Overview
What is Dell Networker?
Dell NetWorker is an enterprise-level data protection software product that unifies and automates backup to tape, disk-based, and flash-based storage media across physical and virtual environments for granular and disaster recovery.
Dell EMC: Good but not the best
NetWorker, better called "Not Workin'"
Great tool as a supplement to your existing backup solution
Not the most easy to use but it can protect your data like no others
A life saver for keeping your most important data safe!
High-Performing, Reliable, Flexible, Scalable --- and not for the faint of heart!
There are better solutions out there.
There are far better options for data protection and disaster recovery than this
Networker - Solid Small to Mid-size Product With Few Drawbacks
Networker, reliable but works like backup software
Networker review - easy to manage, does what it says
It's a single application to manage all different backup datasets
Popular Features
- Deduplication and file compression (10)6.969%
- Instant recovery (11)6.060%
- Incremental backup identification (11)4.848%
- Multiple backup destinations (10)3.030%
Pricing
What is Dell Networker?
Dell NetWorker is an enterprise-level data protection software product that unifies and automates backup to tape, disk-based, and flash-based storage media across physical and virtual environments for granular and disaster recovery.
Entry-level set up fee?
- No setup fee
Offerings
- Free Trial
- Free/Freemium Version
- Premium Consulting/Integration Services
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Product Demos
Dell EMC Networker: NVP-vProxy Health Check Tool Demo Using Networker Troubleshooting Tool
Features
Data Center Backup
Data center backup tools send data to a secure storage location after encryption and de-duplication
- 5.2Universal recovery(9) Ratings
Universal recovery is the ability to restore backups to any machine regardless of the platform
- 6Instant recovery(11) Ratings
Instant recovery is the ability to restore operations very rapidly
- 6Recovery verification(9) Ratings
Recovery verification is automated testing and verification of backups
- 4.5Business application protection(9) Ratings
Protection of all applications running in the data center
- 3Multiple backup destinations(10) Ratings
Multiple backup destinations is the ability to backup data to more than one location
- 4.8Incremental backup identification(11) Ratings
Incremental backup identification is the ability to identify incremental changes since last backup
- 5.2Backup to the cloud(6) Ratings
Ability to store and back up data to the cloud
- 6.9Deduplication and file compression(10) Ratings
Integrated deduplication and compression capabilities
- 6Snapshots(9) Ratings
Ability to take regular snapshots to ensure that Recovery Point Objective (RPO) is met
- 2.7Flexible deployment(9) Ratings
Deployment on any servers with full support for all applications being used
- 4.5Management dashboard(9) Ratings
Web-based dashboard allowing configuration and monitoring of all backups
- 3.9Platform support(9) Ratings
Product supports multiple operating systems and applications
- 4.7Retention options(9) Ratings
Provision of best-practice and customizable retention policies with reporting
- 7.2Encryption(7) Ratings
Data encryption to ensure that data is safe while being backed-up
Product Details
- About
- Tech Details
- FAQs
What is Dell Networker?
Dell EMC NetWorker is an enterprise-level data protection software product that unifies and automates backup to tape, disk-based, and flash-based storage media across physical and virtual environments for granular and disaster recovery.
Available Modules
Dell EMC NetWorker Module for Databases and Applications – Protection for business-critical databases and applications including IBM DB2, Informix, Domino (Lotus), MySQL, Oracle, and Sybase
Dell EMC NetWorker Module for MEDITECH – Integration with certified MEDITECH Backup Facility (MBF) disaster recovery capabilities for backup and application-consistent local and remote replication
Dell EMC NetWorker Module for Microsoft – VSS-based online protection for Microsoft applications including Exchange, Hyper-V, SQL Server, and SharePoint
Dell EMC NetWorker Module for SAP – Availability of mission-critical enterprise resource planning (ERP), business warehousing, and high-performance, in-memory analytics by delivering fast, online backup and recovery for SAP and SAP HANA.
