Hornetsecurity Altaro VM Backup Reviews and Pricing

it_user231315

Senior Support Consultant

Jul 16, 2017

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VM backup and the item level recovery are the most valuable features

Pros and Cons

"VM backup and the item level recovery are the most valuable features."

"It would be nice to be able to recover the items to their original location."

What is most valuable?

VM backup and the item level recovery are the most valuable features.

How has it helped my organization?

They are fast to restore in an emergency.

What needs improvement?

It would be nice to be able to recover the items to their original location.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using this solution since it was first released.

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What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Sometimes, due to disk space and VSS, we have experienced stability issues.

How are customer service and support?

Technical support is good, i.e., if you keep up the maintenance agreement.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Previously, we were using the Veritas Backup Exec. However, we haven't used it since 2012.

How was the initial setup?

The setup was very easy, i.e., a step-by-step process.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We looked at Veritas Backup Exec.

What other advice do I have?

Make sure you have enough disk space, especially if you use replication. Also, as the two have managed to butt heads on occasion, causing VMs to be put into a paused state due to snapshots that haven't merged. It can then be a timely job to shut the machines down and merge them back in.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: We are Elite Partners.

it_user116595

IT Support Engineer at a tech company

Mar 22, 2017

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I could create VM backups from live machines without issues.

What is most valuable?

Simplicity and reliability. I had some difficulties activating the product but after the activation phase all went smooth.

How has it helped my organization?

I could create VM backups from live machines without any issues. The restore process also was very quick.

What needs improvement?

I have tested version 5 only. However I would like to see the addition of a VM converter from another solution (VMware) and a P2V capability.

For how long have I used the solution?

I used it for two to three months.

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

We have had no issues with the deployment.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

There have been no performance issues.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It's been able to scale for our needs.

How are customer service and technical support?

Excellent customer support. I only needed assistance during the activation process.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I have only used the traditional Windows Server Backup tool and the Hyper-V export procedure.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was straightforward.

What about the implementation team?

It was implemented through an in-house team.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

it_user649608IT Manager

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Sep 4, 2017

Not sure there is a unique benefit to point out. The overall experience and good support on the supplier side makes it a good option to use. Even the best products could fail it has not a good support (the reverse is a also true). That said I do like the option to have a connected remove server act as a backup storage (more common today with the availability of cloud solutions)

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Hornetsecurity Altaro VM Backup

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it_user474570

CEO at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Jan 3, 2017

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Easy restore for entire virtual machine files.

What is most valuable?

Great backup features for all my Hyper V machines.
Excellent for offsite backup as an add on function
Easy restore for entire virtual machine files and sandbox option
Well priced
Excellent support and team behind this product

How has it helped my organization?

Easy of use backup
Fully functional multiple locations of backup

What needs improvement?

I want continuous Exchange backup, as this product allows you to revert the Exchange data to almost any custom point in time as it backs up exchange servers as soon as the transactional logs are closed. However I just add hourly backup to Altaro for Exchange servers.

I need to be able to restore emails to Exchange Live not just to a PST. This is a major drawback as I want to be able to restore individual items or mailboxes directly into my live Exchange databases so the user can see the email right away. I was able to do this with Backup Exec years ago (before I used Hyper V). For example, I had to restore a user’s contact I first restored the contacts to a PST file then imported the pst into outlook.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

How is customer service and technical support?

Customer Service:

Good

Technical Support:

Great

How was the initial setup?

Very Good

What other advice do I have?

Wait for the new version 7 the beta that im testing is very quick

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner

it_user542493

IT Manager at a manufacturing company with 501-1,000 employees

Nov 29, 2016

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Restoring and stability areas have room for improvement.

Pros and Cons

"Ability to restore to any host."

"Stability."

What is most valuable?

Shiny and new looking.
All backup features look nice.
Ability to restore to any host.
File level restore on FPS and Exchange.
There is a free version for Hosts with 2 VMs.

How has it helped my organization?

None!

What needs improvement?

Restoring.
Stability.

For how long have I used the solution?

6 months.

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

No. Easy deployment.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Yes, Service had many issues and had to reboot host to resolve on multiple occasions.

Unable to restore a VM when I needed it. Tried multiple hosts. Connected via gig switch and would never complete.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

No issues.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

HP Live Vault (Iron Mountain).

How was the initial setup?

Easy setup.

What was our ROI?

Many lost hours when restorations fail.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

it_user215835

Support technician at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

May 31, 2016

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Backups are much easier to manage, using a drag and drop interface for a lot of the features.

Valuable Features:

Generally, the entire program is brilliant, and there isn't any one feature that I can pick out. However, I'd always recommend using the Altaro offsite backup server as this works brilliantly.

Improvements to My Organization:

Backups are much easier to manage, using a drag and drop interface for a lot of the features.

Room for Improvement:

The only issue at the moment is a lack of throttling. Our backups tend to take most of the day, and whilst it handles VSS backups very well, you do notice a performance hit because it's using all reads on the disk or transferring at maximum bandwidth.

Deployment Issues:

We have had no issues with the deployment.

Stability Issues:

There have been no performance issues.

Scalability Issues:

It's been able to scale for our needs.

