Best VMware Backup Solution: Protecting Your Virtual Environment
Virtualization is what shapes modern digital landscapes worldwide, making VMware data backups critical for both individuals and organizations. Considering the quantity and variety of cyberthreats targeting IT infrastructures, you risk losing critical data if you don’t have a reliable VMware backup solution installed and configured.
The market offers a wide range of solutions to back up and recover VMware infrastructures, single VMs, particular files or app objects. Those solutions vary in their pricing and functionality, each having strong and weak spots. I’ll try to highlight the advantages and disadvantages of the 8 best VMware backup solutions currently on the market.
The Essentials of VMware Backup
For starters, we should define what a backup is and, more importantly, what backup is not. Many people working with VMware, including IT professionals, tend to perceive regular VM snapshots as backups. The fact that a snapshot enables reverting a VM to a certain point-in-time state makes it easy to confuse snapshots with backups. A VM snapshot in VMware relies on a virtual disk, thus becoming unavailable in case a failure occurs on the physical disk level. Any recovery tool that relies on production infrastructure somehow, like a snapshot, can’t and shouldn’t be treated as a backup.
A backup is an independent copy of original data stored in a different location. The key is to keep your backup data available and recoverable when the main infrastructure is rendered inoperable. Additionally, organizations want the system recovery process to run as quickly as possible to minimize downtime and reduce operational disruptions.
Modern organizations are all data-driven, regardless of their size or industry. Moreover, the complexity of VMware infrastructures that even small startups build makes efficient data backup and fast recovery a challenge. A robust VMware backup solution is necessary to provide data availability and recoverability under any circumstances.
The Best VMware Backup Solutions
Below are the eight modern solutions for VMware backup that you might want to consider when picking your most suitable one. Each solution has pros and cons, the most significant of which are highlighted. Check, analyze, and choose the VMware backup and recovery solution that best meets your requirements.
NAKIVO Backup & Replication: The Top Contender
The first solution on the list is NAKIVO Backup & Replication. The leading VMware backup solution that is positioned as “fast, affordable and top-rated”. NAKIVO offers the full set of features and functions required to implement an up-to-date and effective backup, recovery and disaster recovery strategy.
NAKIVO Backup & Replication integrates native VMware technologies and enables you to perform image-based, app-aware incremental backups of VMware VMs and send those backups to on-site, offsite and cloud storage locations. Full and granular recovery options to original and custom destinations are also included. Additional backup security functions such as encryption, two-factor authentication and role-based access control, combined with ransomware resilience via immutability make NAKIVO Backup & Replication a worthy solution for any organization.
Another benefit is flexibility. You can customize and schedule workflows, automate disaster recovery sequences for different scenarios, and manage the solution via a single web-based console. The pricing model is also flexible and can suit an SMB and an enterprise organization equally well: users can pick a perpetual or subscription license with prices starting at $1.95 per a VMware workload/month. NAKIVO also offers a VMware monitoring tool to keep detailed track of your production environment and backups from the same dashboard.
The solution has overwhelmingly positive reviews from customers, offers great value per price, can help you minimize infrastructure downtime and ensure data availability at any moment. Summing up, NAKIVO Backup & Replication is the list’s top contender that you shouldn’t miss.
AOMEI Cyber Backup: A Free Option
AOMEI Cyber Backup is free, which means this solution is cost-effective by default. Small organizations with strictly limited budgets are the first users to benefit from this backup freeware. The solution has VMware’s CBT technology integrated, enabling incremental backups to save storage space and shorten backup timings. The web console and workflow automation features make AOMEI Cyber Backup worth considering.
AOMEI enables data backups for unlimited numbers of VMware free ESXi VMs, and up to 3 paid VMs. It’s worth noting that the premium subscription that unlocks backups for up to unlimited numbers of VMs is relatively costly. What’s more important, the free version functionality does not include automatic backup cleanup and VM restoration to new locations.
Still, while being free, AOMEI Cyber Backup can get behind paid competitors in terms of advanced functionalities. The solution provides limited support available only on workdays and can recover data slower than other competitors included in this list. Lastly, according to online reviews, users may have compatibility issues and occasional crashes while running backup and recovery workflows.
Vembu BDR Suite: A Reliable Choice
Vembu BDR Suite is another cost-effective solution to back up VMware VMs and infrastructures. BDR Suite provides incremental backup, recovery and replication functions for VMware environments, enables data encryption and includes some management functionalities. You can back up up to 10 virtual machines for free without time limits, while advanced protection and recovery are available only with paid editions.
Nevertheless, the solution from Vembu doesn’t have particular functions (for example, advanced ransomware protection via immutability) that you can find in more premium alternatives. Users also complain that the BDR Suite interface is outdated and needs an update, and the reporting is also not up to the required standards.