Dell Networker Video
Dell Networker Technical Details
Operating Systems | Unspecified |
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Mobile Application | No |
Frequently Asked Questions
Comparisons
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Reviews and Ratings
(54)Community Insights
- Business Problems Solved
Dell EMC Networker is a versatile backup solution that is widely used across various industries and organizations to protect critical data. For example, Provident Funding relies on Networker to back up virtual machine images, physical Windows systems, and Cellera NAS, ensuring the safety of their data. The IT team at Provident Funding uses Networker directly and can easily make recovery requests as needed. By leveraging Networker, Provident Funding reduces the risk of data loss and maintains the integrity of their information.
Additionally, Networker has been chosen by numerous companies to safeguard their data. Although there have been experiences where the product did not meet expectations, such as backups failing regularly and encountering poor support at one undisclosed company over the past three years, for the most part, Networker has proven to be a reliable backup solution. It is utilized by both SMBs and enterprise-level organizations to protect a variety of systems including file servers, application/database servers, VMs, and databases. Moreover, Networker is often paired with Dell DataDomain to create a comprehensive backup infrastructure that handles a large volume of critical backups. This combination offers peace of mind and enhanced data protection for organizations across different sectors.
Overall, Dell EMC Networker provides valuable backup capabilities for protecting crucial data assets in diverse environments. Its versatility makes it suitable for businesses of varying sizes and needs, offering a single application to manage different backup datasets effectively. While there have been instances where users encountered challenges with the product or received subpar support, many organizations rely on Networker to ensure the integrity and availability of their data.
Attribute Ratings
Reviews
(1-11 of 11)Dell EMC: Good but not the best
- Backs up data.
- Hardware notifications.
- Easy to use interface.
- Support is not so easy to work with.
- replacing drives can be difficult.
- Our model doesn't support VMs.
NetWorker, better called "Not Workin'"
- When used with a Data Domain appliance, using either DDBOOST or a VTL, it is quick and does a wonderful job of deduplication. We have 2.3 PB stored on a 140 TB DD 4500. While this is expensive storage, the cost for 2+ PB would be even higher.
- It does a good job of brick-level backups of Exchange mailboxes, and does so in very good time. A few hours backs up our entire organizations mailbox stores in a way that provides object level restore.
- Used in combination with DPA (Data Protection Advisor), it has a very good reporting capability. DPA, however, requires more than just surface knowledge in order to get really good reports, and the DDOS changes can wreck havoc with customized reports.
- NetWorker has a number of glaring flaws. For starters, it does not have any built-in vaulting capability. I simply cannot believe that EMC thinks nobody takes tapes out of their libraries. Their response to our inquiry about it? "We can write a program for you that will cost x-thousands of dollars, or you can develop one yourself." We wrote our own customized program to vault tapes.
- NetWorker does not posses any Disaster Recovery reporting capability. Again, we had to custom code reporting for this so that tape librarians would know what tapes to recall from offsite storage for entire groups of servers. During a crisis there isn't time to be doing that on a one at a time basis for hundred or thousands of servers.
- NetWorker is extremely sensitive to DNS changes, and appears to cache DNS data in hidden locations. We have servers being reported by NetWorker as not connected when they were decommissioned years ago, removed from AD and DNS, yet we still cannot get NetWorker to stop complaining about them.
- NetWorker does not play well at all with multi-homed clients (more than one network interface). In environments where it is not conducive to backup servers of a production network, it becomes crucial to do so over a dedicated or secondary LAN. This causes huge issues with NetWorker.
- If a group contains a number of clients, and one of those gets hung up during a backup, the entire group fails. That is a very wasteful approach for both time and infrastructure resources. Instead, it should fail the one client and allow the remainder in the group to complete successfully. It should also allow the group run to be canceled and still keep the good clients backups rather than registering the entire group as failed.
