Bacula Enterprise vs NetApp SnapCenter comparison

Bacula Systems and NetApp are both solutions in the Backup and Recovery category. Bacula Systems is ranked #24 with an average rating of 10.0, while NetApp is ranked #48 with an average rating of 7.5. Bacula Systems holds a 1.1% mindshare in BRS, compared to NetApp’s 0.7% mindshare. Additionally, 90% of Bacula Systems users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of NetApp users who would recommend it.

Bacula Enterprise

Read 10 Bacula Enterprise reviews

2,369 Views
1,090 Comparison Views

90% willing to recommend

NetApp SnapCenter

Read 27 NetApp SnapCenter reviews

1,188 Views
1,105 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Bacula Enterprise

NetApp SnapCenter

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 11, 2024

Bacula Enterprise and NetApp SnapCenter are two competing products in the data backup and recovery market. Bacula Enterprise is preferred for its pricing and support, whereas NetApp SnapCenter stands out for its advanced features, which users find worth the extra cost.

Features: Bacula Enterprise is praised for its comprehensive data management, flexibility in deployment, and strong community support. NetApp SnapCenter users highlight its efficient data snapshot capabilities, seamless integration with other software, and reliable performance.

Room for Improvement: Bacula Enterprise users mention the need for a more intuitive management system, better user interface, and streamlined setup process. NetApp SnapCenter users seek enhancements in its reporting tools, improved documentation, and faster customer support response times.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Bacula Enterprise is noted for its detailed setup process, complex but well-supported by customer service. NetApp SnapCenter offers a more straightforward deployment but receives mixed feedback on customer service responsiveness.

Pricing and ROI: Bacula Enterprise is cost-effective with a strong ROI, especially for smaller enterprises. NetApp SnapCenter has higher initial setup costs but is justified by its efficient performance and advanced features, leading to long-term ROI benefits.

To learn more, read our detailed Bacula Enterprise vs. NetApp SnapCenter Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Bacula Enterprise vs. NetApp SnapCenter

July 2025

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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

Bacula Enterprise

Ranking in Backup and Recovery

24th

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Backup (16th)

NetApp SnapCenter

Ranking in Backup and Recovery

48th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Backup and Recovery category, the mindshare of Bacula Enterprise is 1.1%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp SnapCenter is 0.7%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Backup and Recovery

Featured Reviews

GiovanniRamirez

Senior IT Consultant at Xerif

Solid backup tool with good scalability

The last scenario in which I used Bacula was for a customer who needed some open-source tool which could support encryption at that time. We managed to convince the customer to use Bacula to deploy it in their environment It was a very good project. The Bacula concept, topology, and networking…

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Mir Gulzar Ahmed

IT Manager at Synergy Computers

Integrates well with various applications , provides a cloning feature for creating snapshots or clones of volume and a centralized command

It is basically centralized command control software. When the users visualize the workflow of the backup, the management and the customer storage administrator know the ins and outs of the backup and recovery. They can make the strategy for their backup and recovery and the certainty of their backups and restore. Strategic planning: Also, it is easy to make a strategy when you have visualized the inflow and outflow of the backup and recovery. With the CLI or native way, without any UI or management tool, you might not be able to create any strategy at all. This is especially important when you have multiple storage systems inside your data center or organization. You need a tool that connects and visualizes the workflow of the backup and recovery from all the storage systems and NetApp storage systems installed within the organization. It is very important when you have multiple storage systems, and you need to manage your backup and recovery workflow. Ease of Management: Unlike other storage vendors, NetApp has its own product called SnapCenter. Other vendors need to acquire third-party software or integrate with other software to manage storage systems. NetApp has its own solution, which is SnapCenter. NetApp's SnapCenter gels well with their storage systems and products. Ease of management is already there. It's a fine software with easy installation, management, and understanding. It's not a complicated software to understand.

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Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"It is easy to scale Bacula Enterprise even if your system is growing tremendously in data and servers."

"Bacula is pretty stable."

"Bacula is very solid, very stable, and very scalable."

"The most valuable features are the special plugins such as SAP HANA databases, Microsoft SQL, and various types of virtualization."

"The solution has extensive documentation and a very active community."

"It brought many advantages - such as the learning curve being very light."

"It works great and it provides you with several standard tools to restore your backup, even after a big failure."

"It can be used in virtually any environment we have onsite."

"The reporting feature has been particularly beneficial to upper management... When you do manual backups, you do not get the benefit of seeing successes and failures and how often you have to do restores. With SnapCenter, you get all of that."

"It's integrated with VMware vCenter. You can also see the backups there and you can do a restore completely out of vCenter."

"The Exchange plugin is the most valuable because we have a lot of customers that use SnapManager Exchange and have to migrate to SnapCenter."

"I like the instant backups and recovery feature that SnapCenter provides within NetApp storage systems."

"The most valuable feature is that it's centralized. In the old SnapManager days, we had software for each server. Now, with a centralized system, we're able to manage all systems remotely, and all agents remotely, and update them remotely. That's a huge benefit for us."

"We have been very satisfied with the technical support's help. Their knowledge level is great. For a noncritical question, they will get back to us within a day."

