Azure Backup alternatives and competitors

We're a solutions provider with backup and recovery software as our main focus, and my work deals with customer support for the backup domains from an architect's perspective.

Usually, it's for on-prem server backup. It's mostly virtual. We have VM backups and subsequent file backups, and we do file restores. In addition, the customer I work for has old Domino Notes, and we also provide support for that with Avamar.

We mostly work with its latest or latest minus one version. It depends on the bug fixes and vulnerabilities in a version.

For the on-prem backup, it has all the necessary features that we require. They keep coming up with new scripts and new updates. It's excellent for VMware backup, and we have no complaints. 

Everything is easy. We can do most things through the GUI. We don't have to go to the CLI for most things.

Avamar is not the best tool when it comes to taking Azure backups. Like Commvault, if Avamar can support VM-level backups for the cloud, that would make it a bit better. 

There is another Dell EMC tool called NetWorker, which is a bit centralized tool. If you deploy a storage node locally, you can use the same UI tool for central management, but in the case of Avamar, it needs to be deployed individually on a site, irrespective of whether it's small or big. So, if I have 10 sites, I have to manage 10 Avamar. That's a bit of a headache. The Dell EMC solution professionals who connect with the clients should suggest NetWorker to clients with multiple sites rather than Avamar. That's because NetWorker gives more centralized control, but they keep recommending Avamar, which isn't the best practice.

There are no free or cheaper training plans. Unless your company is a partner with Dell, you don't get the student guide training, etc. Their administrator guide does not have all the information required for a new person. It doesn't cover the basics. The student guide is good, but it's not free. If you are a partner, only then it's free. Otherwise, there is a cost of $2,000 to $3,000. For people who are new to Avamar, there should be some resources to enable them to study on their own at least 50% of the basics. If I want to study Commvault, I get so many documents and resources to study, but in the case of Dell EMC products, there aren't any free resources. Only if you're a partner, the resources are available for you to learn. The user manuals and administrator guides are just for deployment. They aren't good for learning the basics for a fresher.

I've been working with Dell Avamar for 10 years. 

Its stability is good. If I'm using the latest minus one version, it's pretty stable.

Scalability-wise, it's good. They're constantly increasing their backup size, as well as total storage size. So, we can scale it whenever we want.

We've about 1800 to 2200 servers for which we take backups. I'm not aware of the number of users, but it's an insurance company. It's an enterprise with multiple locations and businesses in most of the top countries.

I'd rate their L1 support a three out of ten. Their L2 and L3 support is good, but in the case of L1 support, for everything they have a single copy-paste response. It's like talking to a chatbot. They should improve that. Even though they're L1, they should try to understand the issue rather than just going through the SOP. There should be some SLA for L1 so that if they are not sure, they should directly transfer to L2 support rather than spending time on it. If you are stuck in a critical issue, it's painful to wait and let three or four hours pass before being transferred to L2.

Negative

We use both Avamar and native Azure Backup. The native Azure Backup has a lot of limitations, and it's still not developed, whereas Avamar is good, but it's not the best for the Azure cloud. So, we have Azure Backup for the cloud as well as Avamar for on-prem. For the VM backup, we have to use only Azure Backup. For file backup or any other backup that Azure Backup doesn't support, we use Dell Avamar.

Its initial setup is of medium complexity. It's neither too difficult nor too easy.

Usually, I'm the only one doing the deployment all the time. It takes half a day for the virtual backup.

Its ROI is good. I'd rate it a nine out of ten in terms of ROI.

I'm not involved in its pricing. My involvement is purely technical.

There is no free training. I'd recommend this solution if the company is giving great training. Otherwise, if you have to learn it on your own, I won't recommend it.

Overall, I'd rate Dell Avamar a seven out of ten. 

We use Zerto as our primary disaster recovery tool for our most important servers.

Zerto is tremendously valuable. It is the backbone of our DR solution for critical databases that hold the data we can't afford to lose. It provided new opportunities to change how we approach disaster recovery. 

