Hornetsecurity Altaro VM Backup Reviews

The ease of use of the solution is its most valuable feature. The interface is also excellent.

The scalability of the solution is limited. 

It's scalable but only scalable to a certain level. If it's for a high-end enterprise, you will have trouble.  If you have seven servers or more and then you'll probably struggle a bit. Right now, we have 500-600 users.

The technical support for this solution is excellent. I'd give it a rating of nine out of ten.

The initial setup is very straightforward.

We use both the cloud and on-premises deployment models. We're a reseller of the solution.

I'd definitely recommend the product. I'd rate it nine out of ten.

The primary use case of this solution is for virtualization and duplication.

The Disaster and Recovery features, as well as the Cloning Technology, can be improved.

I would like more cloud integration with disaster recovery.

This solution is stable.

This solution is scalable and we have one thousand users.

We don't plan to increase our usage of this product.

I have not used the technical support.

The initial set up was complex, and I was not able to do the set up myself.

I didn't deploy the solution, so I don't know how long it took.

The pricing is okay. I don't know the exact cost.

I recommend this solution, although I have encountered some complexities with it.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We implemented virtualization to minimize the physical infrastructure which leads to higher CAPEX and OPEX. When we moved to a virtual environment, we had issues with our existing backup software from a popular brand and required additional investment, which was much higher. We have used Altaro Backup to use Hyper-V instances as backup and replicate them to offsite and DR locations periodically through the IP VPN/MPLS connectivity.

Altaro offers two VMs at no cost. This has helped us to eliminate the implementation of expensive backup solutions at remote offices, which had two instances. The free version is in no way inferior to the paid version and had all the features of expensive backup solutions, including secure encryption. From installation to backup and recovery, it is very simple with a user-friendly user interface (UI). 

Key features:

• Easy to install and use
• Built for virtual environments
• Multi-hypervisor support (Hyper-V and VMware)
• Offsite backups boosted by WAN acceleration
• File and Exchange item level restore
• Backup live VMs with no downtime
• MS VSS Integration
• Cluster shared volumes aware scheduling
• Restore to different Hyper-V host or clones
• Central management console
• Compression and encryption
• Supports WS2008 R2, WS2012 and WS2012 R2
• Supports ESXi, vSphere, and vCenter 

Reverse Delta is Altaro proprietary backup deduplication technology. With Reverse Delta, the latest version of a file is always made available in its entirety, not as a delta file. This means that if you require the latest version of a file, it is possible to access it directly from your backup drive without having to rebuild the file from delta files. The delta files are only used if you want to build a previous version of the file; building one delta file at a time for each version as you travel back in time in the reverse direction. 

This works for both Hyper-V and VMware.

Availability of physical server backup would be an added advantage.

Migrating the physical through a backup and restore to a virtual environment would also be very helpful.

https://www.altaro.com/vm-back...

https://www.altaro.com/vm-back...

Support is good.

The previous backup solution was licensed for physical environment and upgrading to virtual required an additional higher investment.

The initial setup was simple and easy. Anyone without prior experience can install, configure, and use it.

https://www.altaro.com/hyper-v...

We implemented with an in-house resource

By implementing the solution at multiple locations, significant cost savings were achieved and it also addressed compliance requirements.

https://www.provirtualzone.com...

Altaro VM Backup is affordably priced. It is a best value for its price and has almost every feature that an expensive, popular product offers.

https://www.altaro.com/vm-back...

We evaluated Symantec, Veritas, and Veeam.

Before finalizing with any other solution, it is better to evaluate the trial version of Altaro, see the results, and proceed (as the TCO is lower and ROI is much higher).

Altaro VM Backup is a hassle-free virtual machine backup software solution for Hyper-V and VMware. The intuitive interface allows you to set up and perform backups and restores easily.

https://www.altaro.com/resourc...

We use Altaro to back up nine VMs across two hosts.

Since moving to Altaro, we feel that backing up and restoring files has become much more efficient in our organization.

Having done disaster recovery plans with Altaro, we feel confident that our organization will be able to get back up and running in half the time, compared to our previous solution.

We frequently use the Granular Restore option for when our users accidentally delete files or to recover emails from mailboxes. We have found that to be a must-have feature and it comes with the solution at no extra cost.

We use the latest feature in Altaro called CDP (Continuous Data Protection) to back up our VMs as often as every five minutes. It allows us to make sure no data is accidentally deleted or overwritten.

The ability to test the backups, without having to manually mount the VHDs after restore, allows us to check the integrity of the backups. This is crucial for us.

It would be nice to see a feature that backs up the host so that, in case of a server failure, an entire server could be restored all at once.

