When is it better to use Networker over Avamar alone?

Both NetWorker and Avamar has its own features, advantage and disadvantage.

When Avamar compared over NetWorker, NetWorker doesn't have any maintenance window which will help you to run backup at any time. NetWorker doesn't need any dedicated hardware, specific OS requirement, which makes NetWorker more flexible.

There are many more advantages and disadvantage with both the products.

One would choose according the requirement.

Regards,
Prajith

I'd go with Networker all the way, as Prajith mentioned there are a lot of advantages but on top of this with Networker 8.2 WAN client direct (source deduplication) with Data Domain the lines between the two products are getting very blurred.

Plus it feels like there has been a lot more development in NW than AV over the last 12 months, if I was a betting man I'd say that Avamar will get absorbed into NW at some point. Especially now that VDP-A source dedup now works directly with Data Domain meaning you don't need to go to full Avamar.

There are a few particular use cases where Networker is an obvious choice over Avamar:

• When tape-out or use of VTL's is a solution requirement.
• When you are dealing with databases or datasets that are extremely large (> 5TB) and need to leverage array-based replicas (clones or snaps) and backups off of proxy hosts
• I personally think the NDMP solution for Networker is preferable, but this is a point of debate with my DPAD coworkers.  The Avamar solution has gotten a lot better, but requires specialized hardware to be included in the purchase.
• There may be some agents available in Networker (Sybase DBs for one) that aren't in Avamar. 
• If the customer only wishes to deploy software rather than hardware,
• The longer the retention of the required data, the more likely tape will be necessary (there's only so much disk capacity in the grid), and therefore the likelihood that Networker will be preferred

On the flip side of the question, the Avamar image-level backup of VMware is simpler to operate than NW's and scales really well; it would be my choice over Networker's implementation.

Avamar's licensing model has always been easier than the client-based "clasic" model for Networker.   Now that there's a capacity-based license for the whole suite, Networker is just as convenient, some shops still run in classic license mode for Networker.

The technical advantages between the two product lines are narrowing, especially when DD and Boost is factored in.  It's almost like the products are converging together or something ;-)

Hope that helps!

-DH