realized?

Tim S

What do you like best?

What do you dislike?

Recommendations to others considering the product:

What problems are you solving with the product? What benefits have you realized?

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