We have been using Altaro VM Backup for our Hyper-V cluster since 2015 and are quite happy with it. Our cluster consists of four Hyper-V Hosts.

Altaro reduced the time we needed for managing our backups. Especially significant is the Cloud Management Console, which solved many issues we had with prior products. Also, the software minimizes the workload for the administrators due to its ease of use.

We use Altaro with onsite and offsite features, so even during ransomware attacks we never were at risk as daily backups weren't connected to the local network. The Cloud Management Console is very helpful as we can manage and check our backups from around the world. Just last week, Altaro added some new features like continuous data protection, which will be the next feature we test.

Missing features at the moment are Linux file-level restore, backup from physical machines, German localized version, and probably full tape support (RDX is supported but there is no "real tape" support).

Altaro VM Backup helps me garanty a efficiant backup policy for my VM's : 

1. Backup VM in the local store of the Hyperviser, several times a day, for short retention and fast restore time

2. Remote backup on a HA NAS storage, for longer retention. If needed, this Nas could be use to restore VM or files on another Hyperviser

3. Automatic VM restore and consitancy tests

I must garanty fast recovery of a VM or files inside a VM

Altaro helps us by the simplicity of the implementation of the backup policy.

It took only several hours to find, test and implement the solution.

Furthermore, this  solution doesn't need to spend several hours a day to manage the backup policy. If someting wen't wong, you are immediately notified.

Additionnal to that technical considerations, the Altaro's support is quick to answer , it's also an important point for us.

Easy to use and to emplement
Offsite – onsite copy
Deduplication
Automatic restore and consistance tests
VMWare and MS are both supported
Boot a backuped VM directly 

Restore file level directly inside a VM.

Storage usage : you have often to manualy free disks spaces 

Yes a few, but we got quick help from support.

Not so far.

Nine out of 10.

No, not for VM.

Super straightforward, it was very easy and efficient.

I did it by me own , and I became a vendor because I'm really conviced by the product

It's difficult to estimate an ROI for a backup solution. But on my point of view, this product is not expensive, does the job what I bought it for, and he's no time consuming 

An easy licensing model, plus pricing is not too expensive.

Veeam, but it was too complex for what I needed.

Try it. It’s easy to install and manage its performance.

• Automated live Hyper-V backups of full VMs.
• Excellent compression and deduplication with off-site WAN backup included.
• Retention policies and reporting included.
• Granular file-level restore and Exchange restore.
• Automated validation of backed up VMs.
• Central management possible.

Accelerated our physical to virtual conversion. It gave us the reliability the business demanded, without investing in expensive software and upgrading the network/storage back end. Allowed application isolation that drastically improved RTOs and RPOs. And enabled our IT staff to easily manage all our virtual backups and restoration with little to no training.

Moving VMs between non-clustered hosts which both have Altaro backup running will not update their inventories automatically, at least in the latest version I used.

Backup speed and comparisons between versions used to be slow on big VMs but that was improved greatly later on.

Four years.

None.

In earlier versions (v3/4) the UI made it somewhat difficult to get the right overview at times.

Fantastic support crew, always ready to give sound advice on setups. They actually listen to complaints/feature requests, and implements them. Great blogs as well with lots of technical information.

At that time, automated backups for Hyper-V were not in great supply. Veeam was too bloated and required a lot of work to test and deploy.

Easy to deploy, very smooth setup, no overhead caused by common integration hurdles. Great choices of backup destinations. Up and running in 10 to 15 minutes.

No other product offers these features for this price. The ROI is great.

As noted above, at that time, automated backups for Hyper-V were not in great supply. Veeam was too bloated and required a lot of work to test and deploy.

Try it! You will not be disappointed.

Valuable features for us include quick recovery, compression, and deduplication. The mix of these features leads to a reduced backup footprint while having guaranteed fast recovery in case of DR.

It has helped us with easy deployment of backed up test systems and site recovery in case of general power and connection failures.

The cloud backup and VMware support (now available in the latest releases), could do with some improvement.

We have been using the solution for over two years.

We did not encounter any issues with stability. It is always running.

We did not encounter any issues with scalability regarding any situation of environment changes while using Hyper-V.

We haven't often used the technical support as it was not needed. When we did need it, we received a prompt response to our request.

Due to poor support for Hyper-V solutions, we searched for an alternative to the previous solution.

The setup was straightforward and without issues on all hosts where it was deployed.

There is a free version for two VMs. I would advise to study the deployment environment well, prior to committing to order a license per host.

We evaluated Veeam Software, HPE VM Explorer, Backup Exec, and Trilead.

Test multiple solutions for at least two weeks, validate DR scenarios, and the storage required for each solution and scalability.