"Being able to add everything in as resource groups is a valuable feature... Having all the SQL servers put into specific buckets, based on their year of release - 2008, 2012, 2014 - allows us to get almost immediate backups that are easily seen and reported on."

"It's a centralized, easy-to-use solution empowering RBAC management, monitoring, notifications, extensive logging, and backup schedules for standalone as well as groups of the same types of environments. The cloning capabilities accelerate development."

More NetApp SnapCenter pros

Cons

"It could improve its interface or offer a specific screen for the manager of the company."

"The initial setup could be a bit easier."

"A more user-friendly interface (GUI) can be developed."

"We would like to see an improvement in the functionality of the GUI."

"Many features have been converted to commercial licensing, which restricts their availability."

"Easier setup and configuration, perhaps including a GUI, would be an improvement."

"Bacula needs a graphical user interface because, for administrators, the command-line interface is okay, but for the average user it is not very easy."

"We are looking for a unique interface that can rule both enterprise and open source editions. Such a thing does not yet exist."

"We would like to see more granular repording and reporting in bigger sets available in SnapCenter."

"Groups might be helpful for each site or data center so that we know a given data center has these resources while another data center has those resources. It's not always easy to group hosts by type."

"I'm waiting for SnapCenter for hybrid solutions. Right now, we only have SnapManager for hybrid. I need agents for that. People are looking to install SnapCenter in a SQL environment, but where they're running SQL on Hyper-V and using virtual files. Currently, we don't have support for hybrid."

"Since the solution's initial setup is complex, it should make training documents available in the public space."

"There is one area that needs improvement and that's in the alerting. When you set up your SMTP alerts, it only has - and I don't understand why - the ability to send an anonymous SMTP. It doesn't do basic authentication, which frustrated me for a while until I figured out that I'm not missing something. It's just not there."

"The compatibility with other manufacturers, like Oracle and Hyper-V, could be improved. I would like to see it be more compatible with other software."

"The UI, the User Interface, needs to be improved. It's not as clean or modern as it could be."

"The product lags in terms of availability."

More NetApp SnapCenter cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This is an open-source solution."

"We have a perpetual license."

"The product is inexpensive."

"The license for SnapCenter was included with the storage array."

"It comes free with the amount of equipment we purchase from NetApp. In terms of pricing, zero is my favorite number."

"The licensing is well-designed because it's already included in some packages with NetApp storage. Therefore, for most customers, it's okay as the SnapCenter license is already included in some NetApp bundles."

"Pricing is very good because if you already have NepApp controllers, then it's included."

"We see a financial value with SnapCenter because we don't have to license Commvault, which is pretty expensive."

"We have a site license, so it comes with the product."

"It's free. The license is included with other NetApp products."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

18%

University

10%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

19%

Computer Software Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

Educational Organization

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Bacula Enterprise?

Bacula is more expensive than various other solutions. It’s almost completely commercial now. Products like Veeam software are much more expensive.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Bacula Enterprise?

Many features have been converted to commercial licensing, which restricts their availability.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Bacula Enterprise?

See all answers

What do you like most about NetApp SnapCenter?

Most banks and financial institutions use the solution.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetApp SnapCenter?

The product should be free because it is just software to administrate systems purchased from NetApp, which are already expensive.

See all answers

What needs improvement with NetApp SnapCenter?

The interface usability needs improvement. It should be more user-friendly and easier for customers to use.

See all answers

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Compared 4% of the time

Dell PowerProtect DD (Data Domain) vs Bacula Enterprise

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Compared 24% of the time

Commvault Cloud vs NetApp SnapCenter

Compared 17% of the time

Veeam Data Platform vs NetApp SnapCenter

Compared 12% of the time

Rubrik vs NetApp SnapCenter

Compared 10% of the time

Veritas NetBackup vs NetApp SnapCenter

Compared 10% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Backup and Recovery

July 2025

Download Bacula Enterprise product report

Buyer's Guide

NetApp SnapCenter

August 2025

Download NetApp SnapCenter product report

Also Known As

No data available

SnapCenter

Overview

Bacula Enterprise is a highly scalable, especially robust and secure data backup and recovery software. Its unique low cost subscription model empowers data centers to truly escape data volume price traps. With a high degree of flexibility and customizability, Bacula offers native integration with a wide range of hypervisors, databases, file systems, cloud interfaces and containers. High numbers of enterprise organizations worldwide (incl. NASA, Bank of Austria, Swisscom or Sky PLC) have adopted Bacula Enterprise backup software in mission critical environments because of its advanced features and ability to handle high data volume at very low cost.

Bacula Systems

Unified, scalable platform for application-consistent data protection and clone management. This software simplifies backup, restore, and clone lifecycle management with application-integrated workflows.

NetApp

Sample Customers

NASA, SwissCom, Navisite, Turner Studios, Bank Austria, Caixa Bank, SdV Plurimedia, Leibniz University Hannover, Zeta Global, Tricore, NetLog, Siemens, LocaWeb, wbsGo, itesys, Queens School of Computing, Escrypt.

All for One Steeb AG, Accenture

Buyer's Guide

Bacula Enterprise vs. NetApp SnapCenter

July 2025

Free Report: Bacula Enterprise vs. NetApp SnapCenter

Find out what your peers are saying about Bacula Enterprise vs. NetApp SnapCenter and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.

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