Acronis Cyber Protect: Premium But Complex
The next solution on the list, Acronis Cyber Protect, belongs to the premium market segment, which raises the price a bit compared to competitors. Acronis is a known IT industry player that has a decent reputation, enough brand recognition and qualification to develop quality products. Acronis Cyber Protect is not an exception, however, it’s important to consider some nuances.
The capabilities and features of the Acronis solution are up-to-date, including backup and recovery of individual files, apps, or entire systems with minimum downtime, as well as anti-malware protection. Acronis Cyber Protect can restore VMs and ESXi hosts to bare metal on different hardware when necessary. The vendor promises an RTO of 15 seconds with near-instant recovery.
Still, although the functionality of the solution is at the level of top competitors, the user interface stops Acronis Cyber Protect from climbing to the top of the list. Some users find the solution’s UI complex, which means you’ll need to invest more time and resources to train IT specialists. Additionally, online reviews highlight other drawbacks such as the solution’s inability to write one backup to multiple tapes or multiple backups through the same drive to the same tape. Also, the Acronis solution does not support NDMP devices, barcode printers, and LTFS tapes.
Hornetsecurity VM Backup & Replication: A Contender to Monitor
Hornetsecurity VM Backup & Replication is a smaller candidate with notable potential for becoming a top-notch solution. Hornetsecurity enables offsite backups via LAN and WAN, file-level restoration to the original or different location, cloud backup, data compression, deduplication, and encryption.
Hornetsecurity VM Backup & Replication also allows users to create immutable ransomware-resilient backups in Amazon S3, Wasabi, and Azure cloud storage. Users can manage data protection workflows from a single control panel and monitor backup storage health with the built-in tool. VMs can be launched directly from backups, minimizing downtime without impacting backup integrity.
The downside of Hornetsecurity Backup & Replication is the smaller user base that does not allow this vendor to increase investments and improve the solution to rival top market software. Implementing more storage options, pushing anti-ransomware protection and security options as well as integrating VM monitoring tools would significantly improve the solution’s position on the list.
Iperius Backup: Versatile and Affordable
Iperius Backup has versatility and affordability as its main advantages. The solution has the Changed Block Tracking (CBT) technology integrated, which provides incremental and differential backup of VMware VMs to different locations (cloud, Amazon S3, NAS, FTPS, among others), incremental replication, and anti-ransomware protection.
Compared to the other solutions on the list, Iperius backup is affordable with prices starting at around $30 per license. However, that affordability comes with particular drawbacks that may be deal breakers for some users, especially in larger organizations.
In particular, Iperius backup does not have full system restore, backup validation, and other features that may be required for larger enterprises. To conclude on Iperius Backup, most probably medium-to-large organizations would prefer more advanced options even though they aren’t equally affordable.
Storware Backup and Recovery: Enterprise-Grade Solution
Contrary to Iperius, Storware Backup and Recovery is an enterprise-grade option, and this tells a lot about the solution at once. Storware provides incremental backup and recovery functionality for VMware vSphere, ESXi VMs, and entire infrastructures. Workflow automation, flexible customization, and integration with other solutions make Storware Backup and Recovery a suitable choice for organizations that want to develop a comprehensive data protection strategy and save resources on data management.
The downside of this solution is, of course, the price. Storware Backup and Recovery costs significantly more than competitors, thus being unsuitable for smaller organizations with limited budgets. And, just like any other solution directed to large enterprises, the solution from Storware may be complicated to learn, requiring more time and training from IT department members.
VSquare Backup: Comprehensive VMware Backup
VSquare Backup is a comprehensive agentless solution to back up VMware virtual machines and environments. VSquare provides a private cloud storage to secure your backups, and a special VSquare Backup Guard feature enabling you to check the recoverability of VMs in backup copies. CBT support, file indexing, centralized administration, and user-friendly licensing policy are nice bonuses for organizations of any size and industry.
However, the VSquare Backup hardware resource requirements are higher than those of competitors. Therefore, if your infrastructure has limited compute power to spend for backup and recovery, this solution won’t suit you.
Conclusion
The variety of VMware backup solutions available on the market can be confusing, and picking the best one turns can be a challenge. Before you even start choosing, define your organization’s requirements, available computing resources. and budget.
Once done, you can use free versions to test basic functions and UI, or install trial versions to find out more about the functionalities available in each solution. Finally, evaluate the outcome based on your investment, and make an informed decision about which VMware backup solution to use. Remember that integrating an efficient backup and recovery solution in your organization’s IT infrastructure is the only reliable way to ensure data security and production continuity.
