What is our primary use case?
We really needed a product where we could extend the Metallic® Backup for Microsoft 365 and archival process, as well as back up our Microsoft 365 SharePoints and our users’ OneDrives. That way we could have a seven-year retention plan and if we need to go back and grab someone’s email that they accidentally deleted two years ago, we could.
We also needed a solution that we didn’t have to have onsite storage for, because we had a storage restriction onsite. This product gave me the ability to have everything stored, as a SaaS model. Everything is right there.
How has it helped my organization?
We recently had an issue where someone couldn’t find an email that they had just recently written. When I went looking inside the backups, I was able to find and restore that email and they were able to continue working. It was very critical for a customer sale, but that email was recovered and it was perfect. Because it was just a single email, it was relatively quick. If I had had to do it another way, it probably would have taken me an hour-and-a-half to two hours longer with our old way of doing it. Before we went with Microsoft 365, we were Exchange on-premises and it would have required me to have pulled out a SAN snapshot to recover the data that way, or go to the tape. Because this is all hosted in the cloud and works in the cloud, I was able to do it in five minutes.
Metallic has helped minimize the time spent on backup tasks, absolutely. It has reduced the time, daily, that I deal with whether the backup is up, and performing backups, by about 50 percent. I have more time to do other things.
I have been able to save on hardware costs at my site due to the low price of the application. I am looking at a reduction in infrastructure costs of at least 25 percent.
What is most valuable?
The most valuable part of the solution is that it is fire-andforget. Everything we’ve programmed into this Metallic SaaS offering is what they claim it to be. It’s been just a treat to use it. From starting the trial, to the 15 minutes it took to run my first backup, to the 30-minutes for my first restore of the users’ email, it has just been fantastic. It works as advertised.
Since it’s built off the regular Commvault product, and I use that Commvault product, the user interface has been very easy for me to get into. It’s easy to use and navigate through. I’ve had no questions on how to find the relevant information, and their documentation has been on-point for helping me find all the hidden features inside their menus.
The Command Center, as far as providing a complete view of data goes, is 100 percent accurate. I found stuff that I didn’t know about. I was able to find out that a couple of things are flowing in an odd way and I was able to get those remedied and treated in a way that ended up improving my boss’s daily life.
It also provides me with a single platform to move, manage, and recover data across on-premises, hybrid, and cloud locations. It’s a single window to see everything I needed to see regarding this level of backup. I really like like it when the company purchases multiple products that do similar things and I have to go to different windows to get full insight. This solution gives me the full insight without having to use other products, metrics, or reporting tools.
Since it plugs into my Microsoft 365 tenant, it was literally three clicks. So it supports cloud well. And it’s all documented well. They even provided training and onboarding help for that 15-minute process. It was just fantastic.
