The solution’s support and onboarding process needs to be improved.

If you purchase a Unitrends appliance, they'll give it for free but charge you heavily for the support. We got the Unitrends appliance worth $ 67,000 for free but paid $ 90,000 for three years of support. We've had a couple of renewals since then, and we've negotiated and got better renewals per year, paying around $ 16,000 to $ 18000 per year instead of $ 30,000.

Unitrends' support is super expensive, and sometimes they are unresponsive.

It's a little complicated for us to speak about areas for improvement in Unitrends because the previous director didn't renew its maintenance, so we're running an old version. We haven't been talking with the Unitrends team about updating to the most recent version, but one of the problems we have is that the device will be EOL in two years. We could switch to their software, but we're not sure we want to go through that.

Unitrends can be challenging to scale.

In terms of improvement, the UI, especially in the recovery section, is unclear about which repository it uses—I had to hover over to find that information. Figuring out the scripting part wasn't straightforward; it took some time and had a few hiccups. Simplifying the scripting process and improving UI clarity would be beneficial.

In the next release of Unitrends, I would like to see the ability to set retention based on the destination repository. Currently, I can set retention based on the data being backed up, but having the flexibility to specify retention periods for different repositories would be beneficial. This would allow me to tailor retention settings based on the importance and nature of the data stored in each repository.

For smaller K12 schools, I wish they offered a beefier free version with more storage and options. This would enable poorer schools to stay safe and secure from all the threats out in the world, especially ransomware and the horrible consequences of that problem.

I would like to see more storage options for the free version.

The solution's base operating system needs to be improved. 

The solution’s UI can be improved. I am saying this because I have seen solutions with better UIs.

I am uncertain whether the solution already includes these features, but I suggest synchronization and support for VXLAN capabilities as the additional features to be incorporated in the future release of the solution.

It seems like Unitrends moved away from enterprise customer engagement and moved more towards the managed service provider market. I'm familiar with that market because I do that type of work on the side. That's great, but that's a whole different market and avenue from the enterprise backup market; how they interact is totally different as well. I don't know what happened, but their customer engagement went completely downhill on their sales side. You just can't do that.

I don't know what happened, but I looked at their cloud product and it just looks like an IaaS implementation of their on-premise product. Cloud products really need to be engineered to be cloud-aware. I haven't looked at it for several months now, but at that time, I wanted it to work out, it just did not seem like it was cloud-aware in terms of being able to have tiered storage and different capabilities that I wanted.

Pushing the client to Windows 8 and Server 2012, no appliance update notifications, more stable pricing model, no support for dual VPN utilization (required for cloud replication and remote monitoring which cannot be done simultaneously).

Follow up for the DRaaS service setup. I'm still waiting to schedule a DRaaS test after upgrading several months ago.

The amount of updates which are being released. We were running 9.2 for the longest time when 10 came out. We were advised to upgrade, then two weeks later, we were told to wait. Since version 10 came out, there have been multiple versions released for Unitrends. Updates should be limited to two or three a year, focusing more on quality instead of a rushed bug release.

We have a huge VMware infrastructure with multiple hosts that use local storage. Backup jobs of VMs seem to target one host at a time, so if there are 10 VMs on that host getting backed up, it hammers that ESXi host until sometimes the jobs hang and nothing more occurs. It would be great to have the job throttle/limit the max number of backups on a single ESXi host.

There are some questions as to how safely they are storing backup data. We had an issue about a year ago, but it actually ended up wiping our entire backup history, because one of the databases got corrupted, and we couldn't recover the backup data. Six to seven years of backup data just disappeared. So, obviously we weren't too happy. It's one of the primary reasons we're looking at the market and have gone down a different route for backups, essentially.

I also think there should be a lesser focus on the physical appliance, which was virtualized. I'm willing to look at it from the ground up and go actually a bit more resiliency, we don't want to lose the entire database because it took a snapshot of the appliance. This is a pretty common thing. We unravel all this data that's backed up if we need to collaborate.

Support is great for small simple issues, but anything more difficult, it is hard to get good resolutions without having to badger them and their management. I think maybe Unitrends' support teams are too small for the size of their customer base and numbers of incidents.

becoming software defined rather than appliance based oriented, establishing alllainces with major oem vendors as that opens flexibility on HW

They are trying to follow Quorum for instant recovery and all those things, however, they have that feature only for Windows environments and not for Linux. The console is pretty complex.

Comparing the features and the working pattern, definitely they have to come down on pricing if they want to compete in the market.

It's complex. It's not so easy to use. It's not an easy configuration or a single pane configuration. There are a lot of steps involved to configure something.

They need instant recovery.

I would like to see the improve High availability features like switchover and switchback process. also unitrends boomerang compatibilities. 

Probably the biggest issue I've had is actually paying for the unit and part of that problem is that they use a third party for the billing. When my sort needs to be renewed, I'm never notified. So, six months later, I will have an issue and try to get support for it, and then it will be a big hassle because I was never built for the support to begin with and then they wouldn't give me the support.

All things with a computer chip.

None.

Renewal issues: It should have the ability to do year-by-year for multiple years.

Making the seeding process more accessible and easier to understand. Also, make more of the undocumented best practices easier to find

Stabilizing SQL database backups: They are way too sensitive and I am having to constantly fix SQL level backups.

If the interface could be less complex, it is would be great. It's not the easiest to get around and to work with. Someone with a technical background won't have a problem with it, but new people might struggle with the interface complexity.

I would like to see more support for the different major cloud vendors and more focus on the desktop so that I can give a client a single solution for all of their backup requirements. I don't like selling two or three different backup products to cover various needs. I want to be able to provide my client with a single solution from a single vendor.

Linux full bare metal backups (automatic).

Implement the changes that are being requested through the GUI.

The next release should bring back the ease of some search issues from the legacy program.  

The ability to run just differentials without pulling the full on your archive.

There are a few quirks where the GUI, agent, and back-end are not precisely meshed. The new OS may have fixed those issues, however.

Technical support is quite inadequate. Techs don't see to be well-versed in troubleshooting issues that arise and tickets stay opened for weeks for resolution.

The only area that I would say needs some improvements is the initial setup. A little more assistance and help during implementation would be great.

It needs both a better interface and a more solid support structure for when issues arise.

Network-based storage stability could be improved.