We realized the benefits quickly, but I don't think it became a staple of our disaster recovery until about a year into our deployment. In the first couple of months, we had some hiccups with upgrades. Once they sorted everything out, it truly became a core solution for us.

It enabled us to transition from data recovery based in a physical data center to the cloud and protect VMs in our environment. Our RPOs also improved tremendously. When we first started, only one other product offered the same RPOs that Zerto provides. However, the other product was problematic, and Zerto has been solid. Compared to other DR solutions, it works quickly to stand up the failed server at another site and bring it nearly into full production. 

We used it to migrate a server, which provided a wonderful recovery time. It worked well. Our RTOs improved tremendously. It reduced downtime in most situations and the time spent on DR testing. A DR test used to run probably 48 hours and involved around four engineers. With Zerto, it runs for about six hours and only requires two engineers.

We couldn't find a product that provides the near-zero recovery point that Zerto offers. The closest we could get was another product that had zero data loss. Everything else had a minimum of 15 minutes of replication time, resulting in data loss.

Zerto can also perform test environment restorations that don't affect production. It's also easy to use. It's a set-it-and-forget-it product. Unless you need to make changes to the devices you protect, you don't need to go in except to make sure everything runs smoothly.

I wish Zerto had better file restoration capabilities. We have not been able to use that because of the limitations of Zerto's de-duplication technology. When we used the immutable data copies feature, we had some lag in replication times, so we don't use that anymore. When there is big data movement, it tends to cause some lag.

We've been using Zerto for about three or four years.

With time, it became a highly reliable and stable solution. We were an early adopter, and it had some hiccups initially. I think they've done a great job streamlining it and making it reliable.

The times that I've needed technical support, they've been very good.I would give it an eight.

Positive

Zerto still hasn't replaced all our other backup solutions, but it has replaced two of them. It is leagues above the other products we used in terms of simplicity and reliability. We have another solution to get around Zerto's file restoration and de-duplication issues. We use Veeam Backup and Replication for that. 

Setting up Zerto is straightforward. The documentation was great, and it is intuitive. Integration with VMware is seamless. It's good at running the scripts needed to run in order to work with VMware. We have a 90 percent virtualized environment. 

I think everything can be cheaper. Pricing limited our ability to use Zerto as much as we'd like, but that's not why we haven't adopted it as our primary backup solution.

We evaluated Double-Take, Veeam's replication solution, and Azure's Site Recovery. None could match Zerto's RTO and RPO. The only one that got close was Double-Take, but Double-Take was very problematic.

I rate Zerto eight out of ten. There's always room for improvement. It's one of the best solutions for disaster recovery available right now.

We use IBM ProtectTIER as a short-term backup and archive. This solution is used in internal IT, so we provide it to our company. We're using the latest version of the solution. It's deployed on-premises.

There are at least 20,000 people using this solution. The number of clients is close to 1,500. All of the clients connect to the backup server and data.

The cataloging is the best feature. It takes millions of frames for the backup. It's incremental, so it takes less time to complete.

The backup for a large amount of data is slow. When there's a large amount of data, sometimes the backup isn't completed in time. I have a 24 hour cycle, so it doesn't get completed in 24 hours with the large amount of data. With Veritas NetBackup, I can take 20 terabytes of backup in a day.

I have been using this solution for 15 years.

The solution is stable. I would rate it as four out of five. 

It's scalable. If our account is getting full, we can create a new account and continue from there. I would rate it as four out of five.

The documentation available on the internet isn't that good. Plus, whenever we log a case, there are so many laws. They will never come onto WebEx to see what is happening and try to resolve it there. They will ask for the log, and then they will do whatever they do in their environment. When we have a problem, they should go to WebEx and check the issue.

We're using NetBackup in our company for different workload purposes. We're also currently shifting from Azure Backup to Commvault.

Initial setup is easy, but it needs more resources on the system side and human resources to manage it. 

We have two people who are primarily maintaining the solution.

Deployment was completed in-house. We upgrade it almost every year. 

We secured the hardware, installed the new server, and then installed the old catalog on the new server. 