Other Advice:

The wide range of changes that you can make are very good. However, timings of the backups take quite a while however this is to be resolved with the CBT feature that they're rolling out in the coming months. It would however be nice to throttle bandwidth/ disk activity during set periods of times. They offer a free license for two VMs or less. A lot of features are disabled, but give it a go and like it, purchase it.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: We're partners

it_user244143

Senior Systems Administrator at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees

May 27, 2015

It provides most of the enterprise class features with the ability to store your data in the cloud, however it has no support for tape drive backup.

Altaro Hyper-V backup solution is best suitable for an SMB and it provides most of the enterprise class features with the ability to store your data on cloud. It also provides an offsite backup for a DR purpose with the help of it’s built in Wan-Acceleration.

When we look at the restoration methods it has two type such as a Full VM restore or a granular file restore. Again the granular recovery will let you restore a single file from a VM or a single item recovery from your Exchange mailbox.

File Level Restore

Scanning Exchange EDB files from VM for restore

Exchange Single item restore

Browsing a VM for file level restore

Exchange Single item restore

Altaro – Retension Policy

Altaro Hyper-V backup also offers ReverseDelta feature for taking backup – By using ReverseDelta technology, multiple backup versions will require less space on your backup drive as it only save the changes between each version of a changed file.

For data integrity Altaro Hyper-V backup has a feature called Sandbox restore where it will do a a VM data integrity test by restoring the VMs to an isolated storage and this task can be scheduled too. It also has a feature called Boot from backup drive – This will let you boot from a VM that you already have backed up but there is a limitation that this feature will support only for the VMs that not compressed and encrypted.

Altaro – Sandbox Restore

Altaro – Sandbox Restore from available VM backup

Altaro – VM Boot From Backup

It support multiple version of Microsoft OS support you can check it here and understand it’s compatibility. Read more

Altaro Editions – Comparision

Advantages of Altaro Hyper-V backup

1. Quick and easy to setup.
2. Nice dashboards for monitoring your backup.
3. Requires less space for retaining multiple backup sets.
4. Sandbox restore – Automated VM restore after backup for testing purpose. That boosts confidence in backup.
5. Central Management Console
6. Competitive pricing when compared to other enterprise class solutions.
7. VM Compression & Encryption.

Conclusion

Altaro Hyper-v backup is not pricey and provides great features to secure your production data on Microsoft Hyper-V clusters. Another plus of this application is, it provides an offsite backup as a DR over a WAN/Internet connection and this will enable your DR without spending much. However it has No support for Tape Drive backup – So no Disk-to-tape backup is possible. Tape backup is still an unavoidable in Data Centers as the tape backup copies are considered and used as an offsite copy because tape backups have a proven longevity of 30 years.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

it_user175725Solution Engineer at a engineering company with 51-200 employees

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Jun 5, 2015

Helpful review

it_user229812

Senior System/Package Engineer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Apr 28, 2015

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The setup is very easy but it would be good if they would expand to allow non-Hyper-V servers to be backed up.

What is most valuable?

The great features are

The possibility to backup Linux machines online
Off-site backup
Fire drills
File level restore

How has it helped my organization?

It provides us with a better backup and restore solution for our Hyper-V environment.

What needs improvement?

It would be good to if they would expand the functionality to be able to backup normal servers without Hyper-V.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've used it for around two years.

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

No issues encountered.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

In the beginning there were issues, but that was related to the storage network.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

No issues encountered.

How are customer service and technical support?

Customer Service:

It's great, the support is good and very fast in providing responses to queries.

Technical Support:

it's excellent.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We previously used Data Protection Manager (DPM), but it lacked the ability to backup Linux VM's without going into saved state so we switched.

How was the initial setup?

The setup is very easy.

What about the implementation team?

I did it myself in-house.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The original setup took me around a day during normal production hours, so no extra costs in terms of overtime etc. Day-to-day costs are really low as there is not much work needed as long as it runs. You just have to review the daily report and add a VM if needed.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We previously used DPM then went straight onto Altaro.

What other advice do I have?

Give it a try as it's very easy to setup and works like charm. Also, the pricing model is very good.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

it_user229773

Senior Support Consultant with 51-200 employees

Apr 27, 2015

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It could be improved by including support for REFS files system, however, DR time has been massively reduced.

What is most valuable?

Item level restore
Offsite copies

How has it helped my organization?

It provides much faster restoration of VMs.

What needs improvement?

It could be improved by including support for REFS files system and restoring brick level items directly into Exchange as opposed to a PST file.

For how long have I used the solution?

We've used it since it was first released so it's been a few years.

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

No issues encountered.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Sometime there are stability issues with older kit, for example, it can take a long time to compress the primary backup.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

No issues encountered.

How are customer service and technical support?

Customer Service:

8/10.

Technical Support:

8/10.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We used Symantec Backup Exec but it wasn't up to the job for virtual servers so we switched.

How was the initial setup?

It's straightforward as you just run a small download and the program is really to go.

What about the implementation team?

We're an Altaro reseller so we buy it in-house and then deploy it for our customers.

What was our ROI?

High as the product is considerably cheaper than the time it would take to restore servers an old fashion way
DR time has been massively reduced.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

We use VMWare in-house, but the setup cost is our price plus around an hour to configure it, depending on how many off-site host locations there are.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

No other options evaluated.

What other advice do I have?

Make sure you have the relevant expansion/space for growing VMS and VSS
If there is not enough free disk space for VSS to run you will get crash consistent state backups
Enable shadow copy (previous versions) restore on files servers if using REFS files system as its not supported

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: We are an Elite Reseller & we have half a dozen certified Altaro Engineers (including myself)