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Oracle Data Guard vs Retrospect Backup comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

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
Retrospect Backup
Ranking in Backup and Recovery
80th
Average Rating
0.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Backup (65th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2026, in the Backup and Recovery category, the mindshare of Oracle Data Guard is 0.8%, down from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Retrospect Backup is 0.5%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Backup and Recovery Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Oracle Data Guard0.8%
Retrospect Backup0.5%
Other98.7%
Backup and Recovery
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Sujeet Rai - PeerSpot reviewer
Director at Lighthouse Solutions
Can be used to back up servers and desktops, but needs to have an Oracle agent for its on-premises model
Retrospect Backup has a single console that can be used to manage and backup servers and desktops. The solution supports tape and cloud since certain customers are still on tape. The solution provides a dissimilar hardware restore feature. If you have a complete machine burnout, you can restore it on new dissimilar hardware. Retrospect Backup is used to protect file data and SQL databases. Streamlining data backup processes with Retrospect Backup is automated and does not need any human intervention. The solution doesn't take up much time and does the backups automatically. Policy creation is very easy with Retrospect Backup. Once it's done, you don't have to bother about it because it keeps working on its own. A disaster recovery (DR) solution has been built into Retrospect Backup. You can restore the whole machine on a fresh setup with ISO images. Retrospect Backup is very easy to use and not very complicated. Creating policies and adding clients is very easy in the solution. The solution doesn't take up much LAN bandwidth except for the first full backup. The solution is efficient and does the backups really fast. It takes backups in batches of 14 machines at a time.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I would recommend that every implementation that goes to the production environment must be done together with Oracle Data Guard."
"The most valuable features are the backup and restore. With this in place along with the clustering, the database is safe from hacking, hardware failure, power failures, and system crashes."
"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."
"The stability is good; it's very reliable."
"Active Data Guard has helped us a lot in achieving the real time reporting by offloading our heavy reports from Production to Standby database."
"Provides an active data guard."
"Snapshot and Data Guard Manager are awesome features."
"The solution is quite stable, as we haven't experienced any bugs, glitches, or crashes, and we find it to be quite reliable."
"Retrospect Backup has a single console that can be used to manage and backup servers and desktops."
 

Cons

"Yes, if the underlying network is not stable, then the Data Guard and standby databases will disconnect and not be operational."
"The deployment cost is expensive."
"The pricing of the solution is quite high."
"We sometimes had scalability issues with read only."
"Oracle could be improved by the ability to manage it on the cloud."
"A significant improvement for Oracle Data Guard would be enabling the disaster recovery site to handle read and write operations, not just data storage."
"Overall, there are some operational issues that need to be dealt with."
"They may need to include the monitoring and the alerting part in Data Guard."
"Retrospect Backup needs to have an Oracle agent for its on-premises model."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Construction Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Construction Company
23%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Comms Service Provider
9%
University
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise22
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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...
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Also Known As

Active Data Guard
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Athenahealth, Discover Financial Services
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Veeam Software, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Rubrik and others in Backup and Recovery. Updated: September 2026.
918,169 professionals have used our research since 2012.