We are a team of five people. At least two guys were involved in deployment. We recently upgraded to the new version, so it took around two days.

We have a capacity-based license, which is managed centrally for all the sites in my company.

I'm managing one of the centers, and there are multiple small sites as well. Everything is managed centrally. We manage how many backups we're doing in a month, and then we send a report. On that basis, we know how much more data we need to procure.

I would rate this solution as eight out of ten. I would definitely recommend this solution to those who want to use it. 

My advice is to understand what you need to back up and what kind of environment you have. Every solution provides you with different agents to go with Oracle backup, SQL backup, file level backup, etc. First, you need to analyze your environment to know your workload and what kind of RPO you want. On the basis of that, I would recommend going with any solution, like PSM, Veritas, or Commvault.

I've always had a problem selling Backup Solutions to my client base. My clients, who are mostly in the nonprofit space, don't really see the value in paying for backup. It's been a hard sell, so trying to figure out the best way to market and sell backup has been a challenge. I tested out the solution to see if it would be a good fit for my clients.

I am an N-able partner. One of the bigger features and advantages of the solution is that it is easy to integrate with my RMM which is also N-able. 

Having the licensing available for partners to be able to take advantage of testing without paying would make a big difference.

I used the solution for a month.

I did not have any issues with the stability of the solution.

I believe the solution is scalable.

I did a trial of the solution to test its functionality. My biggest issue has always been cloud backup. When I did my testing, N-able Cove Data Protection was still in beta for the cloud. I think recently the Cloud service portion was launched. I was more concerned with the cloud functionality and Office 365 backup. 

The tech support is fine but they changed the structure for requesting support. It sometimes frustrates me relative to what it was with SolarWind but it works. 

The initial setup was simple.

The cost is around ten dollars per workstation a month and that includes a certain amount of data.

I give the solution an eight out of ten.

The problem with the solution for me was that I didn't get NFR licenses, so I was constantly paying to try and figure out the product, which was frustrating. I need to test the product to know how it works, and so if I'm paying to test the product, that's not helping me.

As new users, we need to understand the product. We need to figure out what we want to get out of the product and what our primary business model is. If our primary business model revolves around backup and data recovery or continuity, we will get more out of the product because we will understand it better. We can take the time to learn more about the solution. If our business is around managed services, N-able Cove Data Protection can be frustrating. The solution does not provide the granular nature required in order for us to save money and tweak our costs.

Our company uses the solution to implement cobots for customers. 

The global application provides a lot of storage for customers.

There are good security features for Google, videos, irregular encryption, and backups. 

The solution includes the best compatibility metrics for integration and they are managed by Google support. 

The Google reporting is very, very good. It lets us know our data or any losses so we don't need tickets to check our data. 

There is a lack of marketing in our region so there needs to be a focus on improving the solution's reputation. We believe in the solution but competitors like VIN have an edge in the market. 

The network and service need to cover more regions than just the Middle East. 

The solution should provide virtual updates on Linux OS via a host address or in utilities instead of via a secret database. 

I have been using the solution for seven years. 

The solution is very stable so stability is rated a nine out of ten. 

The solution is scalable so scalability is rated an eight out of ten. 

Technical support is helpful but it can take one or two weeks to sort out issues. 

I rate technical support a seven out of ten. 

Neutral

The initial configuration file can be a bit complex. A professional technician who is provided by the vendor should assist with setup. It would boost the solution's reputation to provide configuration, expansion, and upgrade services to customers. 

We implemented the solution in-house and the initial configuration took about four hours. 

The cost of an integrator license is moderate and its features cover most customers. Application features for government or compliance require a separate license. 

Our company proposes solutions to customers depending on their use cases. We have multiple applications and multiple technologies. 

For example, we propose a particular solution to customers in the banking or government sectors. We propose another solution for small or medium companies in the general business sector. 

For every security level, there is good stability and integrity. 

Support could improve and the initial configuration would be easier with assistance from a professional engineer. 

I rate the solution an eight out of ten.