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Bacula Enterprise vs Oracle Data Guard comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 11, 2024

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
22nd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Backup (18th)
Oracle Data Guard
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
34th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
32
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Backup and Recovery category, the mindshare of Bacula Enterprise is 1.1%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Oracle Data Guard is 0.8%, down from 0.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Backup and Recovery Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Bacula Enterprise1.1%
Oracle Data Guard0.8%
Other98.1%
Backup and Recovery
 

Featured Reviews

Davilson  Aguiar - PeerSpot reviewer
Analista Tecnologia Banco de Dados at Centro de Gestão da Tecnologia da Informação
Very cost-effective and well organized with good compression
It could improve its interface or offer a specific screen for the manager of the company. A managerial user who wants more information beyond the operational technician should be able to access it. It could include greater transparency regarding the volume of data trafficked on the network, as well as the expectation of deduplication. A more practical strategy could come with a backup policy model as a suggestion for both large and small companies. A simple suggestion is to visually implement the backup time as far as your physical media.
AdnanNaseem - PeerSpot reviewer
Principal DB A at a computer software company with 201-500 employees
Active data protection has ensured high availability and supports seamless reporting workloads
In my opinion, Active Data Guard is the most valuable feature. We use the secondary side for reporting purposes, which reduces the load on the primary side. Oracle Data Guard includes functions such as automatic failover, but we use manual managed failover. After some months, we converted our primary to secondary and secondary to primary. Oracle Data Guard is effective in minimizing data loss and provides a good solution for that. The main benefits of Oracle Data Guard include minimizing data loss during a production failure. It is used for maximum availability when paired with Oracle RAC, so if any disruption occurs, we have an alternative Data Guard to convert our load to the disaster recovery site. Oracle Data Guard maintains a high level of data integrity by using archive logs. When a transaction happens, redo logs create archive logs, which are then applied on the disaster recovery side, ensuring that both databases are synchronized.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Bacula Enterprise, so far, has never let us down with their service and support."
"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."
"The support is outstanding and world-class."
"The most valuable feature is its ease of use; it works great and it provides you with several standard tools to restore your backup, even after a big failure."
"We have been using it for several years and we are very satisfied with how easy it is to configure and set up and run backups."
"The most valuable feature is the support for Linux servers."
"Bacula is pretty stable."
"The Active Data Guard and Fast-Start Failover features are excellent."
"We have found the replication feature the most useful. We use this feature the most. The ability to recover a database with less effort and the use of Oracle Data Guard Broker to administer the complete environment are also very useful features."
"Another valuable feature is the possibility of backing up the database from the standby database instead of the primary database, to avoid backup process overhead in the primary system."
"We have dealt with Oracle's customer service for eight years, and their service is astonishingly good."
"The most important feature is that if I want to test the database at the disaster recovery site, I can take a snapshot, test it, and then revert it back to the original state without needing to restore the complete database from the primary data center to the disaster recovery."
"It's a very good solution if you want to protect your data across two data centers, or you have a middle man or many administrators who use these solutions for protecting their data. It's very reliable compared to other solutions that are most often not storage-based."
"With this in place along with the clustering, the database is safe from hacking, hardware failure, power failures, and system crashes."
"You can see how the logs are applied, check the apply time, and how far behind the standby is at any given time."
 

Cons

"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."
"The initial setup could be a bit easier."
"It could improve its interface or offer a specific screen for the manager of the company."
"We are looking for a unique interface that can rule both enterprise and open source editions. Such a thing does not yet exist."
"Many features have been converted to commercial licensing, which restricts their availability."
"Relying solely on a desktop is a bit frustrating as its GUI isn't exactly responsive."
"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."
"I think it would be great to have a graphical interface assistant (like DBCA, ASMCA, NETCA, etc.) for initial configuration, monitoring, configuring Oracle Data Guard Broker and all the Data Guard Broker commands, without needing Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control installed."
"When the data replicates into the standby database there is a possibility of having a microsecond amount of data loss."
"It's a master of making money! If you want to have everything automated and done smoothly, you have to add additional licenses."
"We would like to be able to see the date time stamp when you execute DGMGRL commands."
"Overall, there are some operational issues that need to be dealt with."
"The database administration needs improvement. With Oracle, we have a lot of features for administrating data, but it might be too many. It needs to be simplified. It should be automated. Looking at Enterprise Manager, there are too many KPIs in place."
"The pricing of the solution is quite high."
"When the data replicates into the standby database there is a possibility of having a microsecond amount of data loss. The data loss occurs when there is a network disconnection between the primary and secondary standby database located in the data centers or if there is a crash in the primary database."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We have a perpetual license."
"This is an open-source solution."
"It's a cost-effective solution."
"​Oracle Data Guard is a feature available only in Oracle Database Enterprise Edition, and is available for extra cost."
"If you want to have everything automated and done smoothly, you have to add additional licenses."
"This is the best solution if you want something similar that's less expensive than Oracle Grid."
"The licensing cost is significantly high."
"It is not a cheap product, but if you look at the price, features, availability, scalability, and maturity, it is a very good product."
"The cost is expensive."
"The cost of the Oracle license will depend on the negotiations with Oracle."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
University
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Government
9%
Construction Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise4
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise22
 

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.
What needs improvement with Bacula Enterprise?
Many features have been converted to commercial licensing, which restricts their availability.
What is your primary use case for Bacula Enterprise?
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...
What advice do you have for others considering Oracle Data Guard?
Ik fluister:VM Host Oracle en DataGuard hebben we per toeval vervangen door Zerto :-) tijdens de Zerto implementatie en VPG werden de Host Data in write-ack Block-Level gerepliceerd. Qua licentie 1...
What advice do you have for others considering Oracle Data Guard?
It is a very useful administrative IT tool. It saves on costs. I strongly recommend Data Guard. I've been using it for eight years and I would strongly recommend it. I'd rate Oracle Data Guard a se...
What advice do you have for others considering Oracle Data Guard?
We're Oracle partners. We've worked with databases 11G and 12C. If a company is planning to implement Oracle solutions, I would suggest they also implement Data Guard. I'd rate the solution nine ou...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Active Data Guard
 

Overview

 

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.
Athenahealth, Discover Financial Services
Find out what your peers are saying about Bacula Enterprise vs. Oracle Data Guard and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,438 professionals have used our research since 2012.