- There is no way in NetWorker to identify specific file/directories that fail to backup successfully. It will report on savesets, but I need to know that file abc.dat or directory F:\Program Data\ failed and why. It does me no good to get a warning that the saveset for the F drive failed. What failed and why? It may have been a critical problem, or it may have been of no importance.
- We endured three years of NetWorker experiencing problems, enduring a grueling process of trying to get knowledgeable and rapid support -- sometimes taking days and weeks, and only after getting really pushy with support managers -- only to have the problems return over and over. For example, it has been a regular issue for the peer information to get clobbered for no apparent reason. The result is the backup fails for that client, and then I have to go in and remove the peer information on the NetWorker Server, all affected Storage Nodes, and the client. I can now run nsradmin -p nsrexec and then the print and delete statements for nsr peer information in my sleep.
Great tool as a supplement to your existing backup solution
- Gives us deep, granular control over our backups data.
- Automates a lot of the hard work for us, saving much time.
- Gives both physical and virtual environments a safe place for data to rest.
- Dell software in general feels a bit data and can be cumbersome.
- Upgrades, patches, and bug fixes are behind when an important security issue is found.
- We sometimes have trouble getting answers from support.
- Solid backups and successful recoveries.
- Dell/EMC has a good support team with quick response time.
- The dashboard is robust and information can be displayed in various ways.
- Sometimes getting to the right support team can be problematic.
- Sometimes navigating through the software can be confusing.
- The GUI could use some enhancements to make it faster (HTML5!).
A life saver for keeping your most important data safe!
- The latest version has patched many bugs and runs well
- The GUI is simple and straight forward but is powerful when needing to do more
- Well priced solution among its peers
- Documentation is lacking
- Prior versions had many bugs and interface issues
- Competitors have some more advanced features
- Seamlessly integrates with DataDomain
- Seamlessly integrates with vmWare for extremely fast VM backups
- Provides agent-based integration for a very wide array of applications-aware backups, including but not limited to: Microsoft SQL/Exchange/Sharepoint, Meditech, Oracle, DB2, Informix, SAP
- Integrates with a wide family of NAS solutions for NDMP backups
- [Dell EMC] Networker is a not a backup software that is not for the faint of heart. It is challenging to understand, implement, and troubleshoot. Many of the errors are nondescript and undocumented, and have left many a seasoned administrator in the dust. If Networker is not implemented by an experienced professional, it will cause nothing but grief for the customer. However, if it is properly implemented and maintained, it will provide reliable, robust, flexible, and scalable data protection.
- It really needs to transition away from Java ASAP. The HTML5 GUI is decent but still a far cry away from being ready to replace the Java interface from a functionality perspective. The Java UI is probably the weakest and most frustrating aspect of Networker, because it is clunky, resource intensive, unreliable, and just a plain eye-sore.
- Networker support will either be a lifesaver or will dig you an early grave, depending on who takes your call. There are Networker SMEs at Dell that have been in the business for decades. If you're lucky enough to reach one, they will provide some of the best support you'll ever come across. Of course, your odds of getting to one of those people is slim, and you'll like end up getting connected to a L1 technician that just learned how to spell Networker. I know because I used to be one of those L1 technicians, and it usually just makes the customer want to find the closest bridge.
I would not deploy Networker in an environment that does not have a senior-level infrastructure engineer that is committed to being the "Networker guy" --- ie. the person that understands the product and is willing to continually learn about it. Do not hand this product to a junior tech or anyone who only has a passing interest in backup administration. It will not end will for your organization.
There are better solutions out there.
- Works with other Dell EMC products.
- Works with VMware.
- UX is just horrible.
- Workflow is hard to easily understand.
- Does not feel seamless.
- I don't think this product does anything well. It shines only because of the Data Domain integration.
- The support teams is excellent, which is good, because you'll need them. Frequently.
- The project implementation team is also competent and professional but their hands were often tied due to poor direction from the sales team.
- The GUI is horrible. Giant windows that don't size properly, confusing terminology, multiple clicks to get things done, it's just a disorganized mess. I can't put this in front of my junior techs because it requires some background in DR software to fully comprehend, and even then it's not easy. It feels very much like this was tacked on to a command-line based product as an afterthought.
- Better management features. It's difficult to integrate with Active Directory, for one. You'll need a Dell EMC tech to help you. Items can't be renamed and have to be recreated. Options are buried in multiple GUI tabs and often are just command line strings in a free-text field. Diagnosing failed jobs and workflows is cumbersome and the errors are often cryptic without some experience. Design it well and pray for uptime, because you need this to work when disaster requires it to.
- Poor reporting features for an enterprise class product. You can't schedule any type of simple summary (an audit requirement for us) in the base product. To do this requires the additional cost of Data Protection Advisor, which is also horribly designed and impossible to get working quickly.
- Post-sales contact is non-existent. We've been through a few reps and the project team dropped us at one point with a half-finished implementation when the original sales guy moved on. We only got the the promised product implementation by telling Dell that we weren't paying the bill until they delivered what they promised and were contractually obligated to.
Networker - Solid Small to Mid-size Product With Few Drawbacks
- Networker has a UI and set that is relatively easy to use. It has a policy-based backup system that is straightforward as far as configuration.
- Networker has fairly robust reporting on current save sets and easily exportable pdfs and spreadsheets of statistics and metrics
- Networker has a monitoring dialogue which allows you to find out quickly what has succeeded or failed.
- Networker's customer service could use a bit of improvement. While some problems are handled quickly, complex issues sometimes have limited responses with difficulty to escalate up the chain.
- Networker prior to version 9 is using outdated policy configuration which tends to make some backup windows and obligations awkward.
- Networker needs a bit better method for accommodating plugin integration with other applications, and better documentation on implementation of those modules.
Networker, reliable but works like backup software
- Networker has proven to be really reliable in restores. If it says it was backed up successfully we have never had a restore failure which is great. Some backup software fails at this most important task, but Networker has been reliable.
- Networker is efficient on system resources. It takes a lot of backing up in order to put our Networker (VM) under any meaningful load. We back up about 60 VMs at a time while backing up other resources (such as the NAS) and it is a breeze for the system.
- Networker is flexible. It takes a little bit to understand how everything is linked together in the interface, but you can customize just about anything about your backup jobs from speeds, threads, backend targets, schedules, and level all very easily.
- We backup to a data domain, which I think does most of the magic, but it is a very compressed/deduped/small backup size relative to the whole sum of the data which is great. Essentially it is very efficient on the storage side, at least when coupled with a data domain.
- Networker terminology is awful. My favorite example is that many required-to-function configuration changes need to occur with the advanced configuration enabled. To make this worse, the 'advanced configuration' I am speaking of is actually called 'Debug Mode'. That's right, you must use debug mode in order to have a functional administrator interface.
- Errors are common and to resolve you often must go to support. You really need to be an expert to fix many errors, the steps usually involve being really knowledgeable in the CLI tools, which I am getting good at, but the public documentation is seriously lacking for troubleshooting these issues. That said, support (through emc) is really good at handling the common issues, friendly, generally knowledgeable, and quick to respond.
- It runs on Java, and sometimes I need to clear java cache to fix interface bugs. Generally this isn't an issue, but it is additional software you must worry about.
Networker review - easy to manage, does what it says
It's a single application to manage all different backup datasets
- One application to do all
- Multiple device integration and support, like DD, Tape, AFTD etc
- Easy-to-manage portal (Networker Management Console)
- Set-it, forget-it setup
- Price sometimes tends to be higher for mid-size companies
- Support sometimes a little delayed
- DR recovery can be a little lengthy & time consuming
Not too good with Oracle DB backup
DR recovery process is not too straight forward, makes it tough to run DR recovery test